QueenPuya

Greetings from sweet and sunny Lima,

I guess there was an earthquake here yesterday, but we just rolled into town and so far things are stable. Exciting! Mercedes and I finished up in Cusco this morning by running around and taking all the touristy pictures we hadn´t had time for earlier. I really enjoyed that city and will miss it. We stayed with the very kindest people imaginable and I felt like I got a good feel for the place, despite being so busy. I originally was going to have several days to be a tourist before we left, but of course, Puya intervened. I ended up going to a whole new departmento, Apurimac, to the west of Cusco on a whirlwind two day collecting trip with a bunch of botanists inventorying the area. I was the Puya expert in residence, which meant I just had to stand by the side of the road and determine if the random stuff hauled down from the cliffsides were new species or not. And they are, as near as I can tell. Two more beauties to describe, new to the world. One with long, skinny green flowers that turn bright pink when they are spent and one with several long arms of fuzzy, dense flowers. Lots of work these are, but still quite exciting. This is a very remote part of Peru and it seems like just now scientists are fully investigating it. Remote equals hours and hours in a cramped truck and spending the night in a skunky little town, but such is the price to pay for discovery. Actually, Apurimac was very beautiful and the canyons along the river, raging straight through to the Amazon, were covered in giant cactus and seasonally dry forest. It is the season for the leaves to turn orange and then fall off, so it kind of looked like a bizarre mix of autumn in New England and the Sonoran desert, with giant blooming white Agaves thrown in for a touch of spring.
Now we are in Lima at Mercedes´mom´s house and I am well fed and a bit nappy in the humidity. Lima is SUCH a different scene from old timey Cusco and I am reminded of LA, Quito and many other places as we rush past TGI Fridays, McDonalds and kids rushing into traffic to sell Tampico. We should eventually find Bryan tonight, to hear his tales of renting a car in Lima and exploring nearby canyons. Tomorrow it is off to the Museo to figure out permitting and meet lots of people. My Spanish brain gets very tired at times like this, but thank God Mercedes is done with her work for her thesis project and can be with me to help smooth over Spanish situations. Hopefully we will not be in Lima long and can begin the giant haul to the north in a few days. I´ve got about fourteen good days left in me before I throw up my hands and choose to ignore Puya and go hiking or go to the beach instead. The end is in site, but it is paved in spiny, glorious plants. Back to itching my flea bites...

Hola todos,

I can with confidence confirm that every single one of you reading this has the ability to successfully visit Machu Picchu. Bryan and I just got back from the most touristy of all things one can do in South America and thoroughly enjoyed it, despite being nickled and dimed at every possible instance. We took a nice bus past some incredible peaks to Ollantaytambo, where we had some hours to kill before getting on the train. The ruins were a rip off and I knew I´d be seeing better terracing later, so we didn´t pay to go in, but sat around eating pancakes and avocados by a river. Very, very nice. The trainride was quite stunning and there literally is no other way to get to the ruins. You can really see why they were essentially forgotten until about one hundred years ago. We followed the windy river as the vegetation got lusher and lusher and less full of Puya. Across the river we´d catch glimpses of burdened backpackers hauling up the Inka trail. I was a tad jealous, but don´t think I coul dpossibly have done that on this trip too. They will hike for four days to get to what our train can do in twenty minutes. We arrived in Aguas Calientes, the town below the ruines, which was not as gross as Lonely Planet made it sound...we are pretty convinced a cynic wrote Lonely Planet Peru. Found an OK hostel, though ridiculously overpriced...twenty bucks!! Then we headed out along some railroad tracks in search of Bryan´s plant. We surely didn´t find it, but found lots of tropical plants and birds, much to our delight. I saw some giant red thing fly in front of us and a giant iridescent blue bird sitting in an avocado tree. I really need to learn some things before I go birding in Costa Rica! We then began our descent up the ridiculous mountain to Machu Picchu. Most will take the tourist bus ...including myself the next morning...but we started the ascent and got some majorly sore calf muscles. No Puya to speak of and no Lepechinia. After an early night to bed, we got up and I decided to pony up some more cash to treat myself to the bus, and Bryan decided to hike it. It is a RIDICULOUSLY expensive place for Peru...it cost Bryan the equivelent of 50 dollars to get into the park ...half for me with my smart ISIC card....and me twelve dollars to take the twenty minute bus. Add in an eight dollar Gatorade and extra money to visit the museum and you have some smug Peruvians and poorer tourists. At least we didn´t spend one thousand dollars to stay in the hotel at the ruins! Lots of others did, though...
Was it worth it? Of course... Machu Picchu is all about the location and the insanely steep, green mountains imbricate in all directions make up for the lack of beautiful carvings or interesting story about the ruins. We don´t know much about the ruins...or at least the guides can´t seem to come to a consensus!...and they really aren´t that old or that impressive compared to Mexico. It actually reminded me of touring an old castle site in England, besides the location of course. But a very lovely place to think about life and time and purpose. I sat in both the rain and the sun for hours, once I was tired of stealing information by pretending to be part of various tour groups. The breeze, the bird songs...once you could filter out the harsh sounds of yappy US tourists...so peaceful. I did find the tourists sort of amusing, though. I would try to guess where they were from before they opened their mouths and was pleasantly surprised to find out I was quite bad at this game. Every possible age, level of fitness and dress was present, often in ridiculous numbers. I would hate to see this place in the high season. Luckily, at least until UNESCO revolks funding, you can pretty much walk wherever you want and get away from it all. There are nice llamas to sit by, too.
Back in Cusco now and things are heating up. I keep meeting more professors who get excited about me and want to plan trips, though I´m losing enthusiasm and increasing my desire to go to the bars and go shopping. Get excited...I am officially going to describe 2 new subspecies of Puya....Puya ferruginea subsp. actinomorphae and zygomorphae(Jabaily&Herrerae). How cool is that! It is actually a lot of work, in Latin, but I am so proud that I have come far enough in my knowledge to do this. God knows every new place will yield more Puyas for me to deal with and tomorrow I leave for an unplanned two day trip to Apurimac to collect new plants...including the second collection of Puya iltisiana, named for a dear old professor at Wisconsin! Fun, fun... Tonight we are going out with some charitable Brits working on their holiday at an orphanage. Bryan headed to Lima today and we meet him there Sunday. Back to the herbarium now and off for some shopping! Get in your orders now for cheap knit goods with llama themes.... Someone should write me an email, really. Love, R

Hola,

Happy Easter! Its not as big a deal here as I thought it would be, though I did get to see a cool procession for Good Friday complete with relics in coffins of glass and people festooning Mary in red Salvia flowers. Bryan and I are preparing for our two day trip to Machu Picchu. It is hard to do on the cheap and there are ways to get ripped off at every turn. We are taking a private bus to some town )Ollantaytambo, in case you know it and then training into the ruins. All direct trains are reserved weeks in advance, so we have to do it this way. I am trying to build up enthusiasm, because it just seems so gimmicky.
We had a great day collecting yesterday, though. Same driver, same undergrad, Bryan and i headed up, up, up to Paucartaytambo in pursuit of plants. We finally saw what a ¨white¨road on our maps is like...really not too bad considering, but again I am glad the rains are gone. Bryans plants, unlike mine, are actually useful and we had lots of fun in indigenous communities markets talking to the people about uses for his plants. When you ask about Puya, they smile and say yes they know it and the plants are far, far away. Two hours later and another 500m in elevation and I reached the puna, and could have been in any number of my favorite sites in Ecuador or Colombia. Same vegetation, same feel and maybe same Puyas! I swear one species is a long distance dispersal from Colombia! I loved being up there and looking down over giant valleys covered in a patchwork of crops. Wheat, corn, potatoes in full flower, quinoa, edible lupine...just beautiful, even if it means massive deforestation. You can´t get too upset about a lot of the environmental change here, though. These people have lived here for thousands of years and must have a few things figured out. I don´t, yet, though and must go work more on the Macchu Piccu plan. Back on Wednesday with more tales!

Hola! Greetings from Cusco, Peru...South America exactly as you expect it be. Mountains, greenery, campesinos in colorful clothing leading llamas, potatos, giant cathedrals. I am quite impressed, though i don´t know if we can entirely trust Cusco, as almost everything I see it geared towards tourism. This is the first place I´ve been in South America where gringos are common and a ¨tall blond¨walking around in zip off pants, fleece vest and a wide brimmed hat does not get stares. Actually, it gets the hustle. Everyone is ready to sell you something here, whether pot (Bryan got offered pot basically the first second we stepped into the Plaza de Armas), artwork, an insane variety of knit goods, a seat at a restaurant, a massage, a tour of some ruins or just about anything else. I am still quite charmed by the roving pan pipe groups that descend on our restaurants at night, but I can see it getting a little old. It is so funny to see all the people that end up here. Little old couples from the States or Germany on the trip of their lifetime, Australian women on a girls only tour, way too fashionable, and therefore fold, Chilean and Argentinians, boorish British dudes walking around in flipflops, American familys on Spring break. All roads in Peru eventually lead here for tourists. I don´t have much interest in them or being them, though.
Peru is quite a lovely place, though. The landscape is huge and the mountains seem bigger than anything I´ve ever seen. Bryan and I debated this and came to the conclusion that, though they might not actually be higher, there are more of them closer together than in the States. We had our first day in the field yesterday and got a remarkable amount accomplished, considering we had only just arrived. We got in Wednesday and hit the ground running, making our way to the herbarium with Mercedes to find some more plant localities. There is a ridiculous beaurocracy around this little herbarium and poor Mercedes has had to fight many battles just to see the wil potatoe collection. I feel so sorry for her being cooped up in a small room with dead plants and mothballs, carefully retyping all the plants locality information onto her laptop for weeks. I remarked that such a task reminds me of Rumplestiltskin and she needs a small man to pop up and spin that straw into gold (Rumplestiltskin=undergraduate). Actually, there is a very nice undergraduate, Miguel, who by order of the herbarium diretor must be with Mercedes at all times while she works. It must be quite a boring job, but he seems to like the rhealm of dead plants and was very helpful to us while we tried to find the names of places on our whimpy tourist maps. Before we knew it, we had a plan for our entire stay and a friend of his, Nelson, to accompany us.
I have come a long way in my travels down here and now have finally ascended to the rank of Translator. My Spanish is better than Bryans and I soon was being introduced as the one who hable castellano bien¨ and I translate back and forth and have the important conversations about dates, times and places. It is a thrilling feeling when I am able to do so successfully and I know that on this trip my Spanish is going to improve astronomically. Very, very few people off the tourist circuit seem to speak English, but at least they speak Spanish rather slowly and with little slang or accents.
Bryan, Nelson and I met on Thursday morningg and headed out of town with our driver. Our first stop, above an Incan wall ruin, yielded perhaps a new species of Puya! Quite exciting, but today I´ll do the task of meticulously measuring it against the descriptions of other species to see if that is indeed true. The sky was blazingly blue and we had to put on sunscreen right away. After a terrible Wisconsin winter, I really felt like Dorothy waking up in Oz. It is the end of the rainy season and everything is as green as it can be and most things are in full flower. Apricot colored wild iris, wild potato vines, Salvias in a riot of color and cliffsides covered in Puya. That day I did some of the nastiest cliff climbing I´ve done to date, even though I said I´d take it easy that first day. I got to see thousands of bat pollinated Puya ferruginea, with their night blooming flowers curling in the sun and climbed a ridiculous mountainside of small rocks and ant nests to the giant Puya herrerae. It might not be the best time of the year for the Puya bloom, but I am still thrilled by skunky, year old inflorescenses at this point. I do hope my enthusiasm continues as the weeks go by. Bryans plants are a whole different story and it was like looking for a needle in a haystack to find the small blue flowered mints in mounds of vegetation on the side of the road. Luckily, Nelson has good eyes and won the prize for first Lepechinia collection. When Bryan saw that plant, I saw a side of him I had never seen before...quite cute. We do so love our plants. Today we are taking a much needed break and going to see the Good Friday madness downtown. Lots of parading of relics from the churches and festooning of cathedrals with red Salvia flowers. Should be fun! The weekend will bring a trip up, up, up to the moister highlands and then Monday we will finally go to Machu Picchu, because how could we ever explain that we didn´t go! Hopefully Mercedes will be done with her work soon and can start to accompany us into the field. So far, so good. The people here are extremely kind and helpful and I slid so easily back into the South American groove. It really feels like second nature to me anymore, I am so happy to report. Off to press some Puya!

Hola todos,