12

To Cuzco:
Cops, Robbers and Farewells

Camp on grassy Ridge overlooking Village. 17 December

We have just completed our last full trekking day; by noon tomorrow we should be in Cuzco. So this has been a rather unreal day, marked by varying emotions – sadness at the ending of an incomparable journey, mingled with gratitude for our survival and a certain sense of achievement. But the dominant emotion – shared, yet not directly expressed by either of us – is deep grief at the imminent parting from Juana.

After a gradual three and a half hour climb we breakfasted in the village of Limatambo, where Pizarro slept after his first crossing of the Apurimac. The urban-looking restaurant – enormous, empty, jerry-built and sleazy – had more house-flies to the square foot than you’d believe possible. Garish murals, depicting brave Incas defying cruel Spaniards, covered three walls. Juana was grazing the verge outside and we sat watchfully by a smashed window. For months we’ve been leaving the load unguarded, but in Limatambo one senses the more sordid tentacles of modern civilisation reaching out from Cuzco.

Not far beyond the village we stopped at the Hacienda Tara-huasi to enjoy what John Hemming has described as ‘the best preserved Inca temple platform, with 28 tall niches, and the longest stretch of fine polygonal masonry that I know’. The nearby Archaeological Research Centre is closed for lack of funds. And Limatambo’s Tourist Hotel, in a well-kept colourful garden, is closed for lack of customers. So is another newish building, with many broken windows, disconcertingly sign-posted as ‘The Limatambo Country Club’. Some over-ambitious developer has recently failed to turn this region into a tourist centre.

At noon we found a formidable redura and, after a morning of sticky heat, the downpour that soon began was welcome. It continued throughout the afternoon as we climbed, with few level respites, onto an immense grassy ridge, boulder-strewn and riven by deep gullies. Here the going got rough: the rain had made our path almost impassable. Rachel fell several times and soon we were both covered in sticky mud. We were also sodden and chilled; one can’t wear long ponchos while climbing slippery slopes. Twice we went astray at complicated junctions; on each occasion Quechua-speaking shepherd boys used sign-language to put us right. I thought often of the conquistadores, who had a far more traumatic time as they struggled towards the crest of this same Cerro Vilcaconga.

At noon on 8 November 1533 an advance party of 40 horsemen under Hernando de Soto began this last steep ascent before Cuzco, and like us they hated the intense midday heat. One of them, Ruiz de Arce, wrote: ‘We were marching along with no thought of a line of battle. We had been inflicting very long days’ marches on the horses. Because of this we were leading them up the pass by their halters, marching in this way in groups of four’. They were about half way up when Soto, well ahead of his men, saw thousands of Indians swarming over the crest above. As the Inca troops charged, hurling boulders before them, they covered the entire mountain-side. When Soto shouted back to his men to form a battle line it was too late; they had had to scatter to avoid the Indian missiles. Many mounted and tried to spur their horses to the level top of this ridge; but no horse could gallop, few could trot and some wouldn’t even walk. The animals’ obvious exhaustion encouraged the Indians and soon five Spanish heads had been split open by clubs, maces and battle-axes; some of the richest conquistadores were among the dead. Soto then tried to entice the Indians down to the comparatively level ground around Limatambo, where horsemen would have an advantage. Some Indians took this bait and about twenty were killed. The rest retreated to the top of the ridge and both invaders and defenders prepared for an uneasy night. But the conquistadores’ uncanny good fortune was soon restored. At 1 a.m., as they huddled sleepless, cold and fearful on an exposed hillock, doing what they could for eleven wounded men and fourteen wounded horses, a distant European trumpet sounded through the night. Another force of forty Spanish cavalrymen had heard of the battle and were doing a daring nocturnal forced march.

No one could better John Hemming’s description of the sequel. ‘The Indians greeted the new day confident of victory, only to find that the battered force of the previous afternoon had mysteriously doubled. The jubilant Spaniards formed line of battle and advanced up the hill-side. The Indians retreated and any who remained on the slope were killed. The arrival of a thousand men from Cuzco did not save the situation, and the natives’ only salvation was the descent of a ground mist … The battle of Vilcaconga was described by its survivors as “a fierce fight”. Quisquis’s men at last made use of steep terrain to come to grips with the enemy. They proved that Spaniards and their horses were vulnerable and mortal. They destroyed part of Soto’s tiny vanguard. Had they gone on to destroy his entire squadron, they might have become sufficiently emboldened and experienced to have crushed Almagro’s and Pizarro’s smaller isolated contingents. Native troops annihilated far larger Spanish forces in similar difficult country in later years. But this is speculation. The fact was that Quisquis acted too late. He failed to exploit the many earlier river crossings, steep ascents and tight valleys where his men could have trapped Pizarro’s impudent force of invaders … The Inca Empire did not, as is sometimes supposed, go under without a struggle. Whenever the native armies were led by a determined commander they fought with fatalistic bravery … But they were now confronting the finest soldiers in the world. Spanish tercios were considered the best in Europe throughout the 16th century and the men who were attracted to the American conquest were the most adventurous. Whatever one may think of their motives, it is impossible not to admire their bravery. In skirmish after skirmish their first reaction was to charge straight into the thick of the enemy. Such aggressiveness was intended as a psychological shock-tactic, and its effect was heightened by the invaders’ reputation for success, invincibility, almost divinity.’

As we approached the long crest of the Cerro Vilcaconga (this crossing doesn’t seem like a pass) the cloud lifted and the sky quickly cleared. We stood in pale gold evening sunshine looking down over gentle hills and a fertile plain towards the ridge above Cuzco. Directly beneath us miles of grassland sloped to a shallow, cultivated bowl-valley holding a scattered village. We said nothing. Juana scratched her forehead on my shoulder, as she habitually does when we stop to gaze. I put my arm around her neck. Jubilation would I suppose have been in order, now that we could actually see the last stage of a 1,300 mile walk over some of the toughest terrain on this planet. But neither of us was feeling even mildly jubilant.

An hour later, by which time it was raining again, we camped not far above the village, by the edge of the track; nowhere else was level enough. We’ve been inspected by several groups of locals, none of whom I much liked. I find it hard to believe that this is the last of so many happy nights in our tiny tent-home.

Izcuchaca. 18 & 19 December

Yesterday’s crisis prevented diary-writing though I was in action for 23 out of those 24 hours. We are still seventeen miles from Cuzco. Moral: Don’t Count Your Cuzcos Before You Reach Them …

When I went out to change the picket at 12.30 a.m. yesterday morning, brilliant moonlight revealed that all our tack had been stolen. As usual we’d left it beside the tent, covered with a waterproof cape weighed down with stones. After the first moment of rage and frustration (how could Juana now carry the load?) I tried to ‘think positive’; this might have happened any night, instead of on the last night, and wrecked our whole trip. Then, remembering countless warnings about the corrupting effects of C uzco’s tourist trade, I resolved to guard Juana for the rest of the night and settled down to re-read Pedro de Cieza de Leon. Twice more I changed the picket, the second time moving Juana to just behind the open tent, where I could hear her cropping until a sudden downpour obliterated the sound. At 5 I went out to change the picket yet again – but Juana was gone. I felt queasy with shock. The picket was still in situ but the rope had been cut close to her head-collar. Immediately I recalled one of our numerous evening visitors remarking on the loudness of heavy rain on the taut tent; and he had also closely examined the tack. In addition to shock and grief, I was seething with that unworthy fury which follows on the realisation that one has been outsmarted.

Ignoring the downpour we packed up fast, intending to hitchhike to Izcuchaca to enlist police aid without delay. Juana couldn’t be far away, yet our trying to search a potentially hostile village would be futile. But how to find the carretera? And how to transport our gear? Then, as the first grey light seeped through the clouds, our guardian angel atoned for his recent lapse by sending a cheerful Indian boy, wearing a torn poncho and motor-tyre sandals, up the path from the village. He was driving three ponies and stopped to ask, “Where’s your mule?” I explained, adding that within hours we’d be back with several policemen from Izcuchaca. This was a good opportunity to broadcast our intentions; here horse-rustling is a major crime and punished accordingly. Even to be suspected of it could land a man in jail for several years, awaiting trial, so most villagers will co-operate with the police on this matter lest they themselves should be arrested on suspicion. Often the police are not too fussy about their methods; their main objective is to retrieve the stolen animal by fair means or foul.

The pony-herd helped us to carry our gear to the carretera: a three-mile walk through chilly drifting mist. I gave him 100 soles; later we discovered that he had stolen the waterproof cape, our small saucepan and Rachel’s beloved fideog.

The sky cleared as we stood by the roadside, soaked and shivering. Ahead, snow-peaks glimmered against the cold paleness of the morning sky. So far, doing things had cushioned me from the full impact of our disaster. Now, while waiting twenty minutes for a lift, I felt completely devastated to think of Juana gone-without a good-bye or a thank you – to a probably unsuitable home. Such an affectionate creature needs love in return. Also, it was acutely frustrating to have our trek curtailed within half-a-day’s march of Cuzco.

A road engineer, at present supervising repairs near the Apurimac bridge, drove us to this friendly, busy little town (pop approx. 5,000) where the amiable policia were semi-paralysed, as usual, by their own bureaucracy. They didn’t share our view that every moment’s delay must be to the thief’s advantage. The proper steps had to be taken, in the right order. Firstly, the Izcuchaca Superintendent had to wire a detailed report of the theft to his CO at Abancay. Secondly, the CO, having considered the report, had to wire back his authorisation for action to be taken. Thirdly, only a Seite policeman could go to the relevant village of Ocasacancpa, which is in the sub-district of Seite. (We’d passed Seite, a hamlet just off the carretera, a few minutes after being picked up.) Fourthly, before walking the three miles to Ocasacancpa the Seite policeman would have to travel twelve miles in the other direction, whenever he could squeeze onto one of the area’s infrequent truck-buses, to receive in person a search warrant from the Izcuchaca Superintendent. ‘A dull hopelessness’ is the appropriate cliché for my reaction to all this; by the time the search for Juana began, she could be half-way to Lake Titicaca where there is a keen demand for good mules. La Policia are hampered in rural Peru not only by their low average IQ but by the lack of telephones and motor transport. The Superintendent here has his own private Volkswagen but he won’t ever use it for official purposes.

A bench was placed in the sun outside the police station. And there we sat for hours being questioned by cheerful fruit-sellers, bread-boys and chicha-girls, in between their sales to captive customers when motor vehicles stopped at this police ‘Control’. While Rachel read – she can get lost in a book whatever crisis happens to be in progress – I counted ten policemen lounging or strolling about, apparently with nothing to do but chat to the locals. Yet not one of them could be sent with us to Ocasacancpa.

Amerigo arrived at noon. Tall for a Peruvian, and affable, he had a three-day beard and a sweat-beaded brow because he’d walked the last three miles from Seite. As no message had yet come from Abancay, we couldn’t board the suitable truck-bus that stopped at the Control at 12.15. When the message did come, at 1.25, we had to wait another hour for the next over-crowded vehicle, in which it was difficult to breathe: standing in the back, one’s rib-cage lacked space for the minimal expansion required. The road is so rough, and we stopped so often, that the thirteen-mile journey took fifty minutes.

At Seite I urged Amerigo to hurry because less than three hours of daylight remained, but he pointed to a nearby shebeen and insisted that cerveza was essential fuelling for the walk ahead of us. Uncharacteristically, I argued against beer drinking. But Amerigo displays the impermeable obstinacy of the very thick and it was 4.05 when we set offfor Ocasacancpa on a narrow path that led up from maize-fields to undulating grassland, then steeply down into the bowl-valley containing the hamlet.

Amerigo made no attempt to question the locals, so I stopped often to ask for news of a brown mula branded JL. Then, for the first time since Juana’s disappearance, it began to seem that we might see her again; all the campesinos’ reactions indicated that she was around, and visible, though no one was prepared to say precisely where. On the cultivated floor of the valley, where the path ran from hovel to hovel between flowering hedges, we saw Carlos, our pony-herd amigo, racing towards us down a slope accompanied by another youth. Both looked triumphant – and expectant. Carlos explained that he and his brother had spent all day informing the locality about our plan to return with the police, and about our enormous international importance (appearances notwithstanding), which we carried documents from Cajamarca to prove, and about the power of gringoes to have campesinos imprisoned for life. As a direct result, our mula had been found wandering in a maize field just an hour ago. Carlos and Pedro had caught her, with great difficulty, and put her to graze on the ridge above their casa where she was now tethered. I studied Carlos’s face as he spoke, and remembered his slick petty thieving, and wondered … Campesinos rarely venture out alone in the dark. Had his pre-dawn appearance been not a ‘guardian angel’ coincidence but part of a complicated plot? There was however a fifty/fifty chance that he was speaking the truth; and when he pointed out a familiar figure silhouetted on the skyline my joyous relief prompted me to give him the benefit of the doubt and another 100 soles.

Amerigo refused to make any effort to find our tack; he seemed to feel that he had more than done his duty by being a passive witness to our recovery of a stolen mule. Nor were Carlos and Pedro eager to help – and it was getting late. We decided to forget the tack; within half-a-day’s march of Cuzco it could be regarded as expendable.

By 7 p.m. we were back at Seite. Foolishly, I’d believed the Superintendent when he’d promised that Juana, if found, could travel from Seite to Izcuchaca by cattle truck: therefore we were tentless. This promise, like most Peruvian ‘official statements’, was a mere flight of fancy. So we then had to walk thirteen miles to Izcuchaca through a raven-black night, without a torch, on a muddy, rocky track pitted with holes, while icy rain fell steadily.

At the start of that five-hour walk we were already exhausted after a harrowing day. I had bought a dozen bread-buns in the Seite shebeen, for sustenance on the wing, but Rachel was too tired to eat them. Rarely in my life have thirteen miles seemed so long. During the first two hours, eight or nine buses and trucks passed us, with no thought of dimming, and for the first time our well-mannered Juana, who had never before met a headlamp, shied in panic and twice tried to bolt. While struggling with her in the path of impatient Peruvian drivers, on that stretch of narrow carretera, we were probably in greater danger than at any other time since leaving Cajamarca. We came to dread the distant roar and glow of a vehicle and I found myself walking all the time with clenched fists, my nails dug in my palms. By day we could have looked for a ‘lay-by’: in total darkness we daren’t move off the road until the headlights had revealed what lay on either side – by which time it was too late because Juana was panicking. Had I foreseen this complication I would have begged for shelter in Seite despite that hamlet’s subtly hostile vibes. We felt quite weak with relief when the traffic ceased abruptly because the Izcuchaca and Apurimac Controls had closed the road for the night.

Between Seite and here we met not one other pedestrian, though this is quite a densely populated area. At 10.10 we first saw Izcuchaca’s few dim lights, seeming brilliant in the utter blackness. By then both Juana and Rachel were stumbling frequently through exhaustion. Momentarily those lights, apparently close, cheered us. But as the road undulated and twisted they came to seem like Will o’ the Wisps, never any nearer, and it was exactly midnight when we arrived outside the Control. We picketed Juana on good grass in the police station back-yard. Then for ten minutes we had to stand outside our ramshackle colonial hotel, desperately banging on its nail-studded double door until a small boy with a torch admitted us. When we fell into bed, leaving our sodden clothes in piles on the floor, I had been on active duty for 23 hours and 50 minutes – and Rachel for 19 hours.

This morning Rachel slept until 10.45 but I had to be outside the Mercado by 6.30 to secure an adequate supply of Alf. We spent most of the day at the police station, enmeshed in red tape. The Superintendent, much impressed by our Cajamarca documents, insisted that the most strenuous efforts must be made to recover our tack. He urged us to return to Ocasacancpa with Amerigo. I said I would willingly return, but not with Amerigo. It seems however that this case cannot now be transferred because it’s down in the records as Amerigo’s …

After supper, when we went to give Juana her night supply of Alf, we found that the picket had been stolen (from the police yard) and Juana tethered instead to a plank. The policemen on duty shrugged and said, “These things will happen” – or words to that effect. Evidently The South American Handbook is not being alarmist when it says of the Cuzco region: ‘WARNING: Thieves are becoming bolder and more numerous’.

Cuzco. 20 December

Everything – as the man said – is relative. Our sorrow at the thought of parting from Juana has been lightened by her loss and recovery; at least we can now choose with whom to leave her.

We got off to a late (7.45) start. Without tack, loading took twice as long as usual. At last I devised a system less collapse-prone than most of my practical improvisations; we had to re-load only three times in seventeen miles. But this precarious arrangement made it advisable to follow the carretera instead of the Camino Real.

At first the road ran level around the base of lowish curved mountains. To the east, enormous herds of cattle were grazing on the wide fertile plain of Anta; and beyond that sterner peaks rose clear against a cobalt sky. Yet this landscape was not ‘our’ Andes – nor, of course, had we expected it to be. The Cuzco to Machu-Picchu railway was visible; electricity pylons strode arrogant and ugly across the plain; a brash advertisement for Singer Sewing Machines disfigured the handsome remains of an aqueduct and a fertiliser factory marked the beginning of the long climb to the pass above Cuzco. Yet, surprisingly, these modern intrusions induced no feeling of anti-climax; here the ‘Spirit of Place’ is too strong for surface scars to matter.

The city of Cuzco was itself worshipped in Inca times. Garcilaso de la Vega records that if two Indians of equal status met on one of the four roads radiating from Cuzco, the traveller coming from the city was greeted as the superior. (Much as Muslims who have visited Mecca are forever after revered.) Indians seeing Cuzco for the first time knelt to do homage before approaching that sacred spot, where each Inca’s palace was preserved after his death as a sacred shrine containing his mummified body on permanent display, tended by servants of his own clan who regularly offered the mummy food and drink. The Spaniards were quick to realise the importance of competing with the splendour and solemnity of Inca ceremonies and traditions. They soon set up the gorgeous Feast of the Body of Christ (Corpus Christi) to rival the gorgeous Feast of the Sun (Inti Raymi). Statues of Christian saints replaced carvings of heathen gods, but often the Cuzco Indians dressed their gods in the voluminous, jewel-encrusted robes of the saints and carried them thus in Christian religious processions. They still do, on occasions. Which perhaps is why advertisement hoardings and electricity pylons don’t matter too much around Cuzco.

Ascending the Arco Punco ridge, we remembered the last battle of the Cuzco campaign when the Inca army fought fiercely to defend this ridge. ‘We found all the warriors waiting for us at the entrance to the city. In the greatest numbers, they came out against us with a great shout and much determination.’ Juan Ruiz de Arce complained: ‘They killed three of our horses including my own, which had cost me 1,600 castellanos; and they wounded many Christians’. Some of the advance party of forty cavalrymen were driven down the slope but ‘the Indians had never before seen Christians retreat, and they thought that they were doing it as a trick to lure them onto the plain’. Thus the Indians, by giving Pizarro’s main army time to come up, lost their last chance to defeat the invaders. That night the two armies camped on adjacent hills, the Spaniards with their horses bridled and saddled, the Indians with their camp-fire burning brightly. But when the sun rose the Indian hill was deserted; the apparent invincibility of the conquistadores had finally demoralised the Inca troops. And so: ‘The Governor drew up the infantry and cavalry at the first light of dawn the following morning, and marched off to enter Cuzco. They were in careful battle order, and on the alert, for they were certain the enemy would launch an attack on them along the road. But no one appeared. In this way the Governor and his men entered the great city of Cuzco, with no further resistance or fighting, at the hour of High Mass, on Saturday, 15 November 1533’.

Cuzco remains invisible to travellers from the north-west until they are directly above its red roofs. As we approached the summit of Carmenca hill, at noon, the sun sent a brilliant white-gold shaft through a blue-black cloud-mass beyond the Cuzco valley. A moment later we were on the hill, overlooking the straggling little city – suddenly so close that we could pick out many landmarks already familiar from photographs. “There are no modern buildings!” exclaimed Rachel joyfully. “And no tin roofs! It’s a lovely city!” The Spaniards thought so too. Full of proud excitement, they wrote to King Charles, ‘This city is the greatest and finest ever seen in this country or anywhere in the Indies. We can assure Your Majesty that it is so beautiful and has such fine buildings that it would be remarkable even in Spain’.

A policeman at a nearby Control post asked me, “From where have you walked? From Izcuchaca?” I hesitated briefly before admitting, “From Cajamarca”. (“Ssh!” said Rachel. “He’ll think you’re boasting!”) The young man stared at me in silent disbelief. And then for a dotty moment I too wondered if what I had said could be true. The conquistadores knew this feeling. They wrote to their King: ‘The Spaniards who have taken part in this venture are amazed by what they have done. When they begin to reflect on it, they cannot imagine how they can still be alive or how they survived such hardships and long periods of hunger’.

Here sentiment prompted us to leave the carretera and enter Cuzco by the ruta de la conquista, a rough track preserved as it was when Pizarro led his men along it into the conquered capital – to lay the foundations for almost 300 years of colonial rule. At 1.15, as we approached the Plaza de Armas – in Inca days the great Square of Aucaypata, larger than St Mark’s Square in Venice and the very heart of the Empire – Rachel did a quick sum and announced that the conquistadores had beaten us by a week. They left Cajamarca on 11 August and arrived in Cuzco on 15 November. We left Cajamarca on 9 September and have arrived in Cuzco on 20 December. The Spaniards’ progress was of course slightly slowed by their having to fight four major battles en route. But we had no Indian guides and one member of our expedition was aged nine/ten. I looked past Juana to Rachel in the lead, her short legs covering the last stage of (for her) a 900-mile walk. And then – why deny it? – I felt very proud of her. Especially because there was never once, through hunger, thirst, heat, cold or exhaustion, a whimper of complaint. Rachel would not wish me to say so, but as mini-conquistadores go she’s done pretty well.

Suddenly we were in the busy, sunlit Plaza de Armas, surrounded by renaissance and baroque magnificence – four great churches, imposing colonial arcades, mansions built for conquerors. We stood silent, feeling strangely indecisive. So this was it – Cuzco. What had been our goal for three months and ten days no longer existed as a goal. We were there. Cuzco was all around us. And now we had to face the dreaded moment of disbanding the team… Rachel too looked non-exultant. “We should celebrate,” I remarked vaguely. “Why?” asked Rachel, moving closer to Juana. I turned towards the posh Hotel Conquistador, just off the Plaza, and called over my shoulder, “This is ridiculous – we’ve got to pull ourselves together!” So we did, and booked into a double-room with bathroom, soft wall-to-wall carpeting, a telephone, wireless, central heating and an electric fire – all of which cost 800 soles. To me this seemed outrageous until I forced myself to ‘think sterling’ and realised it was only £2.25. Rachel uneasily surveyed all this lavishness. “We’ll find somewhere more suitable tomorrow,” I reassured her. “Just for one night we must have a room with a bath, before we go to stay with the Waltons.”

While the porter was taking our load upstairs (obviously he’d never before seen gringo baggage of that calibre) the receptionist was finding a corral – in a doctor’s lock-up garage for which we have to pay 1,000 soles per night. It almost broke our hearts to leave Juana standing disconsolate on an oily concrete floor with a meagre bundle of Alf which it had taken us two hours to collect from various cuy-owners.

On the way back to our hotel I bought a new shirt and new shoes. Then, before my bath, I symbolically consigned my boots, jeans and bush-shirt to the WPB. As from this evening, a modicum of respectability will be required. Our trekkers’ privileges are no more.

The same. 21 December

In Izcuchaca we were told that there is no demand for riding-mules in this motorised region but that the Cuzco Tourist Office organises pony-trekking during the dry season. At home no one would condemn a beloved animal to such a career; here one-day treks, with a long rainy season vacation, offer an easier life than regularly carrying loads to market and pulling primitive ploughs up precipices. So this morning we presented ourselves to Sancho, the young man who apparently runs the Tourist Office, and asked him if he would like to buy an affectionate, good-looking, intelligent, docile and hardy young riding mula.

Sancho at once lost his ‘professional’ welcoming smile and looked pathetically confused. “You want to hire a mule to ride – yes?” “No,”I said, “we want to sell a mule.”

At that point two young women who dispense tourist brochures in an adjacent office came to the door and explained: “These ladies have walked from Cajamarca with a mule.” Sancho laughed uneasily, not sure how to take this joke. “It’s true,” insisted one young woman. “We saw them arriving yesterday and they are staying at the Hotel Conquistador and the porter has seen their documents from Cajamarca.”

Sancho’s bewilderment deepened. He frowned at us. “Why did you walk from Cajamarca? It is a long way and the roads are bad. It is possible to fly from Cajamarca to Lima, and then from Lima to Cuzco. It is not necessary to walk.”

I avoided Rachel’s eye lest she might giggle derisively, thus mortally wounding Sancho and wrecking our chances of doing a deal. “We’ll fetch the mule,” I said briskly. “She isn’t far away. When you’ve seen her you can think about it – there’s no hurry.”

Juana had just finished her breakfast Alf – a lavish supply, purchased early at the Mercado – and she greeted us ecstatically, eagerly trotting out of her alien prison. Our way back to the Plaza took us past what remains of the Temple of the Sun and up the renowned Callejon Loreto between some of those unique Inca walls of which John Hemming has written: ‘The Incas’ skill as masons is their most impressive artistic legacy … They succeeded in cutting and polishing their stones with dazzling virtuosity. Adjoining blocks fit together without visible mortar. Even when the blocks interlock in complicated polygonal patterns, their joints are so precise that the crevices look like thin scratches on the surface of the wall.’ But we were in no mood to enjoy these magnificent monuments. Now that Juana had to be sold, all our attention was focused on getting that horrible ordeal over and done with as quickly as possible.

Our absence had allowed Sancho to make the necessary mental adjustments and he was again smiling. “You are like Pizarro!” he greeted us. “You have shown how easy is travel in Peru for foreign ladies! Now I telephone The Lima Times and they write about you!”

It was immediately evident that Sancho doesn’t know a mule from a donkey. His father, he said, is the expert. So he locked up his office (there are few tourists in Cuzco at this season) and we all set off for his home on the outskirts of the city.

Despite its architectural splendours and illustrious history, one can’t really think of Cuzco as a city in our sense of the word. It seems more like a prosperous market-town, with extensive agri-cultural suburbs where small tiled adobe houses line rough muddy laneways and farm animals and poultry wander happily, un-troubled by motor-traffic. It took us an hour to reach Sancho’s home, a large two-storeyed farm-house in its own cobbled courtyard, concealed from the road by a high mud wall with a wooden double door. Sancho’s mother greeted us, an unlikeable mestizo woman whose sharp eyes peered suspiciously from a fat cunning face. She looked contemptuously at Juana and snapped, “Muy flaco!” (very lean) which alas! is true. But Sancho’s father approved and we settled on 27,000 soles; I’d asked 30,000, he’d offered 25,000. The bureaucracy of mule-trading will however be another day’s work. Tomorrow Sancho and I must go to a notary (surprise! surprise!) and transfer Juana’s papers in his presence. So we left our mula happily settling down to a pile of maize husks, having arranged to return tomorrow afternoon to exchange the notary’s documents for cash.

We have now moved from the Hotel Conquistador, whose poshness proved illusory. Our initial baths exhausted the hot water supply; when Rachel leaned lightly on the handbasin it fell to the floor; the central heating didn’t work; the electric fire behaved like a Catherine wheel if switched on and, when the door-handle fell off; locking us in, we discovered that the telphone was a mere decoration. We are much happier in the Residencial Plaza, also just off the Plaza de Armas, where for 380 soles we have a double room (sans bedding) with a big table beneath a dim electric light bulb. There is no window, but the door opens onto a balcony running around three sides of an open patio where geraniums blaze and sheets are hung to dry. Rachel’s only complaint is that the communal loo suffers pungently from drought.

The same. 22 December

We spent most of today with Sancho, commuting between the District Police Headquarters (as in Cajamarca, the police had to be deeply involved) and the office of the Public Notary, where for hours everybody ignored us. Then at last our ‘case’ was taken up by an ancient and phenomenally slow-witted gentleman with wispy silvery hair, bushy black eye-brows, a grey cravat and a shiny black suit. When all four certificates (made out on special embossed paper bought by us at the post office) had each been stamped three times by different clerks we set off for Sancho’s home. On the way we booked on tomorrow’s truck-bus to the Waltons’ tea-plantation – which happily is beyond reach of more conventional forms of transport – where we were invited for Christmas when we met Carolyn and John at San Rafael.

Chez Sancho we got a shock. Already Juana had been moved (by goods train!) to an uncle’s pasture down the Urubamba Valley, ‘because now in the rains there are no riding tourists and she needs to get fat’. After the first horrid blank moment we were glad. Not saying good-bye is always much easier.