Postcards from Peru

I´m fairly certain that I could live quite happily here in Ollanta for a long time, with only a few necessary modifications, and no, it´s not because they have cheap avocados in the market. I could live with the instant coffee and the weird Spanish keyboard and the dusty cobblestone streets. I could adjust to reading American newspapers entirely online. Maybe. I could even get used to carrying around my own toilet paper. (Who knew that there are people in the world who don´t consider it a bathroom essential?)

But I digress. I think the hardest thing about living here, for me anyways, would be the language barrier. I´m starting to understand other people most of the time, and I can usually make out what I want to say. But my concoctions are usually pretty ugly, and I´ve been frustrated by my limited vocabulary.

I love words. I like learning new words and looking them up and finding out where they come from. I like trying them out on people and figuring out how to pronounce them. As my sister Julia would say, words are my jam.

So to come to a country where my descriptive abilities are limited to ¨pretty,¨ ¨funny,¨ ¨clean,¨ and ¨magnificent,¨ give or take a few words, is frustrating. I like telling long stories and sarcastic jokes, both of which are hard on a limited repertoire. Every time I learn a new word, I try to repeat it and fix it in my brain so it doesn´t leave, but usually it does. It has taken me a lifetime to build my English vocabulary, so I guess it´ll take more than eight weeks to build a functional one in Spanish. I think I´ll have to start by finding another synonym for ¨bonita.¨

And bonita just didn´t cut it for our experiences today. None of us are quite used to living at 9,000 feet yet, and we get out of breath walking up stairs. (Which I actually fell down this morning. Ironic that my first mishap was so mundane.) But we wanted to check out the amazing ruins surrounding Ollanta and not feel quite as lazy as usual. So we went up about ten minutes to the free ruins at the edge of town. Wow.

This town is situated in the Sacred Valley, but it feels like you´re in a bowl of mountains. The Incans used Ollanta as a defensive fort, building terraces from the river up to the town and on the hills of the surrounding mountains as defenses against the conquistadors. They held off the Spanish for a very long time, and it´s easy to see why. It´s freaking hard to climb those terraces. And we aren´t even carrying armor.

But the view from the ruins was magnificent. From where we were, we had a view of the entire town and surrounding hills. It was so beautiful, in fact, I was at a loss for words. In either language.


Exploring the Incan fortress. Building with stone was clearly their jam.


Looking out over the town, and the more well-known ruins on the other side.


¡Hola Ollanta!


Climbing around.