Journey To Italaque, Bolivia | Part II

JOURNEY TO ITALAQUE Part II.

An Andean Adventure in Four Parts
By Henry Kuntz
Part Two: El Condor Pasa

(Synopsis: With the goal of attending a festival of panpipe ensembles in the remote but musically renowned village of Italaque, Bolivia, on May 3, 1986, my travel companions Josh, Patrick and I rode the back of a truck for a day high up the far side of huge Lake Titicaca. By evening, we had arrived in Puerto Acosta, the last outpost before the Peruvian border. From there, we were told we could reach the village. We discovered, however, that there was no road and no transport, only a “muy directo” path. Italaque stood 25 kilometers away.)

In spite of the distance, longtime locals assured us we could walk to Italaque from Puerto Acosta in seven hours.

It was a brilliant morning. We had arrived the evening before in total darkness. Now we could distinguish our surroundings. Tiny Puerto Acosta’s calm, airy lanes centered on a big, open plaza; the town tucked neatly into a gentle mountain valley.

There was no proper restaurant in town, only one-room comedores with simple planks to sit on. A señora served up whatever she had available. For now, that was eggs, dry bread, and weak coffee, the same meal as we had eaten in the just discernible candlelight of the night before.

At 10:30 Patrick and I set off for Italaque. (Josh, nursing a pulled muscle, decided to remain in Puerto Acosta which was beginning a festival of its own.) We toted sleeping bags and carried packs with overnight basics, a bit of bread and two tins of sardines. We were almost immediately in the country. We started up a hill and in only a few minutes inauspiciously lost the muy directo path in the middle of a field of green vegetables.

We found our way out of the garden and onto a nearby trail. Six feet wide, winding upward, this had to be the route.

For a long time, we hiked up, then down; up, then down, up and down. All the while, we could not be sure where we were going.

Hiking just above the tree line (at 12,000 feet), our surroundings, while nowhere near as barren as the moonscapes of higher elevations, were mainly rock and green scrub. Early afternoon, we suddenly stepped onto a wide cultivated plain ringed by craggy offshoots of the lofty Andean ranges. The spaciousness and dramatic clarity of the setting were exhilarating. For Patrick and me, it was an opportunity to experience the real life of the altiplano. Basic but cared for adobe houses stood at expansive intervals; each dwelling’s inhabitants maintained extended agricultural tracts. There were scattered groups of people about: women herding sheep or exhorting well-packed llamas forward, men digging and harvesting tiny potatoes. Veins of water flowed freely through long irrigation canals.

As we crossed the plain, the wistful tones of wood flutes wafted on the wind. The sounds came from a distant settlement. Nearby, an Indian man motioned us to his home to speak with him and his son. He was a handsome man, a bronze sheen to his skin, square face, prominent cheek bones, in loose white clothing. He was about 45 with the aura of a wise elder. He was curious to know where we had come from and where we were going. We filled him in, but our conversation was as much an unspoken acknowledgement and affirmation of each other’s presence as it was an exchange of information. He wished us well and sent us on our way.

At the plain’s end, we stopped for a brief lunch. Then, following a narrow roughshod path, we climbed very high up, spectacularly above a layer of white clouds, then wound steeply down, more than 3,000 feet, into a rugged green valley. (Oh, the legs!) All around, the mountain’s abundant rock had been used to create fences and facing for rows of flat terraces that were planted up and down the sides of every available incline. (This agricultural method was put in place by the Incas; many Inca terraces are still in use.) We traveled alongside a streaming silver river until our path took us over some boulders to the other side. The trail veered off; stone gave way to cobblestone. Daylight waning, to our amazement we walked into Italaque.

The village’s boundaries were roughly defined by high rock wall fences. Its white stucco buildings were topped by tin roofs. Tall eucalyptus trees graced the area, so that the village appeared almost as a mountain oasis.

Italaque was even tinier than Puerto Acosta, not even a pension to stay in. The Aymara Indian men we encountered upon our entrance into its large square were impressed by the fact we had arrived there on foot. One of them – short, dark, dignified – hospitably suggested that we spend the night with him and his wife. Like his compadres, he was durably attired in wool sweater, alpaca scarf and heavy jacket, a worn but stylish brown fedora on his head.

Night was coming. The town had no electricity; it also had no running water, only the nearby river. Our host led us to a room above a small store he owned. It is where he and his wife lived, ate, and slept. The modest room was little decorated; a corner was noticeably hung with antique wood flutes and panpipes.

For dinner, the señora served Patrick and me one fried egg each along with about twenty baby boiled potatoes. There was an unknowable story in the dusky map of her stoic Indian face, barely lit by the faint flame of a low hanging oil lamp.

Bedtime followed. The señor secured the door to the space with an old skeleton key that creaked as it twisted in its weathered lock. We were confined for the night. There was no bathroom, so the señora placed a pink plastic pail on a miniscule balcony for use as a toilet. When the señor extinguished the flame of the lamp, the darkness was as dense as in a deep cave.

The couple slept in one double bed; Patrick and I, in our sleeping bags, in another. An ongoing nightmare was a loose plank in the middle that automatically popped up whenever either of us shifted positions.

I had just passed into a state of semi-slumber when the low throbbing of big bass drums began. They rumbled purposefully, persistently in the distant night. The beating came to a quickened crescendo, halted, ritually began again. My eyes shut; mind drifted through dreams. Silence. Sound! From the square below: the loud riffling of snare drums, cadential bursts of breath blown hard into perhaps a dozen high-pitched sikus, or panpipes. I could imagine the jaunty spring in the steps of the musicians as they marched. Their playing was taut, crisp, and proud, not unlike that of a well-drilled fife and drum corps. The band’s snappy sounds slipped mysteriously in and out of the consummate blackness.

We were up early, walked to the river to wash, wake, and rejuvenate.


The celebration of “El Dia de la Invencion de la Santa Cruz” was to take place several hundred feet above the town on the narrow ridge and precipice of a hill known as Calvario. The May 3rd date, honoring the “Discovery of the Holy Cross,” is coincidental to the timeframe that the constellation “Southern Cross” reaches its highest peak in the heavens. We hiked the hill’s rocky grade. On its crest sat a tiny chapel and courtyard. A quiet market spilled off the top, barely clinging to the summit’s edge where an ample portion of earth had eroded away. It was mainly run by Indian women in an array of bowler hats, plaid aprons over their bright skirts, peddling an odd assortment of items ranging from wool and polyester clothing to rubber tire sandals and plastic kitchenware. A barely palatable stew of anonymous highland tubers (our breakfast!) was being eagerly downed by hungry villagers.

By mid morning, circles of costumed male musicians, twenty to twenty-five in a group, began forming on the hillside below. Their instruments included the sikus we had anticipated and also large and small end-blown flutes and a variety of drums. The drums boomed periodically as the players carried out ceremonial observances, including the consumption of an overpoweringly strong white grape brandy. Their ritual drinking would continue throughout the hours of playing to come; the festival’s celebrants, we included, would be invited to join in the communion. As a clue to the drink’s significance, when asked if I wished to partake of it, it was with the simple question, “Potencias?’” or “Powers?”

Single file, the first group of musicians began rapidly ascending the hill, stepping hurriedly in their rubber or leather sandals. Over silky white shirts and dark pants, the players were hung with shiny gold and rainbow- streaked capes and scarves; their cocoa brown faces were offset by tall hats circled with gaudily painted feathers of red, yellow, and green. Running intently, they simultaneously blew a low stately melody on their great and small sikus and beat out rhythms on their drums. Most of the sikus were grand, the longest tube of each instrument being nearly four feet long. The players exhaled big billowy breaths of sound that whooshed about like gusts of mountain wind; their airy blasts were harmonically tinged with the twitters and chirps of panpipes only inches in length. The drums that were strapped over their shoulders were large; the heads were over a foot in diameter and the wooden cavities, surrounded by animal hide, more than two feet long.

listen to First Group – Large Sikus

 
As if the sight of the band and the sound of it were not astonishing enough, at its wings flew two giant condors! Rather, I should say, two beings who, for the sake of the ritual, had taken on the feathered costume and character of the great bird of prey. When the group had reached the courtyard of the small chapel the musicians, still playing, began circling about the creatures, first in one direction, then the other. Someone entered the chapel to pray and make obligatory offerings. The birdmen, shrouded in black, opened wide their dark wings for full effect and stood upright, their faces hooded with white gauzy material through which they could see and to which was attached a small mirror, perhaps to honor Inti, the Sun, or to ward off evil influences. And they began imitating the postures of flight of the Andean condor which they believe is endowed with mythical powers.

As the world’s largest bird of prey, inhabiting and soaring above the mountains’ highest and most remote peaks (the realms of spirit), the condor is thought to carry the souls of the dead into the afterlife. It lives by feeding on what has died, but in so doing transforms what could be dangerous to life. The condor therefore symbolizes the mysteries of life and death. It inhabits a world between worlds, able to carry messages to the gods.

The dance of the condor likely dates from pre-Inca times, as it is intimately associated with the history of the siku which itself is that old. Little has been written of it ethnographically, however, and it is rare to see it.

We stood in awe of what we were witnessing.

The great birds momentarily drew in their wings. The sikus blew a long, slow finish to the ceremonial song. The drums, now alone, roared like rolling thunder. Then, beginning the tune anew, the group wound its way through the festival crowd onto the narrow precipice of the hill.

Already, a second group of musicians was playing and entering the small courtyard. A third, then a fourth were ascending the rocky slope.

The giant condors circled portentously overhead.

Next Week: “The Festival’s Wild Finish; Lost in the Mountains”

Thanks to Martha Winneker for editorial assistance.
Text, photos, and recorded sound Copyright Henry Kuntz. All Rights Reserved.

Journey to Italaque, Bolivia | Part I

JOURNEY TO ITALAQUE Part I.

An Andean Adventure in Four Parts
By Henry Kuntz
Part One: Finding the Way

In South America, where seasons run counter to those in the north, it was the fall of 1986. As I crossed the Peruvian border into Bolivia — in the midst of a five-week trip — little did I know that I was about to embark on one of the most exhilarating yet harrowing journeys of my life.

A principal goal of mine in coming to Bolivia – whose population is 60 to 70 per cent Indian — was to attend an intriguing Andean festival in the village of Italaque. I had read, in Lynn Meisch’s Guide to El Dorado and the Inca Empire, of an event on May 3rd of each year, the feast of the Discovery of the Holy Cross. This was to feature a contest among groups of sikuri or panpipe players from surrounding areas who had undergone musical training there. Italaque holds near-legendary status in the region for the high level of its players’ musicianship.

The only problem was that I had been unable to locate the village on any country map I had seen. So upon arrival in La Paz — the world’s highest capital city, sprawling compactly around a bowl-shaped stone canyon at 12,000 feet — I immediately went to the tourist office, a tiny kiosk on the esplanade of a wide boulevard, for the purpose of obtaining directions.

There I met Australian Patrick Hanson and American (and Australian resident) Josh Ahrens who, excited upon learning of the Italaque festival, were intent to join me on the journey.

They were thirtyish in age, flaunting a spirited youthful enthusiasm. I was two months shy of turning forty.

We found the village on a detailed map, high up the far slope of Lake Titicaca. (Lake Titicaca – at 12,500 feet – is the world’s highest navigable lake and the second largest in South America, covering 3,200 square miles.) This side of the lake, the northeastern one, is little traveled by foreigners. The border which runs between Peru and Bolivia there, and which continues diagonally through the lake, affords no legal entry or exit points from either side of the frontier.

So the first response to our inquiry from the woman behind the counter was an attempt to discourage us. “No es una area turistica,” she warned, in a forbidding and foreboding tone we, in our naiveté, cavalierly shrugged off. She said that the only way for us to make the journey was to hire a driver whose services would run U.S. $300. Since each of us was living on between $10 and $15 a day for all expenses, that sum was out of the question. Even dividing the cost three ways, that would minimally come to a week’s budget for each person. *

There had to be another way, we thought. After all, locals were somehow doing the trip. So we asked around and discovered the cobbled back street where transport to that part of the country departed. And it was there we presented ourselves in the cold, clammy darkness of the early morning of May 1st.

What type of transport we expected to get, I can’t recall, but what we boarded – with a packed crowd – was a large, open flatbed truck, a raised beam running the length of its center and its sides flanked by wooden fencing. (In the Andes, one discovers that while buses, and to a certain extent trains, ply the major routes, other travel needs are met by trucks such as this, commandeered by private drivers, who may or may not combine their runs with other business.)

Truck etiquette seemed to be to place one’s belongings beneath oneself to sit on. That presented a certain logistical problem for me (packing camera, cassette recorder, and a three-foot long wood bass flute and several LPs I had purchased), but most people had with them only large mushy bundles of things tied together by blankets, and the floor of the flatbed was stacked and carpeted with these.

The prime seats were behind the truck’s cabin, held on to dearly by several oversized Indian women who leaned comfortably back, uniformly attired in their wide indigo skirts and colorful rainbow wraps, their heads sporting the always-fashionable dark bowler hats.

People began securing their places in the truck around 6:00 AM. It wasn’t until after daybreak, 8:00 AM, that we finally began our snail-like ascent from the city’s cavernous gorge. Hovering above the metropolis in the distance stood its majestic “guardian,” snow-packed Mount Illimani, gazing caringly down from 20,000 feet.

We passed over the canyon ridge and onto the altiplano, the vast high tableland stretching from northern Chile to central Peru between the two main eastern and western Andean cordilleras or ranges. Traces of the eastern cordillera could be seen in the distance; the plateau itself was wide and endless.

Everyone was well bundled because, although it was a spectacularly bright and sunny day — the Andean sun is in fact, due to the thinness of the high altitude atmosphere, the hottest direct sun I’ve ever experienced — the air was cold, heightened by a chilling wind from the moving vehicle. The Indian women further anesthetized themselves to the temperature by steadily chomping on clumps of dry coca leaves.

I should say a few words about the altitude, because for most of a month, I lived at or above 12,000 feet. Being at that altitude is not simply being at an elevation but being in an elevated state. Following a headachy day or two of personal acclimatization, there comes an amazing sharpness of perception – and atmospherically, everything is sharper — and a clarity of mind unlike what one normally experiences at lower levels. It is not unlike being stoned.

As the truck clattered past the canyon’s rim, we were struck by the appearance of clusters of dusty, unkempt red clay barrios. Only the poorest lived in this windswept area, descending daily to work in the less harsh climate of La Paz. Gradually, nature reclaimed the space until we were riding not far from Lake Titicaca itself, its glassy waters gleaming sky blue in the morning light.

By early afternoon we arrived in the town of Escoma, two-thirds the way up the Bolivian portion of the lakeside. A road runs from there to Italaque, so we had thought to depart the truck at that juncture and secure other transport. But we were told nothing was moving in that direction anytime soon and that it would be better for us to continue on to Puerto Acosta, the last town of note before the Peruvian border; from there, we could get to Italaque.

Escoma was well into one of its own yearly festivals. No one was going anywhere. Our driver took off: for a meal or to join in the celebration, we didn’t know. Meanwhile, we waited uncertainly on the truck.

From around a corner of the square we could hear strains of clashing brass bands. Trumpets, French horns, tubas, big bass drums – band after band came parading in front of us, playing their own version of the same melancholy tune. Women in brown alpaca ponchos, scarlet velvet skirts, and black bowler hats, threw their heads back high, bobbed low, twisted this way and that, proudly displaying their steps. Snaking among the women and the bands were fantastic characters in cartoon armor, floppy cardboard capes with layer-cake shoulders, silly white, brown or orange wigs on their heads. A mocking affront to the conquistadores?


An hour and a half later, we began rumbling down the road toward Puerto Acosta.

Now, there is a superstition among the Indians of the region that whenever Easter Sunday comes too early, before the end of March, as had occurred this year, it is a fateful harbinger of natural calamity and disaster. True to form, rain after rain had deluged the area in previous weeks, raising the level of gigantic Lake Titicaca nearly ten feet. Entire villages had been inundated with water, farmlands had turned to mush, the train on the Peruvian side of the lake between Juliaca and Puno had discontinued service because most of its tracks were submerged and, of course, portions of road were completely flooded.

The impact on our journey was such that there were parts of the highway that were so under water that the weight of the passengers in the truck would cause the vehicle to bog down. We had to abandon the truck and scurry, sometimes as much as three quarters of a mile over steep inclines, to catch up to it, waiting with its engine revving. No one wanted to be left behind. Even with that precaution, water would rise to near the top of the truck’s four foot high wheels, so close to its underside that it looked as if it might float away. Somehow, it always managed, struggling sluggishly through the lake’s new periphery. We continued on.

At 7:00 that evening, we loped into Puerto Acosta. The place was utterly dark save for a lone dim streetlamp near the bus stop, the town’s only electrical extravagance. A small boy led Patrick, Josh, and me through the black streets to an unmarked pension whereupon a gaunt, jowl-faced Spaniard, flashlight in hand, greeted us at the door. He led us to a rectangular stone room, spartan but not unpleasant, where there was a bed for each of us. The room came to 2 million pesos apiece, extra for however many thin candles we burned. The bathroom was outside and around the corner: a sink, no shower, only cold water.

No matter, we were happy to be there. The Spaniard brought us a large beer to cool our thirst, and we queried him about getting to Italaque. To be sure, we could reach the pueblo from Puerto Acosta, he said. But there was no road and no transport, only a path. We could walk it easily, he claimed. The path, he said, was muy directo. And the village was only 25 kilometers away!

Next Week: Part Two: “El Condor Pasa”

Thanks to Martha Winneker for editorial assistance.
Text and photos Copyright Henry Kuntz. All Rights Reserved.

* Note:

While we were on a strict traveler’s allowance, we became instant millionaires upon entering the country. The Bolivian peso was trading at nearly two million (!) to one US dollar. The currency was so devalued that a single sheet of toilet paper was worth more than a one peso bill. Luckily for us, there were now one million peso notes. There were reports of restaurant patrons having to produce foot high stacks of bills to pay for a meal.