Ventanillas del Otuzco
by Scott Kloos
Along a small irrigation ditch I walk a thin hard packed dirt path through the grass, not sure if I am headed in the right direction. I pass through what in the USA would be backyards. Dogs viciously bark. I hop from one side of the canal to other to avoid them. People peer out from half-finished mud brick and wood beam houses. They are beautiful-just the way I'd like to make my own house some day.
-I am looking for the Ventanillas. Is this the right way?
-Yes, continue straight and turn to left but be careful. There are robbers out here. They will kill you, he says slicing his neck with his finger. Be watchful.
-Always.
He continues on so vehemently that I begin to believe him and even suspect that he himself intends to murder and rob me. I find a break in the conversation and make my exit. I walk around the corner. In dream like fashion three young, semi-thuggish looking guys approach.
-You want me to take a photo, one of them says reaching out for my camera.
-No, thanks, comes out of the mouth in my head that is filled with visions of me handing camera and them running off leaving me lying on the ground bleeding to death.
The trail leads to a river where workers crush and sift rocks for gravel. The landscape is scarred. A voice calls out, Hello. My eyes scan about. A guy half reclines smiling broadly in the middle of a field of yellow mustard flowers. I wave and smile back. An old man digs in a stony virgin field with a homemade pick. His daughter throws rocks off to the side to make a short wall. Their donkey tied to the stump of a sawed off resprouting Ash tree munches on tall grasses that wait to be dug up.
The Ventanillas de Otuzco are a natural pre-Inca rock formation filled with holes that was used as a necropolis for the chiefs of the Cajamarca culture. Farms surround the site which is right off the two lane dirt track. I walk through snapping pictures. A girl above shouts down.
-Meester, meester.
I try to ignore her, but she is very insistent. -Meester, meester. Come up here. There are more tombs and a tunnel, meester.
-Yeah, OK. When I am done down here. She continues to annoyingly shout 'meester.'
When I finally go up to the top, I see there is nothing-just a few women and girls with crappy fake artifacts for sale. I walk past shaking my head and glowering at the girl who was shouting at me and head down while they implore me to buy, to take their things. A chorus of 'Gringo malo' follows me down.
At the bottom a German couple gets into a car.
-What did you think?
-It was ok?
-Yes, there is a better place near here, bigger, that no one knows about.
They speed off, and I board a colectivo, sitting in front so I won't get smashed in back. It goes along interminably slow.
-Gas pedal broke?
The driver looks at me and smiles, his partner at the door shakes his head, No. Something is going on between them. The driver pushes the windshield water button and squirts girls on the side of the road. He laughs every time as if it were the funniest thing ever.
I have to leave. The jungle call is as insistent as the girl at the Ventanillas. I am torn. The best carnaval in Peru starts here in a few days, but I am done. I have a possible meeting in Piura with the father of a friend I met on a bus near Huaraz. He knows the medicinal plants of the region and wants to share his knowledge. Piura is the capital of the northernmost Peruvian province and the place where the San Pedro curanderos can be found.
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