Southern Conquest

ITS TWIN STRANDS OF INDIAN AND SPANISH INFLUENCE NOW PEACEABLY ENTWINED, THE CULTURE OF PERU IS ONE OF DAZZLING RICHNESS.

by Juliet Clough. House & Garden Magazine, London

As the procession made its way around Cuzco's main square, it was not the statue of the visibly pregnant Madonna which arrested me so much as the faces of two women in the crowd. One, smartly dressed in black and plainly of Spanish descent, stood quietly, the beads of her pearl rosary slipping through her fingers. Next to her, an Indian pedlar had put down her basket of candles and stood in a state of ecstasy, head back, eyes shut, singing her heart out to the Virgin Mary in her own language. The crowd listened respectfully. The bearers, tottering under the weight of statue's ornate silver pedestal, waited until she had finished before moving on past flamboyant churches, the remains of Inca palaces and the arcaded houses that line Cuzco's sumptuous Plaza de Armas.

Peru was full of such moments, insignificant in themselves perhaps, but distilling a past weighed with the sorrows and splendours of the Spanish conquest into the absorbing spectacle that is Peru today. Nothing had prepared me for the riches, the complexity, the sheer glamour and style of Peru. But my eyes had been opened by ten days of travel in the south, with a crusading tour operator who not only knew her country inside out, but had constructed an itinerary whose careful planning enhanced the extraordinary quality of the sightseeing.

When it comes to accommodation, in Peru you can go as far upmarket as you like. El Olivar, a small luxury in an old olive grove, provided a haven from Lima's smog and traffic. In Cuzco, we stayed in five-star luxury at Hotel Monasterio and awoke to the sounds of a fountain in the sixteenth century cloisters; vast religious plainsong at breakfast came as standard.

As for the heart-stopping sight of Machu Picchu, the Inca city that lies slung like a hammock between a cluster of freestanding peaks, softies can forget anything to do with trails and treks: travel instead by train and helicopter and stay in a chic rainforest lodge surrounded by an orchid garden.

The Spaniards never discovered Machu Picchu but, in most of southern Peru, the crossover between the culture of the native Indians and that of the conquistadors who so ruthlessly helped themselves to the shiny bits, is a recurrent theme. The overriding flavour of Peru is the mestizo, a heady mix. Wonderful baroque churches rise above the crumbling mud villages of the Colca Canyon. But in Yanque, a Spanish knight riding across the carved portal of San Francisco's is caught in a jungle of Amazonian flowers. The ladies of Chichero weave stylised European patterns into the blanket wraps universally worn around the Andes, but they use looms unchanged in design for around 3000 years.

Peruvian cooking reflects the same transitionalism, treating staples with cosmopolitan cunning. Brandy sours flavoured with Coca leaves, served at Pantagruel Restaurant in Lima, summed it up nicely. At Huayo Ccari, a a stylish family hacienda in the Sacred Valley, the cheesecake cam with local berries, while at El Parador, in the Colca Canyon we dined on soup based on indigenous quinoa grain, fresh trout and ruby jelly based on ayrampo cactus.

Eco-friendly lodges like these are Peru's latest claim to the kind of environmentally sensitive tourism that, in remote areas, demands not only comfort and beautiful scenery but a stake in the benevolent management of an often very poor and underdeveloped environment. El Parador del Colca, built by Mauricio de Romana, a passionate preserver of the canyon's fragile ecosystems, is stone built, its thatched roof supported by beams salvaged from an old alpaca warehouse, its simple bedrooms furnished in warm Indian colours. Breakfast on Mauricio's sunny terrace included bread hot from a little earth oven and the unobtrusive company of a giant hummingbird. Across Lake Titicaca we found a similar lodge, built by Martha Giraldo on Suasi, the islet she owns near the north shore. Martha's tiny kingdom made a beguiling retreat, a long, thatched house, entirely solar powered, scented with roses and medicinal herbs, the only sounds birdsong and the bleats of resident sheep.

To travel, by train between the barren fringes of Lake Titicaca and the splendours of Cuzco was like watching and improving geography film in an old-fashioned cinema. Inside, Inka Class carriages had plush seats and ladies with trays; through the windows marvels spooled past--the bald twin ranges of the Andes converging on the Vilcanota watershed; pink flamingos at 4,000etres above sea-level; herds of llama and alpaca guarded by bowler hat shepherdesses. In remote stations vendors brandished gloves and socks. But I had already done my shopping. I had bought alpaca sweaters in Arequipa and brightly patterned gloves on Taquile.n Lima, I visited Kuntur Huasi, the workshop from which John Alfredo Davis is reviving the art of Peruvian colonial carpet weaving. Mari Solari, who has worked in handicrafts for twenty years, has an unerring eye for pottery from the jungle, old silver and textiles, top-quality alpaca blankets. From Las Pallas her house in the bohemian Barranco quarter, filled with antiques and the old folk art of Peru, I took home one of the charming little portable crib scenes called retablos. Made of potato flour, it frames gaudy Spanish angels bossing blanket-wrapped Andean shepherds, a takeaway slice of the unique Peruvian mix.