27th October

Cusco is a wonderful, vibrant and historic city. In all measures it stands tall. It is also extremely touristy, and I mean extremely. If Machu Picchu was an amusement park, then Cusco is surely a circus. We had to come here though, so much of Peru’s history is wrapped up in this city. Cusco was, after all, the heartland of the Inca empire, and to them the navel of the world. Being here however, has turned out to be a bit of an endurance test. There are only so many times a day someone can ask you if you want a massage or try to sell you a picture before you end up losing it with them. The antidote to all of this though, is to avoid the area around the main plaza (Plaza de Armas) and get out to the countryside and in with the locals.

With that in mind, Jess and I headed off to the market town of Pisac today, hoping to get a couple of bargains before visiting some quieter ruins above the town. To our real dismay, we failed on both counts. The market had clearly become over-commercialised, probably due to the influence of tourists flocking from Cusco, and the ruins were ridiculously expensive to enter (compared to the rest of Peru, not to UK prices). We decided to ditch our original plan then and go and find something a little more authentic and honest, so we headed back up the road a little to a much smaller village. Finally, we found something much more up our alley, in the form of a llama reserve and an animal refuge almost next door to one another.

I’ve got to be honest, by the time I had got to llama reserve I was ready to snap. I was so aggravated that Jess could hardly say a right word to me. I was surprised then just how quickly being in the presence of these animals calmed me down. The reserve was not just for llamas, but for vicunas, alpacas and guanacos too. We also saw a few chinchillas, just grazing around the outside edges of reserve in their natural habitat. So there we were, in the warming sun, just lazily making our way around and feeding the animals while soaking up the nature of it all.

The pens the animals were housed in were just to separate the different animal species from one another but were completely open to visitors like Jess and I. So when I say we were walking around the animals, I really mean we were in there amongst them. It felt good and it felt right.

And then there was the moment. The moment when I saw Jess aged six again. When she was a small girl, we used to take her to show farms where we would wander around together and she would feed the animals. She loved being there, and we loved taking her there. I have pictures in my mind of the photographs that we took during those times. They are so vivid. And today, the way she stood, the way she smiled, the way she held her hand out to feed the alpacas, was just like a living memory. My Jess, was six again, and a grown woman, both at once.

I’d seen it before during this trip, maybe on a bus with her sleeping next to me. The way she would curl up in a ball, the way she would snuffle and the faces she pulled, no different than when she was a toddler. This trip is a very special one for us, our last real time together before she leaves home next year for university. From next year, my little girl will be gone. Life will have revolved, and there will be no turning back, only forward. Once left, in all likelihood, she will never return, at least not for more than a few weeks at a time. You can imagine how that makes the father of an only child feel. You can also imagine then, how much this trip means to both of us.

So today, as with other days before now, I see her as she was. It’s like history recounting itself to me, while we still have the time. Those past memories precious, the memories we're making now, more precious still. I'm just glad I saw her leaving coming, and made the time now, to cement the bond between father and daughter, making memories we will both share for a lifetime.

Moving on from the llama reserve, we headed to the animal refuge, and this too held its own importance. You see, Jess is here, on this continent, as she wanted to spend time volunteering with just such a place. Volunteering now, before she hits university and a career, because that is where her heart lies and she wants to do it now while she can. Visiting this place showed me why these refuges are in need, and the cruelty that takes place to these innocent animals. Sometimes from greed, sometimes from ignorance, but always with a painful cost to the animal.

A Russian girl showed us around, her broken English strangely much more intelligible than most of the Spanish speakers attempting the same thing, which in turn still better than my attempts at Spanish. You could tell from her face as she related the stories behind each of the animals rescued just how much it meant to her to be there and to help in her own way.

She described for instance how the hands and feet of a coati had been removed because of blind ignorance. Some people in this country feel that coati blood is the antidote to snake venom, just because a coati is nimble enough to kill a snake if it needs to. So having a coati around is like having a medicine cabinet to them. To the coati, it is just purgatory and completely soul destroying. She felt it inside, you could see it in her face. And Jess feels it too. This work is not a choice, but a longing, a vocation. And now I understand too, why it is so important to them both. I don’t know where Jess’s career will lead her and what she will end up doing, but if she follows her heart, then it will surely be somewhere just like this.

The Russian girl took the bus back to Cusco with us. She now lives here, with her Peruvian husband and three year old daughter, making a difference. And so happy she was, giggling and laughing throughout the journey. A good girl, with a good heart. Her happiness couldn’t help but rub off on me too. So many people I’ve met on this trip, so many stories, but hers a special one that will linger long in the memory. Her name, Alexander. May God surely bless her.

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Part of trip: South America 2009 - Ecuador, Peru & Bolivia

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