A Grievous Oversight

I received a recent email from my new friend Kristina from Wisconsin, who I met on my whitewater rafting trip just outside Cusco, Peru. You may have noticed that I failed to mention Kristina in my Peru blog entries. Suffice it say, Kristina also noticed my failure to do so. Rather incensed, she took it upon herself to send me a transcript of my conversation with her. In deference to this oversight, I've elected to include said transcript below. My additions are in italics.

Caton: Hi, I'm Caton.

Kristina: Hi, I'm Kristina.

Caton: Oh my god, you changed my life. Thank you for your inspiring words of wisdom, and your unselfish offerings of kindness. You have truly shown me "the way". I was about to trek up to Machu Picchu to take a nose-dive off the top, but instead I will continue my round-the-world trip and periodically update my blog on my happenings, depending on the internet connection in each geographical region I'm in. You also cured my paralysis.

Kristina: Oh, okay. That's great, and not at all creepy. So, do you have a last name, Caton?

Caton: It's Walker. Caton Walker.

Kristina: You were paralyzed, you say?

Caton: Well, not anymore. Duh. I met you! So, can I email you after I leave Peru?

Kristina: You bet. Just as soon as I make up a false email address.

Seriously, this girl's got quite an imagination. They're growing more than corn up in Wisconsin.

Botulistic Doilies and Pisco Sours

After a laborious pen-purchasing episode, I was ready to embark on a City Tour of Lima. That's where you and several other tourists load onto a mini-bus (the ubiquitous mini-bus will continue to rear its ugly grill throughout my world travels) and putter about the city while listening to a woman point out things that aren't particularly noteworthy: "Oh, so that's the Venezuelan embassy? And you're going to stop the bus and give us five minutes to take photos of it? How kind of you." 

My favorite part of the tour was listening to her divergent commentaries in both Spanish and English; she'd often tell me all about something in Spanish then, presumably due to language limitations, tell me something entirely different when she "translated" into English. For example:

In Spanish: If you look to your left, you'll see a former aristocratic home that has since been converted into a luxury boutique hotel, the first of its kind in Peru. This building was commissioned by a Spanish noble in the 17th century, and is noted as having among the oldest and most well-preserved examples of the traditional "Lima balcony" in the entire city. It's rumored that its pastel yellow color originated in the original owner's love for his youngest daughter, whose favorite color was yellow. This daughter went on to marry the regional viceroy, and was subsequently killed by an outbreak of smallpox in the early 18th century. If you look just below the eaves, you'll see a relief of her face, which was added to the building by her grieving father.

In English: That building is yellow.

Fortunately, Lima itself easily overcame the limitations of my tour guide. In the course of an afternoon, we saw many colonial treasures, including the Basilica Cathedral of Lima, Peru's Government Palace, and the Plaza San Martin.

My favorite, however, was the Convento de San Francisco (pictured above at left), a Baroque masterpiece that was completed during the 17th century. What's more, the workers who toiled on the convent clearly built a sturdy building; the place survived a devastating earthquake in 1746. Even more impressive, I can personally attest that the convent withstands the weight of loads of morbidly obese American tourists every year, and with veritable aplomb. So here's to 17th Spanish engineering. It appears the conquistadors were as good at engineering as they were at genocide.

Obese tourists and earthquakes notwithstanding, the most interesting (and tititalling, if you're into the macabre) attraction at the Convento de San Francisco is its catacombs. In short, the catacombs are a series of underground caves where convent management likes to stash its dead people and then show them off to tourists. And they do it with style. Nobody's exactly sure how many bones are crammed into the convent's catacombs, but anyone can see that someone has put a great deal of effort into organizing said bones in an aesthetically pleasing manner. In one area (pictured at right), someone seems to have made a type of bone "doily," with skulls carefully flanked by outer rings of arm and leg bones. It's one of the most delightfully gross things you'll ever see. I couldn't help but wonder how all this started:

Two convent residents, a Bishop and a Monk, are walking the courtyard one day.

Monk: Man! I just tripped on another bone. Maybe we should do something about these bones lying all over the place.

Bishop: I couldn't agree more. We should put them down in the basement.

Monk: Works for me. I'll have some on the nuns sweep them up and toss them underground.

What? I didn't say he was enlightened monk. In fact, for purposes of this made-up story, I gather he was quite sexist.

Bishop: No, no, no! I was thinking we could pick each of them up, and then arrange them into really pretty patterns.

Monk: What? The bones?

Bishop: Yes, yes! Wouldn't that be a good idea?

Monk: No. As a matter of fact, that does not strike me as a good idea. You know, handling bones is a great way to develop a nasty case of botulism. And I must add that botulism is no fun at all. It's often accompanied by anorexia, uncontrolled vomiting, and excruciating muscle paralysis.

Bishop: What? I don't follow.

Monk: Botulism. It's a bacterial infection. You can get it from handling the bones of dead things like, you know, people.

Awkward pause.

Bishop: Yeah. That's where I'm going to have to differ with you. He then holds up his fingers to do quotation marks in the sky. You see, I'm more of a "Pre-Age of Enlightenment" Catholic. So, I don't really connect cause and effect. I don't know about all this "handling bones" mumbo jumbo; all I know is that if indeed you do get this botulizzle...

Monk: Botulism.

Bishop: Whatever. Like I was saying, if you do get this "botulism," it's because it was the will of God. It's all up to Him. That's the only possible explanation.

Monk: Um, okay. So, following that logic, if you were to take a nap in the middle of the street, and subsequently get stepped on by a horse?

Bishop: ....will of God, most definitely.

Monk: Wow. Well, we're just going to have to agree to disagree. You can play interior decorator with your bones all you want, but I'm going to sit this one out.

Bishop: Oh, I'm afraid that's not advisable.

Monk: Huh?

Bishop: Well, another thing about the pre-Age of Enlightenment church is that we burn people at the stake who disagree with our worldview.

Monk: You mean me? Burned at the stake?

Bishop: ...to a crisp.

Monk: Oh. I don't like the sound of that at all.

Bishop: Well, sorry. I don't make the rules. I just light the match.

Monk: What? The self-igniting match won't be invented for another 200 years.

Bishop: Well, fine. I light the whale oil or whatever. Either way, I'd suggest you repent unless you're yearnin' for a burnin'.

Monk: Yearning for a burning? That's nice. You should put that on a bumper sticker or something.

Bishop: Thanks. I'll be sure to put that one on the back of my donkey cart. So, what say you to getting burned alive for your treacherous ideas?

Monk: I was thinking that we could arrange the bones in a doily pattern! 

Bishop: I love doilies!

Monk: Yeah. Your hot pink vestments would suggest as much.

And that's how the catacombs of the Convento de San Francisco came to be.

So, after my city tour was completed, I finally joined Isabel for an amazing dinner at T'anta, a rather famous restaurant in Lima, which is the brainchild of Peru's resident celebrity chef Gaston Acurio. You really should click here to learn more about him, particularly if you're lucky enough to live near one of his restaurants in Chile, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Spain, or Venezuela. Sadly, I didn't get to enjoy my dinner (or my accompanying Pisco Sour) as long as I would have liked; I took off directly from dinner for the airport for an overnight flight to Houston. And, with that, my trip to Peru was finished. 

Violating Pre-Colombian Building Codes

On our way down from this second pass, we came across the majestic Incan ruins at Sayaqmarka; it was as if the place had been concocted in an Indiana Jones cinematographer's imagination. We climbed to the top (via a short, but extremely steep ancient staircase) and took in breathtaking views. We were actually above the clouds; we marveled at the cloud-tops, with glacial peaks poking through every now and again. After chatting with my fellow trekkers, I wandered about the ruins, trying to decipher the purpose of each of the stone formations. Whenever you're among Inca ruins, you'll often come across seemingly random stones placed on the ground, but not so random as if to suggest that they'd simply fallen there. Instead, it appeared as if they'd been placed there intentionally. Within Sayaqmarka, I came across one particularly large stone that seemed as if it had been some sort of altar. With the benefit of my near-complete ignorance of ancient Incan culture, I imagined how the stone had come about:

Inca Bob and Inca Joe are toiling away, helping to build Sayaqmarka.

Inca Bob ("Bob"): Wow. Building this Sayaqmarka thing is entirely too difficult.

Inca Joe ("Joe"): I couldn't agree more. Here's an idea: how about we build these gigantic structures at the bottom of the mountains so we don't have to carry these stones up 3,000 meters of sheer mountain-face? Do you think the King's ever thought of that?

Bob: Well, first of all, I'm a pre-Colombian Inca, so I have no idea what a meter is, but, to answer your question, no; I don't suppose the King's ever considered that. He things big. Or, in this case, high.

Joe: What's this "pre-Colombian" you speak of?

Bob: How should I know? Do you think I'd be carrying stones around all day if I knew that sort of thing? All I heard was there's some guy who's planning to come to this part of the world one day. And he'll bring small pox.

Joe: Well, I don't know what these small pox are, but I'm not worried about something that's small. I mean, they've got "small" right in the name. And, thanks to our modern dietary standards, I'm practically a giant. I must be nearly 5 feet tall. So small is nothing for me.

Bob: Five feet? Yeah, I still don't know anything about these European units of measurement you keep using.

Joe: What's "European?"

Bob: This conversation is getting exhausting. Will you just stop talking do your Inca thing in peace?

Joe: Wait. Why did you leave that massive stone there? You can't just drop a stone in the middle of the room because you're tired.

Bob: Um, I didn't. That's where it's supposed to go. It's, um, an altar.

Joe: Really? Well, what's it for? Who ever heard of such a small altar in the middle of a room? What's it for?

Bob: Um, it's for sacrificing babies.

Joe: Babies? Since when do we sacrifice babies?

Bob: Oh, since yesterday. The gods thought it would be a good idea. Didn't you get the memo?

Joe: No. What's a memo?

Bob: I have no idea.

Joe: Fine. Never mind. So whose lady are we sacrificing?

Bob: Not lady! Baby! You know, those little things that scream and dirty up the diapers we haven't invented yet?

Joe: Oh yeah. Well, whose?

Bob: Well, not mine. That's for sure.

Joe: How do you know that?

Bob: ...gods told me so.

Joe: Who appointed you ambassador to the gods? How do you know all of this stuff?

Bob: I dunno. I suppose I just operate on a higher spiritual level than you or something like that. So do you think you can have your baby all cleaned up by tomorrow's sacrifice; we wouldn't want the gods to get dysentery or something.

Joe: How could that happen? Do they intend to eat him?

Bob: As far as you know, sure.

At least that's how I imagined it. It's a good thing I don't know much about pre-Colombia Inca history. I find that facts and knowledge make history far less interesting than my made-up versions of history.