QueenPuya

I think I might have officially logged my last collection record of my Ph.D... number 231, Puya macrura. A lovely Puya who can live in dry slopes and has black flowers and very pointy bracts and we found it just across the river from the town we are staying at. But really, it all ends with Puya raimondii, the largest bromeliad on earth and probably the most memorable of them all. They live in the highest, steepest, most desolate places I have seen...I think I set a new altitude record for myself of 4500m (someone translate to feet, I don´t know.) Nothing lives there, except hearty campesinos, their livestock, some grass, and the giant Puyas. They are as tall as buildings and quite plentiful on secluded hillsides, perhaps protected from the wind. I did not hit a flowering year, but many had old inflorescences twice as tall as the leaves, which provide a lovely home for many noisy woodpeckers! Spectacular and fitting to save to the end, but I can´t really be useful at that altitude for long, so I had to take my data as pictures. I´ve got some fun theories about the plants that I´ll explore more later and I´m glad I spent the time and money to see them properly.
We are wrapping things up in Carhuaz now, with a day of long family meals. Siria, the families Quechua servant for some 60 years, prepared cuy, or guinea pig. Unfortunately I saw them out in their pens just as cute and fluffy as in a petstore. They don´t skin them when they fry them, and you are served one cut in half with little legs splayed out. The only way to really remove the meat is to pull it off with your teeth, including hair and skin. It took me ten minutes to brave some thigh meat separated by Mercedes for me, and that was about it. I´m a little disappointed in myself, but fried hair is just too gross. I almost have decided to give up pork for good after seeing the adorable pigs they keep here. I was also kind of appauled to see Mercedes cousin bring in one of his fighting roosters fresh from battle covered in blood. He will nurse its wounds and get it back in shape...it probably gets more love than any of the other animals in the house. We ate some fluffy Inga beans from their tree and ran inside before the rains came. Now I am whiling away the time before our bus to Lima leaves. I just adored Ancash and this valley, with views of the largest, whitest mountains I´ve ever seen, but I am more than ready to start wrapping things up. Work, rest, and fun await for my final days in Lima.