Local women selling handicrafts and homespun rugs in Pisac

We were an hour out of Cusco when conversation stopped. As we crested over a steep hill a brutal landscape stared back, all jagged peaks and windswept hillsides. A small town lay buried in the centre of the verdant valley in the centre of the looming peaks, and distant farms dotted the western edge of our vision. Juan rode at the wheel, me in the passenger seat. Sacred Valley lay before us. He’d invited me to his family home whilst leading me to Macchu Picchu, suggesting that we could spend the day with his father.

‘He is a very old man,’ he had said. ‘He speaks no English.’

I nodded, and said that we’d meet in Pisac the day after the trek.

A rusty gate marked the end point of the road. Beyond it, only a thin trail spiraled further onwards – a meridian directing the car to a mud-brick farmhouse. Juan drove slowly now, and the front door to the house sprung open. A very old man emerged. He wore a woven beanie on his head, and his hands curled over the door protectively as the car rumbled to a stop. As we assembled before him, Juan introduced us in Aymara. The man nodded as Juan spoke, weighing each of us in turn with sun bitten eyes. His face was wrinkled, and told of a lifetime spent in the sun.

‘My father,’ said Juan. ‘Inti’

We introduced ourselves, with Juan translating. Juan told him that I was Australian, miming a kangaroo bouncing. Inti laughed, and his hands relaxed, retreating into the deep pockets on his jacket.

‘I thought we’d spend the day with him,’ said Juan, inviting us into the house. ‘Maybe cook a meal, have a drink.’

We followed him into a dark kitchen. Inti followed behind, whistling softly as he shut the door. Hard packed dirt muffled our footfalls. The room had a clean, cold smell to it. Inti stooped beside a hearth, and a small fire sparked from beneath his fingers. He moved with the grace of a person perfectly at home, and he bade us sit. Thin beams of sunlight spilled into the room from a cracked window, and promptly, we all held steaming mugs of tea.

‘Do you have anything that you’d like to know from my father?’ said Juan.

I asked Inti how long he had lived on the farm. He paused before answering, blowing softly onto his clay mug.

‘Since I was born. Perhaps fifty years.’

We murmured in amazement. I asked him what changes he had seen in Peru throughout his lifetime.

‘Nothing much,’ he answered softly. ‘Fewer people seem to stay in the hills now. But farming has stayed the same.’

‘And what about the years under the junta?’ asked Jake.

‘The soldiers came up here so infrequently,’ said Inti, now rolling a cigarette in his callused fingers. ‘The sixties were tough years, very tough. But we kept doing what we have always done.”

We spoke for a time more, speaking of Inti’s life. He smoked three cigarettes as the morning wore on. He joked quietly with us, and asked us how living in hostels had treated us. I told him that it had treated me fine, aside from the bedbugs. At times, only he and Juan would speak, softly in their tongue. We sat quietly, all of us straining to hear a familiar word of phrase. I heard none, but both men appeared at ease as they spoke.

A high wind greeted us upon leaving the house. Inti blew into his hands, rubbing them together. Juan led us out into a brown field behind the house, with Inti following. Thin furrowed lines marked the careful passage of Inti’s plow across the field. A long row of dark leaves lined each furrow. Inti stooped down at one such clump of leaves and plucked at them. Dragging them from the soil, he held them in an outstretched hand, potatoes dangling from beneath his fist. He held them out to me, smiling.

“Potato?”

I took the clump of leaves, and felt the cluster of tubers below. The dark clay plastering the potatoes peeled off easily in my hands. Inti weighed me as I rolled the potatoes in my hands, and I flashed him a thumbs up, and he returned the gesture. He bent to pluck out another root. Watching his searching hands this time, I followed their progress as they grasped at the root. I followed his lead, stooping over to pluck a cluster of potatoes from the soil. Into spoke softly, encouraging me to continue. My friends soon joined us. We moved slowly, methodically, yet Inti moved with speed, his hands searching through the soil as a snake through grass. The wind howled as we worked, and clouds of dust careened across the field. We joked about this being the first day of work we had each done in a long time. Juan translated this, and Inti laughed. Juan translated his response,

‘If they want to stay on for the summer, there is space in the yard for a tent.’

In time we had gathered a prodigious pile of potatoes. We dusted them off and left them in a bare patch on the field. Inti and Juan nodded at this, smiling. They whispered as they watched us clean the potatoes, and their grins grew larger. The air, grown cold with the steadily setting sun now had a bite to it.

‘Should we eat?’ asked Inti, Juan translating.

We spoke our approval, and the old man dusted his hands off on his jeans. He stared at the sky, and then back to us.

‘Better we eat before it gets any colder,’

Juan and Inti set us to work once more. Following Inti’s lead, we gathered up small apple-sized balls of mud and clay from the soil. Each handful scooped up was rolled into balls and stacked into a pile. The sun reached its zenith as we worked, and my breaths came shallow in the thin air. As we left the clay at his feet, Inti dug a small trench. Smiling at seeing the consternation on our faces, he gestured with his hands, telling us to bring him more. Hands muddy, we handed him more and more clay. As we piled it in front of him, Juan began piling the potatoes into the trench, covering them in earth. Inti had stacked each ball of clay into an intricate earthen dome over the trench, completely occluding them from view. Juan produced a cigarette lighter, and the old man took it. We gathered round to watch this, and he grabbed at one of the last remaining clay-balls. He held the flame of the lighter to the mud ball and it began to smoke. A small flame grew within the clay, and he dropped the smoking ball through a hole in the dome. He did this with each remaining clay ball – sparking a flame inside each until they began to puff out white smoke. In time, the inside of the dome was bathed in a layer of smoke, but none escaped.

‘Will it be hot enough to cook the potatoes?’ I asked Juan.

Again, he smiled, and translated to Inti. The old man clapped a hand over my shoulder and laughed. He spoke to Juan.

‘He said that you can poke your head in and find out,’

We sat there watching the mud dome as the sun set. We huddled inside ponchos provided by Inti, rough Guanaco wool scratching at our forearms. Huddled in the dust, we appeared spectral and ghostly in the dying light – bathed only by the small cherry of flames winking from inside the earthen oven. We passed one of the bottles of pisco we had brought between us as we waited. Juan softly translated as Inti spoke.

‘Juan has spoke and spoke of bringing travelers here,’ he began, taking a long drag from the bottle. ‘But as far as I know, none so far have come.’

Juan nodded, confirming this.

‘I don’t understand the appeal of watching an old man cook potatoes, but all the same, I am glad that Juan brought you here.’

We murmured our thanks softly. No other words seemed necessary. Inti stared into the flames, huddling deep within his poncho.

‘Maybe it is time to eat, no?’ he asked.

We scooped the potatoes from the now collapsed earthen stove. They rolled from the smoking clay piping hot, burning our fingers. Inti bit into the first one that he found, dirt and all. Following his lead, we each bit into a potato. The caked dust and dirt broke under my teeth, giving way to the fleshy starch. Heat radiated within me and I finished the potato, grasping for another. For a time, we were silent but for our groping into the dirt, scooping up potatoes. Inti spoke quietly to Juan.

‘He says that the land absorbs flavour every time we cook in it’ translated Juan through a mouthful. ‘Each bite we take tastes of the memory of the last time we cooked in this field. Each bite is like eating the ghosts of the potatoes from the year before, and so on.’

As he spoke, his words began to ring true. I could taste flavours unlike any I had ever experienced. They swirled within me, and Inti smiled knowingly. We shared a moment, silently chewing, dirt streaking our faces. History and tradition synthesized into a perfect unison of flavour as we ate. His eyes glinted, and he clapped me around the shoulder, gesturing to his potato with his free hand. Peering at it, I saw that there were small white worms wriggling inside the potato. He and Juan laughed uproariously, their cackles reverberating across the valley. Juan spoke to us after conferring with his father,

‘He also says that some of the potatoes have gone rotten, and may have maggots.’

Grins split our faces. Inti laughed again, and pointed at us, making a worm like motion with his wizened index finger. Laughing harder still, we passed the bottle of Pisco between us and joked about the ‘real flavour’ of the field being both starch and maggot. The last remaining potatoes were divided between us, and we ate them with smiles on our faces.

The lingering taste of earth and possible maggot stayed in my mouth as we descended down the hillside. Walking now, we slowly hiked the way back into Pisac. Juan and Inti stood at the gate, empty bottle of Pisco resting precariously on the wall. They stood bathed in grey twilight. I waved, and then turned onto the thin mountain path that led back to the road.