Quillabamba Coca, August 2014

Federación Provincial de Campesinos de Convención, Yanatile, y Lares represents the interests of coffee, cacao, and coca farmers in the valleys around Quillabamba.  Currently their lawyers are trying to spring from Lima prison people falsely accused of being "terrorists" in a counter narcotics offensive downvalley from Quillabamba.

Anita, FEPCACYL office manager, took me to her parents´ coffee and coca farm.  Her dad had just harvested these coca leaves.

Leaves after drying about three hours in early morning sun on stone drying patio.

Harvesting.  The immature leaves at the tips of each limb are not taken.

The shrubs are chopped back to the ground every three years.  This maintains vigor, leaf size, and keeps shrubs low for harvesting ease.

Coca field.

 

Coca shrubs leafing out after being chopped.

Coca field.

Pucallpa Street Art, August 2014

Three paste-ups by Curaca on concert posters referencing sloth, piraña, and a famously tastey armoured fish.

By Sose, from Iquitos. "In these times the landscape changes!"

Chico Wasca.

Ollantaytambo, August 2014

Brugmansia sanguinea

Inca ruins, residential?, above Ollantaytambo Valley.

Inca rockwork terraces in use.

Andes.

Pisac, August 2014

 Sarah recognized my half marathon hat from when she worked the Moab ambulance and ran the race.

Inca stonework terraces above Pisac.  They don´t let em plant in the archeological parks but elsewhere the old terraces are in use.

Inca ruins above Pisac.

Old trails all over the hills.

Pisac and the upper Rio Urubamba.

Cacao, July 2014

Cacao pods.

First you got to suck the (sweet) goop off.

Shipibo kids doing their part.

Then the chocolate seeds dry in the sun.

Rio Ucayali, July 2014

Antonio & Juan.

"Maloca", a structure invented for dosing foreigners.

Moving  people and platanos.

"Colectivo" on Rio Ucayali.

This is as close as I got to Machu Picchu.

Peruvian Amazon, August 2013

Boarding the "rapido" for 18 hour trip down Rio Ucayali from Pucallpa, the main town on the middle Ucayali, to Contamana, a major market town.

Boarding a motorized dugout on an oxbow lake in the Shipibo community of Canaan Chia Tipishca.

 A waterway leading into the forest beyond Canaan Chia Tipishca.

We boated two hours and walked an hour to this fishing hole where three of us hooked these fish in about an hour.  I caught three.  Fishing is excellent in bodies of water cut off by low water during dry season.

Collecting Rae Rao, a plant used for resolving conflict between individuals or groups.

 

One of two coca bushes maintained on a Mestizo's farm cleared from an abandoned narcotraficante's coca plantation.

 

Floating island on legendary Lago Imiria.  Some floating islands have mature renaco (a fig species) trees.  Jaguars are said to swim out to these islands.

 

Piraña for dinner, yum.  Shipibos have fresh fish with every meal.

 

Entrance to the market town Contamana on Rio Ucayali.

 

Medicine & magic shop in the Cuzco market, in the Andes.

 

Double and triple flower Brugmansia blossoms in Cuzco.