A Glass of Milk

          “A glass of milk,” I said eagerly to the waitress. I ordered the scrambled eggs and toast as an afterthought. What I really craved was the milk. I had been deprived of its sustenance for a week. My brain could only focus on the cold, white, liquid that had been unavailable and unsafe to drink for seven entire days.

It was 1984, and my friend Gail and I had gone to Peru because she had broken up with her boyfriend. Gail was determined to do something different and wonderful for herself, like visit the Amazon. When she first asked me to go with her, I actually said, “Are you out of your cotton pickin’ mind?” In the 1980’s, it sounded like an awfully dangerous place to go. There had been a cholera epidemic, rampant poverty, terrorist activity by The Shining Path, and a despotic dictatorship. My father, sister and even my 6 year old nephew thought it was a bad idea. My nephew had seen a picture in the travel brochure of a native with a blow gun and feared that I might be killed in the jungle. In addition, as a Type I insulin-dependent diabetic, I was fearful of possible medical emergencies in a third world country. On the other hand, Gail was a hospital dietician, spoke fluent Spanish, and was someone I felt entirely safe with. Here was an opportunity that might never come my way again. I shocked her and myself when a few days later I told her I was going.

It was a wonderful trip. We travelled by plane, train and bus, through Peru’s three climates, from the temperate but congested streets of Lima, up to the cool, cloud-filled heights of Machu Picchu, and then down to the steamy, abundant Amazon. There were surprises everywhere.

Lima was a city of contrasts. The main part of the city was busy, crowded and loud. The wealthy Miraflores section was quiet, tree-lined, and manicured.  In the distance was a huge mountain, not covered in beautiful trees, but in a thick miasma of refuse, poverty, disease, and unrest, housed in lean-to’s and tin huts. In 1984, unemployment was at 60%. The cronyism and corruption of the autocratic Peruvian government served the rich and the connected; the poor seemed expendable and not worth supporting. The poor rummaged through the garbage heap and pilfered from the tourists.  We were warned to cover our wrists with long sleeved shirts if we wanted to keep our watches and to remove our earrings if we wanted to keep our earlobes intact. We were considered a “natural resource” to be mined by the poor of the city.

Beginning in the early to mid- 1500’s, the Spanish invaded Peru to mine the country for gold and land, in the name of God and country. As much gold as possible was transported back to Spain. Lima became a Spanish city. The churches were built from local stone scavenged from Incan structures. The altars, encrusted in gold, were almost blinding and caused this viewer to gasp in awe at the beauty and the power they represented. 

In the museum, my eyes were drawn to the golden, oversized Incan death masks, golden jewelry, and clothing that accessorized the dried-out, semi-mummified remains of the powerful from hundreds of years ago. The deceased’s legs were broken to attain the traditional cross-legged, seated position for those elevated enough to have an honored burial. This was horrifying to my sensibilities, but clearly honorable for the ancient Inca. Square incisions in some of the skulls were evidence of Inca brain surgery, perhaps letting out bad spirits, perhaps alleviating brain pressure. The survival rate was unknown, but the wound had healed over on many skulls.

In 1980’s Peru, the survival and longevity rate in the country side and in the

poverty stricken areas was about 40 years. The lives of the poor, marked by disease, joblessness, and violence seemed to be an expendable commodity for those in positions of power. Services for the poor were non-existent, which is why the violent, communist group, The Shining Path had a following. Freedom and survival contrasted greatly with the privilege of the United States

The main streets of Lima, lined with shops and restaurants, were bustling with shoppers, workers, and school children in uniform. Cars, busses and taxis crisscrossed the city. During our day of leisure, Gail and I walked through a festive, busy outdoor market. People milled around the stalls where foodstuffs, souvenirs, and clothing were sold. Cute little puppies were hawked on the street as if they were pieces of meat. I found the market dizzying and a little frightening.

A neatly-dressed young man separated himself from the crowd, approached us politely, and in excellent English asked, “Are you Americans?”  “Yes,” we answered cautiously. “I’m a college student and would like to talk with you for a few minutes to practice my English.” As suspicious New Yorkers and tourists on alert, we held our bags close, but did strike up a friendly conversation with him. In less than three minutes, we were surrounded by a trio of armed guards who stood at ease in a circle around us. They said nothing. They just stared blankly ahead. “We should stop talking now,” the young man suggested. “We might be arrested if we don’t.” He turned, and walked away.  So did the guards. Gail and I stood there aghast.

Later, when we were on our official group tour, we passed the Government Palace, and our guide sternly warned not to take any pictures: “They will shoot first, and then maybe, ask questions later.”  Though the city had energy, and I was excited to be exposed to a whole new culture, it was a relief to leave Lima.

Departing, unfortunately was not so simple. The Shining Path had announced it was going to close all the roads around Lima. We were awakened at 4 AM so that we could board the bus and be in the airport before the group blockaded the city. Our guide pointed out an area on the way to the airport where a display of a fiery hammer and sickle was known to burn from time to time. You may have heard of The Shining Path. When John Paul II visited Lima in May of 1988, they protested in Lima with parades, bombs, and a city blackout.

We arrived at the airport in time and boarded a ramshackle, retired American plane while a mechanic examined the fuselage with what looked like a dime store flashlight. He fumbled around the plane’s engine for a few minutes, and then we took off, headed to the high altitude city of Cusco (11,000 feet). As we flew through the breathtaking landscape of the Andes, the plane bounced in the shifting air currents. Meanwhile, I busied myself by holding my finger in the air vent to stop the unrelenting high pitched whistling noise it emitted. I couldn’t help but think that the plane was held together with spit and sticky tape, and that we might end up like the people in the book “Alive,” who crashed in the Andes and had resorted to cannibalism to survive.

We landed safely and put on the light winter jackets we had been instructed to pack. The lack of oxygen in the thin, cool air hit Gail immediately, and she had to hold on to me as we disembarked and crossed the tarmac. She spent a good deal of the first day of sightseeing planted on the seat in the bus. I felt fine. I clambered all around the ancient sites where huge stones had been fitted together to build large structures without benefit of mortar.  The Spanish commandeered the stones to build their own buildings and churches the European way, but the structures were not as durable as the Incan ones. The city’s sidewalks, roads, gates, and buildings were all made of stone. We were surrounded by the building blocks of the ancients, where Quechua Indian and Spanish customs and artifacts were merged together.

That night we found a great restaurant. Mostly we ate chicken or fish, although guinea pig was served also, usually accompanied by some form of potato, which, is native and prolific in the region. The only dish I would not try, because I was afraid it was unsafe, was ceviche— cut-up raw fish marinated in lime juice and spices. I did take a small taste of Inca Kola, the national soft drink, which was a sugar and lemon verbena blend. One taste of the sugary, yellow concoction was enough for me. A glass of milk was not available and I was told it would be dangerous to drink. So, the delicious coffee and tea were my drinks of choice, enjoyed without benefit of milk.

Note to tourists: rest the first day you are in a high altitude city. I had to hail a taxi from the restaurant back up the three blocks to the hotel because I was so short of breath. I had climbed and clambered much too much that first day of sightseeing. I felt as sick that night as with any bout of stomach flu. To fight the waves of nausea and dizziness, I drank coca tea (related to cocaine) which was supposed to help by expanding the blood vessels in the body. (I still have some teabags hoarded in the back of a kitchen cabinet at home.) A group of us shared an oxygen tank in the hotel sitting area as we passed around the face mask like a joint. We were so starved for oxygen; I don’t think any of us thought much about the issue of questionable sanitation. Later, I ordered up the tank from room service to take additional deep sniffs before I went to bed. Nothing helped much but a good night’s sleep. I stumbled to the bus the next day for our trip to Machu Picchu, which is thankfully at only 9,000 feet (1,000 feet below the cut off for oxygen deprivation).

Additional advice to tourists who drink: alcohol and altitude don’t mix. The Army Corps of Engineer fellows who had enjoyed a few too many Pisco Sours were too sick to go to Machu Picchu, the highlight of our entire trip. The rest of us took the long train ride on the highest track railroad in the world. We passed indigenous potato farmers chewing their coca leaves and working their fields. It was the first time I had seen blue skinned potatoes. We saw small groups of women and children, all dressed in bright woven blankets, wool hats and sweaters, who were minding the sheep and alpaca. Except for the very young, people looked old and weathered. It was a hard life in the mountains. 

From the train, we took a bus way up onto the mountain, so high, that when we glanced back we saw what appeared to be a line of toy train cars in the middle of the most minuscule train set in the world.

On this mountaintop, sometime in the late 1400’s the Inca established a city, possibly as a religious or royal retreat. The mystery of Machu Picchu is that it appears to have been completely abandoned with no trace or explanation.

The guide spoke reverentially about the Quechan religion and people, about the Inca civilization. His voice was soft and hypnotizing. One could almost feel the spirits of the lost civilization hiding on the edges of the wind, behind the stone walls, in the recesses of the mountain. The clouds and light rain obscured the peaks and added to the mystical atmosphere and then cleared away to allow pristine views of the terraced landscape inhabited hundreds of years ago and then deserted.

Empirically speaking, only our tourist group, a guide, and an overfed alpaca named Poncho, stood on the ancient configured stones at Machu Picchu. I cannot describe the strong sense of another presence. Maybe the lack of oxygen was still affecting my brain.  In high altitudes, where oxygen is thin, like the Andes or the Himalayas, spiritual people with paranormal senses seem to gather. Perhaps the lack of oxygen strips the strictures of civilization or the rigidity of our thinking, to open us to other possibilities. Perhaps the lack of oxygen simply disseminates our rational brains. I cannot answer for sure. I just know I felt a very strong energy up there and a sense of awe that I have rarely experienced elsewhere. The surrounding mountains were so dramatically high, that it was impossible not to feel infinitesimally small, and yet, spiritually by the abandoned ruins. No camera lens could capture the grandeur, the mystery, or the sensation of the place.

We went down the mountainside to return to reality. On the way to the train I wanted to buy a necklace from one of the vendors. This required mostly nonverbal, but tough negotiations. She wanted my ski jacket in payment, plus 10 American dollars. I paid her in cash. We bargained for so long she had to jump off the moving train as we pulled out of the station. I regret I didn’t give her the jacket. I would have left a piece of myself in a foreign land and made a big difference in someone’s life. On the other hand, it was almost December, and who knew what the New York weather was going to be when my plane landed.

The next day we flew from the thin air and awesome height of the Andes to arrive in the low jungle where the air hit us like a thick balm, heavy with oxygen. We navigated the muddy brown currents of the Amazon on a flat bottomed, thatched-roofed wooden boat, which protected us from the strong sun and the recurring tropical rain bursts. Our lungs luxuriated in the ever more oxygenated air and our mountain- dry skin drank in the tropical moisture.  Our eyes sucked in the verdure of the place:

dull dark greens to bright bottle greens, malachite to peridot, emerald to pea green. Trees grew out of the water with their trunks and leaves half submerged in the rising waterway, adding to the unruly, thick shoreline on either side of the river. Our cameras clickety-clacked in an effort to capture the texture and scale of the Amazon, to entrap on film the  flamboyant birdlife, the giant wasp nest, the depth of the jungle.

“Stop. Put your cameras out of sight. Now.” warned our boat captain. “We are about to pass a naval installation. They have big guns whose bullets could reach us easily from shore.” We did as we were told.

We arrived at the dock at the Amazon Camp where there were wooden paths, a main meeting area, and dorms with palm thatched roofs.  It was a sleep away camp for tourists.

We went on nature walks, tramped through the jungle, tasted fresh guava, viewed the flora and fauna, and stayed on the path so that we would not walk into any fire ants. We had swimming privileges off the dock, but were warned there were piranha in the waters. Perfectly safe, they said, unless there was blood. I was a skittish swimmer and was sure I’d scrape an ankle diving in, so I demurred.

At the camp, we played with the pet parrots, exchanged stories, relaxed on the hammocks.

One of the guests brought out an anaconda snakeskin, which she had bought as a souvenir.  She took pictures so that she’d have a record of the magnificently patterned black, brown, and green snake, in case U.S. customs confiscated it on her return home. She wrapped me in it, and although I smiled for the picture, I felt uncomfortable as she arranged this “trophy” around me. Even though anaconda prefer caiman or antelope to human flesh, this 9-10 foot long animal, when alive, could easily have hugged me to death, broken my bones, and eaten me whole for dinner--- a shiver-inducing thought.

At our own dinner, our host provided us with another off-putting thought. He suggested cheerfully that monkey meat was on the menu for our evening meal. I hoped he was jesting. After dinner, we sang around the campfire and listened to the jungle sounds. It was turning out to be an ideal nature camp experience.

When we retired to our dorms, the sounds of the jungle engulfed us, simultaneously loud and also soft, with unknown animals calling and rustling. The thatched roofs proved not to be reliably water-tight and I had to move my bed to a less drippy spot. When I went to prepare for sleep, there was a large beetle covering most of my toothpaste tube. I told him to take his time; I would wait. Meanwhile, by the light of the kerosene lamp, I checked the toilet seat before I sat down in case a snake or a tarantula had gotten there before me. I experienced no such intruders. The next morning Gail, however, had the honor of sharing her outdoor shower with Kermit the Frog.

We visited a jungle family home and a fishing village, saw the sparse homes and lives the Amazon people lived in. We witnessed the blown up bellies of little children who had parasites. No one wore much in the way of clothing—after all it was the tropics. I wanted to believe that the home on stilts was just a prop, and that the family owned a modern home somewhere else, where they laughed at the gullible tourists. Unfortunately, I think that was only in my imagination.  I hoped they could be happy and satisfied, even though they were not living what I could call a life.

The father demonstrated the use of a blow gun. It was my opportunity to buy a child-sized one for my nephew Ira who had expressed fear that I’d be a victim of a poison dart attack.  At the Iquitos International Airport the “weapon” was confiscated, to be stowed safely away in the luggage compartment. I gave the official a doubtful, dismissive look. He said, “Ma’am, I tried it. It works. I suggest you stuff the blow gun so you nephew doesn’t harm himself or anyone else.” Ira loved the gift and kept it up on his bedroom wall for years.

Souvenirs bought, pictures taken, experiences lived, we made our way from Iquitos to Lima to Miami to New York. Despite sleeping in leaky, thatched dorms on the Amazon and suffering oxygen deprivation in the Andes, there was really only one thing I really missed: milk.  It was 2600 miles between Lima and my first glass of milk in Miami.

When the glass with the familiar Howard Johnson’s blue and orange logo arrived at the table, my mouth stretched into an eager smile and then a big, expectant “o” as my lips latched on to the cold glass. The liquid splashed and played against my palette and tongue. It hit my taste buds with a sweet, sliding delight. No sipping. No savoring. A good gulp, an appreciative inhale, followed by the loud exultation of a sigh.

The waitress gawked at me and then started to laugh. She had witnessed her husband react with the same gusto to an ice-cold draft. But milk? She shook her head and walked away to get the rest of my breakfast order while I enjoyed my lip-smacking milk delight . . . so American, so safe, and so delicious. Only 1,092 miles more to my own apartment, my own bed, and a container of milk in the freezer, waiting for my safe return home.

Afterword

Sometimes one person’s carpe diem, can become your own seize the day moment. If Gail had not invited me on this trip to Peru, I would never have taken this amazing trip or the one I embarked on two years later to Kenya.

            The corrupt and authoritarian government in Peru made me very sensitive to any hints of the same here in the States. Conditions in Peru have changed for the better over the decades, but still are not ideal. Covid 19 hit Peru hard in 2020, according to newspaper reports, and has sent the country’s healthcare and financial systems into a downward spiral. I hope that Peru recovers and that you can visit there sometime in the future. After almost 40 years, my memories of Peru are still vivid, and I can visit them any time I wish.

Marsha H.

July 2020