my My Wandering

It did not take me long to recall the airport layout – it was not that big anyway – and I soon found a place to sit in the boutique and traveler congested Panamá City Airport, munching on some thyme and cheese cookies brought from home after a couple of flights the second of which had taken over 15 hours and waiting for another three hour one before calling it a day. Not a fan of the ‘people watching’ sport decreed by some travel guides, I however found quite interesting the image provided by those big queues of passengers plying the narrow hallways, as the gate areas were way smaller than a 737, let alone a bigger aircraft, passenger load.

At first the tempo was slower and the singing was not that loud, but everything soon picked up: rhythm, drums, voices, until the whole airport, a metal structure building, seemed to vibrate to the music, with flight announcements fading away. A few ladies wearing bright colour dresses were dancing to the music coming from the drums a couple of boys were playing in a show that seemed to have been commissioned by one of the duty free shops around. Yet soon enough pretty much everyone around, from cleaning staff to several shop employees, from passengers to airline personnel and crew, started dancing, singing or yelling as if they had been rehearsing together for weeks. I instantly knew that the long haul flight had taken me to the right place and the last leg to Lima was hardly noticed, with the recent developments in neighbouring countries nearly forgotten or all the way labeled as untrue.

Steam had started coming out of the South American pot in a way that was not at all unfamiliar to Emmanuel Macron’s France, for instance. In Chile social unrest had started with a price increase and it was later further ignited by typically cheap Socialist propaganda, in Bolivia clashes had kicked when Evo Morales rigged the elections so as to get a new president mandate and his apparatus then got the poor and unions in the streets in a similar manner. And in both cases the ensuing violence led, beyond anything else, to a general unrest, respectively a society rupture where, paradoxically just at the first sight, a fraction no longer challenged those that had been at the origin of the issue in the first place, but another fraction. As Michel Sardou put it:

“C’est toujours la même eau qui coule,
C’est toujours le raisin qui saoule […]
La même chanson qui fait danser la foule.”

Therefore, even when things cooled down (where they did so), one could not ignore the unrest in the air, that defined by the few words one of the people rallying in La Paz had simply put in mid November 2019 as: “Ahora sí, guerra civil!”.

When all was said and done, the turmoil – whether visible in the riots and street fights or simply sensing it while talking to people or just walking down the street – only showed once more the shortcomings of people ruling schemes that relied on the individual’s wilful action and knowledgeable background: communist autocracy and egalitarian democracy. While the former looked gloriously in theory, it miserably failed simply because people (subjects) are different and act from a hedonistic – as opposed to unselfishness-generated – point of view, the latter once again provided a captivating and enticing theory, but it equally failed as it presumed that everyone has the knowledge, brainpower and nonetheless will to decide who is an appropriate leader and who is not, therefore being able to have a say on the destiny of the community. No wonder that both forms of ruling got corrupted the very moment they got into practice. But then, give people a chunk of bread, some wine and the illusion they are in charge (therefore importance) and you can do whatever you please with them as long as you make sure they lack factual knowledge; only that the resulting cake no longer translates as ‘power to / of the people’, but ‘puppet show’. Disregarding of that, the recipe applied in Bolivia (where Evo Morales and his MAS party relied on the coca farmers and uneducated class they fed cheap nationalist ideals), in North Africa and parts of the Middle East or Central Asia (where terrorist organisations relied on those that were easily given a corrupt, doomsday vision of the Quran as a background and later trigger to do whatever instructed) or in Romania (where people voted according to the media-fed Muppet Show disregarding of the facts), and the list could go on for a long while, from France to the United States with noteworthy stopovers in Italy or Greece. In the latter, Alexis Tsipras’ running a bailout referendum in 2015 asking people whether the government should actually pay or not the foreign debt (that was the factual question) was grandly hilarious, the ridiculous apogee of democracy in the land where the term had been coined.

The driver taking me to the city centre was very cautious both in terms of traffic (which was, true, hectic, just as some drivers seemed to embrace nothing short of a death wish, quite familiar a matter for someone coming from Romania) and safety, choosing to drive down busier streets and providing plenty of advice. On the other hand, the very fact that the street where my hotel was located was actually fenced off by police was welcome not necessarily from a safety, but rather from a ‘no car, no honking’, point of view. Other than that, Lima acting as the capital of a major part of the continent in the colonial period was visible in the size and number of highly decorated churches, in the many, grand, intricate detail balcony casonas, as well as in the size of the old town, despite the many contemporary additions. The air was filled with music, dust, fumes, fried chicken fragrance and, of course, horning, while a surprise seemed to wait for the visitor at pretty much every corner, whether it was about an intricate façade church, a small restaurant serving mouth watering tortillas and empanadas or a welcome discussion with strangers. Logistics-wise, it was funny to find out that in Peru, just like in Colombia, Spanish BBVA was one of the only banks to charge a commission – and a hefty one at that – on foreign cards. As a guide would point to a group of tourists in Cusco a few days later while showing them the different layers of a stonewall: ‘the lower section with nearly perfectly cut and polished stones standing upright is the Inca layer; the upper, slanting section of rough, poorly worked stones with a lot of mortar between them to cover the holes is the Spanish layer’.

Contrasts were great, as one could hardly place in the same pot the quaint, palm tree-lined streets and avenues bordered by smart condominiums in San Isidro, the busy and colourful old city centre, respectively the shanty town going up the Cerro de Cristóbal. And, well, it was in Lima that I first made and then saw to it that it turned into practice, a plan that every other hour I would stop at a local tavern and hole in the wall place and grab something to munch, with a cup of coffee, a big glass of guanabana or avena juice aside. As for the grand buildings of them times past and present, of them all the adobe pyramid of the Huaca Hallamarca appealed to have a special magic to it, as it sat there, in the middle of the plush, high end residential district of San Isidro facing a condominium building the design of which had been inspired by it. While Lima was far larger and featured way more impressive period buildings given its history as King’s capital overseas, while its mixture of old and new architecture was appetite opening by default and its fast pace life was refreshing, it fit very well between the rustic picturesque of old Quito or Bogotá, respectively the smart vibe of Caracas and Santiago de Chile. And, just like in Santiago, the fact that most foreigners rushed to the highlights elsewhere in the country granted Lima a sense of natural existence, one that Cusco for one had long lost for the most part.

When, at 04:30 AM, the time to go had come and the driver the receptionist had obliged to call drove me to the airport, the city was neither quiet, nor dark, but the traffic around was actually just fine as a refreshing morning kick. A couple of hours later, what one saw while descending through the clouds and approaching Cusco Airport could be divided in two: green mountains and thousands of houses filling nearly all flat or not necessarily flat spot around. The sharp contrast between the two made me instantly recall a friend’s words: “man is such a pest on this planet!”.

While the traffic and honking in Lima were history here, it was the “everything made for tourists” that hit one the very moment he or she got off the bus in the Plaza San Francisco. Bars and restaurants catering to nearly every possible taste, shops stocked to nearly all possible needs and services – from massage there seemed to be an inflation of to buying Aguas Calientes-bound train or Machu Picchu entrance tickets (even though all could be easily arranged online without paying a commission), from trekking gear to one thousand coffee toppings – could have easily outfitted a naked Martian, catered to his diet and then taken him through an endless array of experiences. Exquisite first floor balconies of period properties overlooking the main plazas and pedestrian streets had been lined up with chairs allowing visitors to practice the people watching sport at ease, without going through the painstaking effort of actually walking across them plazas and along them streets. Restaurant and bar patrons held their menus and called for customers switching languages accordingly, while a double decker bus plied the cobblestone streets with passengers enjoying yet another people watching experience on the go. Yet this was to be only one of the places where mass tourism had gone cheap, wild and extreme, as Aguas Calientes or Ollantaytambo were to show their take on the Las Vegas patent. And, as Juan Carlos – the hotel receptionist’s friend giving me a ride to the Lima Airport – had put it, “No hay una temporada alta o baja en Perú, solo es cuestión de viajar en el norte o el sur del país”. And, to make it complete, the crisis in Bolivia and Chile had added yet more visitors to the already full glass.

It was refreshing to head from Cusco to the highland Chinchero village with its colourful market of textiles and vegetables, where the barter was still in use by local people. But then, the time to go back with the flow had come. Even though my room windows opened towards the tumultuous river and the loud roar was a constant companion, I could sense a tapping sound that carried out throughout the night: rain. At 4:30 AM (again) I started walking through the pouring rain, just to find a line of about 3 dozen people already formed at the bridge gate that would only open at 05:00: these were the people that walked up to Machu Picchu instead of taking the bus most visitors chose to get to the site entrance. It was these people walking alone that should have been granted access to the site, as taking a bus up to a mountain crest where others had gone through the pain of levelling the ground and building a city out of nearly perfectly polished stones, taking a bus up there was simply blasphemy not in respect to God one might or might not believe in, but in respect to that place and the people that had built it. Instead however, Peru – like many other countries – pushed its way to mass tourism, hence maximising quantity at the price of ever lower quality, while allowing and making room for ever more people up there instead of filtering or limiting them and maximising the experience provided. The example of Bhutan came to my mind, a country which had rigorously organised the tourism business, levelling numbers through a high fee per diem that ensured 1. those people really wanted to go there and not only to tick one more country off the map and 2. the local economy profited from the tourism business without spoiling the heritage and altering the traditional way of life. And at the end of the day, the moment the tourist number reached a critical level, an increase in the daily fee would regulate it while allowing for an income growth as well. But then, it is always easier to follow the trodden trail and a deaf-and-dumb laissez faire than to consider matters in a qualitative manner so as to come with a solution that suits one’s particular situation.

Peru however was on a one way street, just like other countries with extremely popular sights: while the streets in old Dubrovnik could not be widened to make room for the passengers of the 20th cruise ship on a given summer day, one way routes could be designed and walking time could be limited, even though this virtually denied any sort of actual experience and replaced it with a ‘been there, done that’ tag. In Peru, with the bus transport to Machu Picchu almost reaching its maximum capacity restricted by the dirt road going up the mountain, a new tramway system was planned to ferry in more passengers at a time and the two visiting time slot day was to be replaced by shorter slots allowing 3 waves of tourists per day. I was happy I could visit the site before a cable car and a night ‘Inca sound and light’ show, were added to the scheme, muffins complimentary.

Some 40 minutes of walking later, after taking over most others, I reached the entrance gate only in the company of a couple of beautiful, sun-tanned Americans in excellent physical condition, their hands talking of a rock climbing history and their withered jackets talking of many days spent in the great outdoors. Unfortunately, just as we got to the gate, the first pack of buses arrived as well, and there came people shivering due to the rain, yawning due to the fact that they had waken up at 5 and complaining due to various other inconveniences, such as that defined by one Emil Cioran: ‘l’inconvénient d’être né’. It was all misty up the crest, and the Inca ruins slowly, magically revealed them from the whiteness all around. With visitors rushing to the guardian hut – guidebooks and guides as well mentioned it as the best viewpoint -, I had the upper part to myself and could take in the peace of a place where the greenness of the ground dissipated in the whiteness above as if they were one. Shortly afterwards, I started on the way up a zig-zagging trail to the Machu Picchu Mountain the top of which afforded grand views of the dark ridges around, dense forests and misty valleys below, as well as of the Inca site still enjoying its misty magic. For some 15 minutes there was nobody around, with others still on the way up, so that the silence was absolute: one could clearly make the reason behind the Incas’ choosing such a place for their settlement. Back down, under a clear sky now, I dived in a sea of visitors going to the right and left, praying to him God Selfie and congregating in the sites stated in their guidebooks. For me, the magic had remained up there, as grand as the views from the Inca Bridge or the Sun Gate definitely were. I eventually backtracked first to the sun-drenched Aguas Calientes walking, then to Ollantaytambo by train and eventually to Cusco by bus.

Taking the time to visit Cusco, one could not ignore its different faces and quite well defined parts. First there was ‘regular’, Peruvian Cusco where one spoke Spanish or Quechua or a blend of the two, meals were greatly un-fancy and definitely not adjusted to please the foreign palate, where streets were packed with a heterogeneous crowd and tidiness was replaced by functionality. Then there was Gringo Cusco, in and around the Plaza de Armas or Plaza San Blas, where Spanish was replaced by hip English, the visitor was offered massages (have I mentioned them before by any chance?), paintings, sunglasses, hats and meals in a cacophony of voices and approaches (the rickshaw driver standing in the middle of a sea of rickshaws in front of Jaipur Station and calling years before: ‘helicopter, helicopter rides, sir!’ just came to mind), where restaurants had menus and ads in English and catered to anyone’s homesick taste, with everything from sushi and hamburgers to pasta and French pastries. And last, as well as least, there was dead Cusco: ‘dead’ not like in the exquisite masonry ruins at Sacsaywaman or Qorikancha, but like in the sterilised beyond any chance of recovery, flask ands hugely boring area off the Plazoleta Nazarenas with its posh hotels and restaurants, fancy dress bellboys, respectively deaf-and-dumb customers thinking of themselves as of contemporary Hemingway figures.

Leaving Cusco early in the morning, I started from Upis, with a cup of fresh chicha and a steamy churro as company, on a trek that would take me in 4 days around the Ausangate, Incas’ holy mountain, where experience exceeded that any human or museum or top ranked archaeological site in the world could ever provide: walking up round, grassy valleys surrounded by scree slopes and dark ridges, dotted with groups of alpacas and with the rare grass roof, stone wall huts of their herders. 

Gravitating around the grand, inspiring Ausangate with its fragmented glaciers, dark brown cliffs and frequent avalanches. Experiencing a lifestyle where local alpaca herders were eager, but not invasive, to talk to them walkers in a greatly balanced approach. Taking in heavy rainfall or hailstorms, strong sunshine or refreshing winds, as well as the warmth of a cup of tea in a nearly absolute silence. Pitching the tent on a grassy meadow off the Sunkachayococha Lake, just to find it buried under a hefty layer of snow in the morning. The clouds and mist parting, taking in the Ausangate with its sharp ridge and overhanging glaciers looming at them humble mortals in all its whiteness and splendour. Coming to enjoy the refreshing alternation of rain, sleet, hail, snow, sunshine, wind and absolute peace while crossing the Surimana Pass. Alternating them alpacas, llamas and sheep with their slow, constant pace while grazing across pastures and steep slopes for days on end. Being surrounded by glorious mountains – the Surimana and the Ausangate – in the 5200 m.a.s.l. Palomani Pass and taking the time to make a coca leaf offering to Pachamama (Mother Earth) and venerating the three entities of Andean mysticism: Uhupacha (the world below), Qipacha (the world of all living beings) and Hunanpacha (the world beyond). After yet another chilly downpour, walking up the Río Qampa with only a dog as company and humbly looking at the majestic Mariposa Peak, the late afternoon sun rays emphasising its cliffs, gullies, walls, corniches and overhanging glaciers. Leaving it Sorapata Valley full of grass and in a glitter of the warm sunset and waking up to it under a thick layer of fresh snow. Going up the Qampa Pass breaking trail through the fresh snow in the company of the previous day’s dog and wondering what the name of the dog might have been: provided he actually had one, it could only be Apu, the one above and beyond us all, with his being more of a guardian than of a mere companion one met along the way. Going down towards the Pachchanta and meeting some French trekkers, proudly and loudly boasting dull concerns one had nearly all forgotten about: money, self-sufficiency or the know-it-all, been-around-since-day-one syndrome; and, lastly, going to sleep while enjoying the magic way foam plugs expand and instantly reduce the Pachchanta campsite buzz to nil: welcome back to the world of sandcastle civilisation, where respect can only last for as long as one pays for the respective ad-on on a hotel check shopping list.

Leaving Ausangate with its impressive, diverse views and crossing village upon village with colourful Sunday markets, I then returned to Cusco in the company of snow-blind Alejandro: having trekked through the snow, respectively in the intense sun down the mountains, he had developed a severe burning feeling of the eyes which had turned into de facto Photokeratitis overnight. Past an empanada, churro and papaya juice break at a place that had become familiar in Cusco, past a flight to Lima, a walk out of the airport that halved the fare and a cab ride to the bus station with the typically grumpy, but nonetheless caring driver, I got on a night bus to Mountain Avenue Central or, in short, Huaraz. Buses in Peru were comfortable, reminding one of the cama or semi-cama service in Chile up to a point – and roads, especially in bigger towns or cities, were not on par.

With nearly half of my face skin peeling off like that of a snake due to the strong sun, respectively fresh snow layer in the Ausangate and well off expiry date (by some 5 years to be precise) sunblock, I went across town for more sun exposure on a quite hot day. Traditional outfits were rather austere here: women from the countryside around wore tall, usually dark hats that bore little to no decoration, a striking contrast from the bright red hats with many different colour stripes and ribbons in villages around Cusco, and their skirts were rather repetitive, monochrome. The craft market was but an uninspiring, sewing machine, synthetic fibre fabric boutique that left one wondering why it was actually called so.

Except for the main Plaza de Armas plus the adjacent avenues bordered by the typical conglomerate of banks, boutiques, administration offices and, in this case, mountaineering gear shops, Huaraz could have been well located somewhere in provincial Jordan, Lebanon or Syria (in the case of the latter, before the ongoing war), with its relatively new buildings (save for one street and not too many other properties scattered around town, Huaraz had been reduced to rubble during the 1970 earthquake) many of which were left unfinished probably to avoid paying taxes, respectively with concrete reinforcement wires rusting in the elements on the upper floors and functional shops, cafés or living quarters downstairs. Foreign tourists had their own den downtown, a small park surrounded by picturesque (but grotesquely out of place) cafés, cosy hostels, travel agencies and outdoor outfitters. Just like always in such circumstances, I found it strange that someone would want to eat or drink like at home while traveling, and all that by paying 20-30 soles there instead of 5-6 soles at one of the dozens of small, family-run restaurants across town. On the other hand, as it lacked its own typical highlights (old square surrounded by colonial architecture and overlooked by imposing 16th-17th century cathedral or pre-conquest ruins, and as tourists merely came to join tours to the highlands around, their artificial den seemed the right product given the demand and market. 

Other than that, Huaraz was the kind of place where contrasts struck one without warning, just like the elderly man sitting in the busy arcade way plied with shops, banks and restaurants downtown. Next to him there was a small glass case with alfajors and other manjar cookies he was selling, while a small note stuck to the top of it read that he had Parkinson (which was obvious, and in a severe stage) and kindly asked customers to give him the precise amount, as he could not use his hand much. At the same time, his vigil, youthful eyes took in the street scene around with great attention while his always trembling jaw kept him from saying a single word. The image of that man with dozens of people walking around every minute was that of life: barren, naked, rough life that could never fit in the cage – golden, as it very well might have been – of a cute little park surrounded by comme il faut venues meant to charm the eye, caress the butt and please the palate.

Leaving town, I headed to the mountains trekking up to the airy and finely located Refugio Perú, adorned with many poems dedicated to the Andes and many mountaineering stories. Following a midnight wake-up and a rather quick crossing of the arenales, it was on up the glacier that, just like the ridge above, had gone through two transformations: the crevasses, to be found everywhere, were more frequent an occurrence than in the dry (and colder) season, respectively some 40 cm. or more of fresh snow fallen overnight. It was actually snowing on the way up, and the snowfall was to be soon replaced by a thick layer of mist embracing the whole mountain and making orientation hard until sometimes around 6 AM, when an intense sun sent its rays over the Huascarán and the Chacraraju. There were many crevasses and they often required making lengthy detours or assess the quality and strength of the small bridges crossing them. The thick layer of fresh snow and the inherent trail breaking added to the effort needed to go on. The alternation of seasons was so sudden at times, from sleet to hot sun, from the flower-dotted meadows below to the hanging glaciers above, that one either got into this apparently rule free area or stepped aside. By 8 AM something resembling an ant house came into sight, a few dashing crevasses cutting its face: the summit. There was nobody around, there were no traces of people as next to nobody went up the mountains at this time of the year. At nearly 9 AM I stood on the Pisco Summit with only the traces in the snow as a souvenir: clouds had closed in and visibility was nil, even though everything seemed to glitter as if someone had set the snow and mist around on fire. It was merely beautiful in a way beauty cannot be put into a picture or painting, with whiteness embracing man, mountain, cliff and valley, bird and the blue sky itself. A sense of immense, overwhelming purity was impossible to ignore and it was not before ploughing through the now wet snow covering the lower section of the glacier on the way down that one got back to them colours and sounds typical for the world below.

Not wishing to linger in the nice and warm shelter (it was open by chance, as they were working to repair parts of it, for otherwise it was closed during the rainy season), I got back down to the trailhead and then to Huaraz in a heavy rain making one wonder how much snow had added to that fallen the previous night, soon filling every corner of my hotel room with pieces of gear left to dry or about to be washed. 

The following day was rather rainy again, with breaks that seemed especially meant to allow me walk through the Chavín de Huántar site after crossing the Cordillera Blanca on a winding road. The temple history, as well as that of the priest processions there, was at least just as captivating as was the line-up of the stone carved tenon heads exhibited in the Japanese-founded local museum depicting the transformation of man into a feline through a mystical process with the aid of hallucinogenic substances. The fact that probably a cataclysm that occurred around 500 BC at first dwindled and then put an end to the site signification for the Andean population was a bit strange, argued one having greatly enjoyed reading Leon Festinger’s ‘When Prophecy Fails’. 

Back in Huaraz under a heavy downpour, there was not much to do than finding shelter – and a great meal for that matter, as always in such places – in the local marketplace and later on in an internet café where the plan for that evening and the following day, the last one in the country, was dramatically changed, with a Truhillo-bound night bus and a subsequent Chiclayo-Lima flight (given the expensive Truhillo-Lima flights for that day) added to the touring cake instead of the initial day bus into Lima. There hardly seemed to be a better match than hurrying with the big backpack through a city where, rain allowing, people had started to go out. Or, well, actually there was: the fact that, in the absence of a bus station of any sort, long distance bus garages shared the same district with the bar and club quarter, with salsa, revamped reggae and latino hip hop blaring out of every other door. I had come to enjoy the contrasting faces of this town, with its busy market streets, hip quarters and poor outskirts, yet the time to go had come, with one of the less notorious bus companies heading to Truhillo still having available places for the night service.

Warm (for someone coming from Huaraz) and deserted: this was the first impression one had upon getting off the bus in Truhillo at 5 AM. Once a short walk delivered me to the garage of the bus company I was to use en route to Chiclayo later on and once I got rid of the large backpack, as well as once I refreshed over a tortilla de verduras and a hot quinoa drink, it was off to the city centre. The streets across the old town had an eerie touch, with their colourful old houses, decaying mansions and public edifices, as well as with their bird cage-like window grids, almost total absence of cars and pedestrians (for the time being) and odd priest ringing the bells at one of the picturesque local churches. Gone were the somewhat distant approach of the highlanders in Huaraz, the rather conservative and more austere building style or their rougher life approach. Truhillo was colourful, decaying, noisy, vibrant and then again colourful, with its colonial architecture and nearly Caribbean touch. Out here, ladies selling coffee or humitas or juice or poultry or avena drinks in the market place, all displayed an old world politeness and candour. It was at one of those places where buying a cup of freshly grounded coffee – even without regularly drinking coffee – that one could stand, sip the hot drink and let the human flow take over, the traffic buzz (which had meanwhile started to be felt) blending in with merchants’ calling for customers. 

Hopping on a minibus that somehow managed to collide with a car so that passengers had to jump on an even more dilapidated bus, I started walking across the desert between what appeared to be earthen mounds but actually was a group of ceremonial temples awaiting discovery and restoration. The site of Chan Chan I reached after a while, the world’s largest adobe city, was impressive through its sealife-inspired friezes, with stylised fish and birds that were simply beautiful through their very being reduced to plain outlines and put in long repetitive rows. As always, I found the desert and everything rising out of it granting me a homey, familiar feeling. Then, hopping on a rusty cab shaking from all joints Daewoo Tico driven by a young man coming from Valencia, Venezuela, I carried on to three huacas of them times past: the Huaca Arco Iris with its rainbow-based pattern decoration, respectively the twin Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol, the former of which preserved some amazingly evocative and fluid set of different depictions of God in the colourful glazed panels along its adobe walls.

Back in town, I got on a bus to Chiclayo, a four hour ride across the desert dotted with sand dunes, acacia shrubs, dry and rocky cactus-topped hills and rice plantations. Chiclayo was packed with people and more so with cars, loud music, shopping frenzy and a positive vibe included, but I somehow managed to make it to the airport in time for my first (of supposedly the two) flight that night.

There is always something magic about big railway stations or airports in the wee hours, meaning after the many evening departures, the late night arrivals and before the early morning rush hour. There is a sort of stillness in the air, a sense of expectation for something or someone that fails – at least primarily – to appear. In the case of the Lima Airport, this period occurred more or less between 1 and 4 AM. And it had been preceded by a peak period that had resulted in the winding queue for the immigration check overflowing in the security check hall which got clogged and everything had to stall for a while before slowly moving on. And then, LAN prided itself with being one of the most punctual airlines in the world, and that was not a typical marketing donut, it was the truth. It seemed to happen to me every 15 years or so that I had the déjà vu, one of my missing the weekly Al Mukalla-bound bus in Salalah and having to backtrack to Muscat and get a on flight to Sana’a instead. This time there were a few of us missing the Asunción-bound flight that night and more people missing different other flights: we were to meet while undergoing the procedures required so as to revert through immigration back to the public area and reach the airline office.

Expectedly, only two LAN desks were staffed at around 2 AM and the process of finding re-routing options was very slow, so that, other than those ahead of the line, always seeming to complain about the expensive or bad schedule options proposed, people were sitting or lying on the floor, young children running around and old people dozing. I had made up my mind that, should the schedule be too bad or the rebooking fare too high, I would buy a new ticket with Avianca which I knew had an Asunción-bound flight the following night. When my turn came, more than an hour later, as the rather young clerk looked for connection flights, we were already deep into conversation about my trip to Venezuela the year before and my appreciation for Caracas he seemed to also be fond of. Therefore, it felt rather natural that a connection via Santiago was soon found and the rerouting fare was reasonable (such matters have no reason to be cheap anyway), the conversation making it even more so, to the extent to which I even wondered what it would have been like to jump on the bus and subway and head for the city centre in Santiago for a gulp of fried (as opposed to Peru-style baked) empanadas, but, with an only hour’s stopover, resolved to leave that in the wishful thinking stage. For the time being, following a joyous celebration with a couple of alfajors, the early morning brought about the smell of coffee and I was eager to move on even given the sleepless night and the many hours of upcoming flights. I could already taste the empanada de piña I was going to have in the Santiago airport during the layover and that gave me all the energy I needed.

My very brief encounter with Paraguay and Asunción to be more precise had revealed lifestyle as a bottom line. That was however only one side of the coin. First, there was the heat and humidity, with even the airport taxi drivers not being very persistent about proposing rides. Then, there were expectedly no tourists about. Then, there was the slow paced life and relaxed approach to pretty much everything. Walking out of the airport compound, there came a right colour (blue-yellow) and correct number (30) bus taking me to the city centre after passing through small glitz business quarters and period residential blocks featuring great Neoclassical, Italianate and neo-colonial style villas.

Asunción was captivating. Music rarely came from only one place or side, with cafés, cars, ad hoc bars and street side stands concurring to it, while many people went for a walk enjoying the cooler evening air completed by a refreshing breeze. Ethnicity appeared to be the most heterogeneous I had witnessed in South America, competing maybe only with that in Brazil. 

Asunción was contrasting. Diversity abounded at every corner and not only there, with the same end of the 19th century buildings sometimes hosting a fancy bar on the ground floor, poor, decaying living quarters on the first floor, respectively broken window, abandoned and ruined quarters on the second floor. The rich and the poor seemed to be sharing the same public space here, and it seemed a somewhat balanced co-existence, as some of the poor did not seem to be very aggressive and some of the rich shared a bit of their fortune with the former: it was evocative the image of an elderly couple having dinner at a restaurant down the Calle Palma asked for food boxes, carefully packed their untouched leftovers, added refreshments and gave them to a street child passing by.

Asunción was colourful. Colourful like in the many small houses painted in every (very) bright colour of the rainbow up the narrow streets of the Loma San Jerónimo. Colourful like in the many, very well done graffitis sometimes covering whole blocks of houses or entire façades and blind walls, with subjects varying from historic or cultural scenes to exotic views or contemporary manifestos. 

Asunción was alive. There were far fewer motorised vehicles than in most other South American capitals I had visited (maybe compared to Paramaribo alone), but its life did not come from these wheeled sardine tins. There were indigenous camps set in the Plaza de la Independencia, asking for further rights and government assistance in a country two thirds the territory of was virtually inaccessible. At the opposite end, shops, bars and restaurants, even drugstores were all open late at night and full of people.

Asunción was courteous and nonetheless laid back. Other than bus drivers, nobody seemed to know what rush meant. Matters were taken one at a time, people would open the supermarket door one for another, family, strangers and acquaintances were greeted with the same old world politeness, friendliness and also lack of ado. 

Asunción was fluid and natural. The staff at the Cabildo had set a large table in one of the main halls of the now major museum and were having lunch enjoying the loud music blaring from the poor Bañado District stretching behind it. 

Asunción was a highly cultural city. The several beautiful period houses and mansions the administration had bought across the city had been thoroughly restored and turned into museums dedicated to the arts, talking of the great heritage of the late 19th and early 20th century Paraguay, whether it was about Agustín Barrios’ guitar or the national take on the harp, about the many fine outfits worn by Actress Edda de los Ríos or the literary heritage of the country. And, a striking difference from most other cities priding on their heritage, here it was not all history revamped: I spent a good deal of time in the foyer of the Teatro Municipal looking at parents and whole families taking their children to dancing and music classes, as they were all dressed up in impeccable, extremely elaborate outfits that talked of the times past when etiquette stood for respect and not for a trademark label.

Asunción was savorous. It was there that I found the richest taste to the otherwise quite simple alfajor: of a mille feuille structure, the cookie was filled with mouth-watering dulce de leche of an intensely fruity (the Trapiche bouquet kind) flavour and it exceeded not in sweetness (that is easy and cheap), but in richness which allowed for a full enjoyment of its round, grand taste.

Having arranged with a driver the evening before, I left Asunción in the morning of a cool, overcast sky day, with a refreshing, strong draught in the car that would have driven a good deal of Romanians nuts in their frenzy against anything that could harm them (of course, other than the harmful stuff they themselves willingly stuff themselves with). We soon passed from the city background to a mostly green one dotted with vivid flowers and rather small houses set on plots full of abundant vegetation. Many of these houses were only about half walled, with the other half consisting of a generous verandah set with rocking chairs, a table and more flowers. Of the different craft towns along the way, I most enjoyed Areguá and Capiatá, the former for its fine setting above a lake and beautiful period houses lost in lush vegetation, respectively the latter for its grandly impressive sculptures and adobe houses hosting them belonging to Elsa de Elías, a very kind and extraordinarily knowledgeable host at the Museo Mitológico. At the latter, the wood sculpture depicting Tupã was moving through the balance, serenity, commitment, wisdom, power and aetheral image it passed on to the visitor. 

After going around and peeking in the large, white column-flanked Franciscan church in Yaguarón, I parted from the driver and hitched a ride, soon finding myself on board of a Pilar-bound bus that took me as far as San Ignacio. A scenery of grand skies and enormous verdant plains unfolded under my eyes, with extensive estancias gathering horses and cattle appearing every now and then  with the horizon line either vanishing in the far distance of the flat landscape or being created by a wave of forested hills that seemed much taller than they really were (around 200 m.a.s.l.) given the mostly flat terrain. The welcome rustic, natural and eye pleasing landscape seemed not to have changed for ages.

The country was however evolving greatly from the rustic postcard image, and that was not only due to the global change brought around by technology, cheap Chinese products and fast-foods.

‘There are many of us, new Germans, in Paraguay’, an elderly man told me in English as I was walking through Areguá, stressing the fact that he did not belong to a family that had settled in the country in the interwar period or following the end of WW2.

‘It is cheap and the passport comes easily: you make an USD 5000 deposit at the bank, submit your application file and, upon having it approved, get your money back: in three months you get the citizenship. Paraguay-born people always give us a strange look, as they say all we need to do is to go to the bank, get cash and then sit down and drink coffee all month long’.

His frank approach was welcome, yet his not speaking Spanish (other than the very basics) not so much, as, after two years of living in the country, it denoted lack of respect for the local population.

It is sometimes amazing to see how little we need change to have great experiences in our lives. Getting off the bus at the crossroads in San Ignacio, walking to the bus stop and waiting – actually lying in the cool afternoon breeze – for a Santa María de Fe-bound bus for a couple of hours, I eventually headed that way. As soon as we left the main road, everything turned serene: the tall grass glittered in the late afternoon sun, wooden portals announced access ways to estancia upon estancia, cattle dotted the land for as far as the eye could see and tranquility was the norm. The village of Santa María de Fe followed the typical Jesuit settlement layout, with a square in the middle (currently a park with quite old trees hosting a rather big howler monkey population), long rows of single storey, column-lined casas de indios on three sides and the church on the fourth. While only a segment of the old casas de indios survived, the houses replacing them for the remaining part had generally respected and followed the layout and – up to a point – the architecture, so that the compound somewhat preserved its original appearance. At night, the whole place was immersed in overwhelming, loud and marvellous bird singing that overshaded even the motorbike passing by. A rather short distance from the main road, the village had created and lived in a world apart, one of its own pace and music that was greatly rewarding for the anyway odd visitor.

Rare as they were, visitors to Paraguay made the infrastructure adjust accordingly to their occurrence. For instance, even though a museum might have had a schedule posted on the main door, there was no reason to staff to be there throughout the day waiting for the one visitor a week or fortnight. In other situations, the very low ticket revenue (unless access was for free, such as was the case with many non-religious museums) generated by visits made it impossible to actually pay for someone a full time job as a caretaker. So that, unless one found the phone number of the caretaker written on the door, one had to find ways of getting through to that person, which made it all more human, interactive, challenging and eventually enchanting an experience. In the case of my visit to Santa María de Fe wood statue collection hosted by the old casa de indios I successfully got in through the milk bottle test. 

As at 8 AM the museum was still closed, my host tried to contact the caretaker by phone but to no avail. After several attempts I resolved to walk to her place and was shown from a distance the typical column-lined long house with three doors. In front of the little window next to one of the doors there was a plastic bottle full of milk, certainly that morning’s delivery. With nobody around to ask, I knocked on all three doors, yet nobody answered. I waited for a little longer, then had a short walk around and across the park; when I returned, the bottle was gone. I knocked on the door for a longer while and some 10 minute later a lady’s face appeared in the small window: the museum caretaker. And it had been well worth, as the holy figure statues saved from the old Jesuit church when it had collapsed in 1910 were extremely appealing through their fine blend of classical religious detail and the apparently clumsy, rougher, human approach of the Guaraní artists. 

Leaving Santa María de Fe, I walked out of the village and hitched a ride in the back of a coal laden truck back to the main road, and then carried on with a big cement transporter with a very friendly crew that delivered me to the Santa Rosa crossing. Leaving the big backpack with the elderly lady running a roadside shop, I walked the couple of kilometers into Santa Rosa and, passing through the local parish office, found the secretary holding the keys, so that I could see, albeit quickly – the secretary was expected – the superb interior of the Capilla Loreto. The way the religious statues here matched the frescoes almost entirely covering the walls was flagrantly beautiful and granted them more authenticity. 

Back on the main road, after a brief dulce de leche-intense lunch., as I was waiting for an Encarnación-bound bus, I met a mid-aged man going in the same direction. He had worked in Spain for years and had met many Romanians there, making a few friends among them, but also learning to be vigil about it:

‘Hay rumanos muy malos, muy malos, banditos tambien.’

It seemed I had not gone far enough from Romania so as not to hear of its people during my holidays.

A bus eventually came and some two hours later we were drawing near Encarnación when, out of the typically beautiful countryside scenery a bunch of tall, shiny high rise steel and glass buildings appeared at a distance: the city of Posadas over River Paraná in Argentina. My wonderful greenery-immersed Paraguayan reverie had just been brutally and thoroughly smashed, taken to pieces and mercilessly trashed, that I hardly kept myself from shouting: 

‘What the fuck is this crap doing over there?!’

Getting over it somehow, I eventually reached Encarnación which thankfully did not have so high or so many steel and glass buildings, but was noisy and crowded and hot for someone coming from the countryside. I needed change some dollars for the remaining time in the country, but to no avail, as bank clerks refused to change less than USD 100 and the bus station money changing wallahs did not like the fact that my bills were folded. I therefore resolved to move on anyway, as I wanted to get back to the peace and silence of the countryside. So, a bus about to fall apart delivered me to Trinidad. There, the lady at the poor hotel I checked probably thought I had just come from Brazil or Argentina and therefore made a quick calculation, giving me a 50% lower exchange rate to the dollar than the official one, she then pretended to check with someone on the phone, made it only 25% worse and, following my second, plain refusal, all of a sudden agreed to a fair exchange, so that I was soon free to walk around the extensive site of the Jesuit reduction ruins. And a treat it was: the red sandstone and bricks used to build the whole site (the casas de indios, the main and initial churches, the college, the watchtower) greatly contrasted with the grassy fields all around and shone in the warm afternoon light. The fine frieze depicting angels, as well as the pulpit, many fragments of statues and nonetheless the remnants of the church were simply impressive especially as they were located on a vast piece of land allowing one to better assess their proportions. With a plastic bag of coconut flavour yoghurt and a slice of fresh local cheese as company, I went to bed in the already familiar sound of one million birds speaking in their one million tongues, a solitary cricket having his say under my window, too.

The quite harsh sun, the dulce de leche-intensive breakfast and the heavy backpack, all contributed to a quick wake-up call and I was soon walking out of Trinidad and towards the Jesús de Tavarangue junction. Dropping one of the three wake-up zings (namely the big backpack) at the local gas station and walking a mere 100 m. down the side road past the couple of taxis waiting for customers, I had just started to wave at cars when one stopped and took me all the way to the ruin site entrance: an old lady, her daughter and the latter’s baby that seemed to greatly appreciate the hitcher’s hat given the strong sunlight. Less impressive size-wise than the Trinidad site, the reduction at Jesús was however more romantic, both in terms of location (on a slightly elevated meadow) and layout (as the church had never got a chance to be completed before the Jesuit expulsion and there was far less still standing of the adjacent buildings). The floral carved stone decorations were just as enchanting as was the peace that adorned the whole place – aided, true, by the fact that I was the sole visitor at the time.

It was getting hot and I started walking back across the village, with the fast pace music coming from here and there, with those rather small, colourful single storey houses featuring ample verandahs, with people sitting and enjoying their refreshing tereré. They had all got so familiar to the point where I enjoyed them without even noticing any more they were actually there. They had to be there just like those bright red mburucuyá flowers and plethora of singing birds all around. Walking out of the village, it did not take long and a car stopped giving me a lift back to the gas station by the main road: the driver was one of the workers on the ruin site on his day off. Hitch-hiking was so easy in Paraguay and it provided such a fine way into the life of friendly and generous locals that made my moving on even harder.

Reunited with my backpack, one minute later I hopped on an ageing bus that soon delivered me back to the noisy and bustling bus station in Encarnación. Half an hour and a subsequent bus ride later I reached the Paraguayan immigration post where I lazied around in the heat, looking at the many Encarnación – Posadas buses with their passengers and their adjacent cross-border trade, as nearly all of them carried at least one large bag of merchandise into Argentina. After a while, my shiny bus, the twice weekly Asunción – Montevideo service, arrived and I sadly traded in the verdant serenity and beautiful roughness of the countryside for the air-conditioned, cama seat comfort of glitz contemporary intercity travel, but second thoughts and regrets are worthless and some beautiful lyrics instantly came to my mind:

Le Paraguay n’est plus ce qu’il était, moi non plus.
On ne va pas regretter les occasions manquées,
Ni les slows pour danser, y’en a plus.
Ceux qui restaient, ou la mort ou l’amour les a eus.
On a vu s’éloigner sur des eaux agitées
Les derniers grands voiliers, y’en a plus…

 

Thankfully, the bus attendant soon gave up speaking English he had a very good command of and resolved to tell me that the night ride would show whether I was a real vampire or not.

Going out of Paraguay was very easy. Going into Argentina not so, with more procedures for people, luggage and even buses, which had to go out of the checkpoint, be searched and come back again so that passengers could board again (with the remark that the Argentinians had omitted to build a paved lane for the return and buses could only come back over a dusty field). The result was that half of the long bridge over the Paraná got clogged with vehicles. Taking advantage of the certainly regular situation that had dozens of vehicles waiting for long whiles there, a few people tried to make a living by selling snacks and drinks. There were over 37C and given the river, as well as the concrete structure of the bridge it certainly felt worse, so that the very sight of those people was moving to say the least.

Once on Argentinian soil, we skirted the Posadas shiny high rise cluster and then proceeded across what seemed to be but an endless green pasture dotted with patches of eucalyptus and pine forests across which countless cattle grazed. At least, even from a bus running in a constant speed, the view was fine again. After crossing one more border, into Uruguay, and some 17 hours after leaving Encarnación, we reached Montevideo with its wide streets, relaxed pace life and equally relaxed inhabitants many of which were walking their dogs at 7 AM. 22C, a clear sky, a light breeze, an uncongested city layout with palm tree-lined avenues and not very tall buildings that were next to never crammed into one another (as I was to see, save for main avenues downtown and the hip coast road), everything announced a great day.

Montevideo managed to be both busy and relaxed at the very same time. It was busy with people going to and returning from work, especially as many financial and administration offices were located in the old town, it was busy with group upon group of tourists when one or more cruise ships called at its harbour. And yet it was relaxed, as everything, everyone was compelled to flow as one, at the same constant pace the city seemed to impose upon them all. There was no running, no jumping, horns were blown rarely (a novelty in South America) and even the air one breathed was courteous. The city was just like the tango its name had been linked to the history of: lacking ado, but equally lacking mournful formalism, it was alive and moving with all its joints working as one.

Then, Montevideo was neither old, nor new. It was neither Quito in terms of compact, old colonial towns, but nor it was Santiago with its high rises. Instead, its extraordinary Neoclassical, Eclectic, Art Nouveau and Art Deco or Modernist heritage was there breathing, alive as it had been upon its completion, not like a dead museum. Beautiful carved wood or forged iron main doors and windows had not been replaced here with easier to maintain but shit prefabricated and plastic ones. Old tiles down corridors and stairways had been equally preserved. My top floor room at a hotel built before the Great Crisis had its original furniture and study, the original wood flooring and even two glasses of the same epoch placed on a period silver-coated plate topped by a small cotton embroidery. Art Deco or Art Nouveau decorations had been repainted and maintained. Several banks and institutions had chosen to have their offices in old buildings and not in new high rises. Original chandeliers, lamps, mirrors, old fashion elevators with their harmonica doors, furniture from the 1920s and 1930s were all alive and functional, and not dusty relics in some picturesque museum. Compared with Montevideo’s financial heart, London’s City looked as sterile as a hospital and as dead as a crypt. The fact that, just like in Caracas, state-run museums were free of charge was not just a mere financial matter, but it provided one’s visit with a different perspective, as by not going through the ticket acquiring process, it felt like actually stepping in someone’s house and not in an institution, hence providing the place with authenticity.

Montevideo was expensive compared to several other South American capitals, even though it did not get close to Cayenne for that matter. The last over 100 years of almost constant prosperity (political regimes aside) could very well be seen, sniffed or even tasted in the city streets, from its fancy, smart setup restaurants to its cultural institutions or fine apartment buildings oozing of the spacious design promoted by Modernist masters.

Street food, omnipresent all over South America from Chile to Venezuela and from Guyana to Ecuador, had been packed up and had settled in shops in Montevideo. Empanadas and alfajors were available at pizzerias and in cafeterias here, churros and the like could only be found at festivals and Sunday markets, with the closest thing to street food being a hamburger van appearing here and there. Subjective as I definitely am, I found the taste of such pastries and dulces to be way too elaborate compared to their equivalents found in the busy streets of Caracas or Quito, inundated by a plethora of fragrances and sounds as they were.

Even though it was only 08:30 AM, the sun was up and strong, there was next to no wind or breeze and it was rather hot as I got off the bus at the Quebrada de los Cuervos crossroads North of Treinta y Tres in Eastern Uruguay. There were two of us heading to the Quebrada de los Cuervos located some 27 km. away down a dirt road crossing cattle land, with the difference that Alejandra worked in the reserve and I wanted to visit it. There were grasslands all around, with patches of dry, infertile land here and there. The land was dotted with cattle to the point where they seemed to blend in with the rare puffy clouds in the enormous sky above. Vehicles were a rare occurrence along the dirt road and neither of us had arranged transport to the reserve gate (we had met upon getting off the bus), but it was great to just be there, in the middle of that vast green land. About an hour later a cheerful gaucho driving a car that shook from all joints stopped and gave us a lift for 9-10 km. and after a longer wait a ranger truck passed and took us to the gate from where a wide trail crossed extensive and hot bushlands to the place where a foot path commenced skirting and then descending in the quebrada. 

It felt excellent to be all alone in that wonderful place that was both exceptionally quiet of humans and enchantingly noisy given the plethora of birds all around. A dozen or so vultures made loops above the quebrada and smaller birds of different species showed up from bushes, trees and palms every now and then. The valley was rather straight for a good stretch, which allowed an invigorating breeze to form down by the water flow that was not very fast, even creating a natural pool in its course. The heat however awaited again one just mere meters on the way up, especially as the trail want up some rocky terrain which reflected the sun rays. 

Back at the reserve gate, I carried on along the dirt road for some 10 km. with dark clouds and thunders pushing me from the back. Luckily it had not started seriously raining for long when a car appeared and gave me a ride to the paved road: a couple was passing a bottle of beer from hand to hand. After an hour’s wait by the Ruta 8, the bus appeared and some 5 hours later I returned to Montevideo: I had started at 4 AM and it was not past 11 PM, but a marvellous day it had been.

The advantage of going to bed late at night is that the early morning is quite easy to reach, so by 6 AM I was already on the way to the Tres Cruces bus terminal again. As if especially for my senses to funny wake up, there was a rather cold drizzle and a quite strong wind. Two hours later and a decent share of peanut butter with the previous day’s yellow cheese on board and I got to Colonia del Sacramento. While touristy, with boat upon boat and ferry upon ferry landing from Buenos Aires, the town layout allowed them all to find their place and, among those dozens of souvenir shops, cafeterias and restaurants, it featured some fine period stone and adobe houses with their simple yet picturesque design. On the other hand, the rather cold wind had kept the tourist number low and the ocean beautifully furious.

Back across those green and pale yellow grasslands dotted with patches of trees, estancias and their de rigueur cattle – for Uruguay was the land where cattle, just like sheep in Scotland, were de rigueur and not humans the former outnumbered by far – and I returned home. Indeed, Montevideo felt quite a lot like home. Well, Uruguay had not got a total imbecile trashing its heritage as president like Romania, did not share the latter’s extreme corruption that stretched far and wide from the day’s big wigs to John Doe (quite to the contrary) and mockery was not the first thing to consider before even saying ‘hello’; on the other hand, Montevideo had confined its street food in standard spaces so much unlike Romania and especially Bucharest. But many things in the country made me feel at home with a positive note: that rich architectural mélange, where a mere block could have buildings in different styles lined together, the apparently chaotic but nonetheless alert city development, those omnipresent graffitis, the odd bright colour painted period house, the tango history, even the fact that most tourists and locals alike congregated in the heart of the old town when there was grand architecture beyond the dozen or so streets there, or the little advertised but excellent art collections, the open door houses talking of them characters of times past. Then, Montevideo came complete with many manifestos, expression of the way especially young people felt about the current course the country followed; however from this point of view Montevideo was way bolder than Bucharest, with the excellent line painted on a wall down the pedestrian Sarandí, one that no dark age (and dark outfit for that matter) priest dared erase as the cleric horde in black had done with a great Bucharest graffiti inspired by St. George’s history: ‘La unica iglesia que ilumina es la que arde’.

’Si, hay una visita guiada al castillo a las 17, pero lo siento, solo aceptamos efectivo’, answered the typically kind and smiling lady behind the reception desk at the Castillo Pittamiglio towards the end of a lengthy stroll that had taken me along richly decorated Eclectic and airy Modernist building-lined avenues and across the lively Sunday market selling cheese, jamón, vinyl discs, underwear, Venezuelan and Colombian arepas with the odd (or not so odd) puff of marijuana joints in the air, all the way to the Southern tip of the city, the Punta Carretas. 

‘Pero, si lo quieres y te apuras, hay un cajero de Santander una cuadra y media de aqui’, she carried on.

I thanked her and walked out. It was a fine Sunday afternoon, the sun was up, there was a cool wind and the air was still fresh after the previous day that had seen a lot of rain. I could definitely walk a block and a half to the bank, get pesos and return in due time for the 5 PM visit, but I all of a sudden resented the very idea of doing so. I did not feel like hurrying, saw no point in it, absolutely none.

I carried on walking along the coast for a short while and then got on a bus, getting off at the Plaza Fabini that echoed of Tango music to which several couples were dancing. There were mostly old people in their elegant period clothes, sporting not necessarily expensive, but matching elegant jewellery, enjoying the music, the dancing, the others’ company, the slowly setting sun, that timeless moment where rush and schedules were words of nothingness, frivolous matters, and that provided one actually gave them a thought at all. The Incas had known better to be selective with what they assigned words for and what they did not.

Back at the foot of the Ausangate, I had asked a local man whether he ever mixed Spanish with Quechua, the latter being his mother tongue.

‘Claro, porque hay palabras en español que no hay en quechua. Por ejemplo ‘imposible’: los incas pensaban que todo era posible.’