In southwest Peru, Manchán Magangot to the heart of the rural experience - while cosseted in a realm of fluffy white towels in five-star surrounds
THE VICUNAS WERE what made me realise I was entering a place apart, a rare and remote world. I had been excited about coming to Colca Canyon in the far southwest of Peru, but the speed and luxury of my arrival by aircraft and air-conditioned car had disorientated me. I didn't really grasp where I was until two hours out of Arequipa, driving across the altiplano - a bleak high-altitude desert surrounded by grey volcanoes (both dormant and active) - I came across a family of vicunas grazing on the sparse leaves of a stunted bush.
Immediately my interest was piqued. Llamas and alpacas can be seen in any child's petting farm, but vicunas exist only here. They have a magical quality: delicate, timid creatures that cannot be domesticated; they need this grim, grave wilderness as much as it needs them to soften its brutal feel.
Vicuna wool is possibly the softest material on earth. It's rare and expensive - an alpaca shawl costs $50, while a vicuna one will cost $1,600. Locals climb up into the mountains to shear them once a year, but it's painstaking work, as the animals are prone to heart attacks if frightened. Since there aren't all that many left in the world, the loss of any is a concern.
We drove for three hours across the bleak expanse, past weird piglet-sized blobs of neon-green jelly (a primitive plant form), and reaching an altitude of 4,900m before finally descending towards a streak of lush foliage that expanded into the Colca Canyon, a crevice in the Earth's crust twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and many times more fertile.
I was here because of the region's remoteness and the wealth of pre-Inca remains it contains, but also because Orient-Express Hotels, Trains and Cruises has just opened a new lodge here, an exclusive development of simple casitas (cottages) built above the river. I was intrigued to know why a luxury travel company would open a five-star place at the far remote edge of the world, and how it would blend the conflicting demands of luxury and simplicity.
My first taste of it was being driven in a golf cart to my casita, an adobe-daubed building with timber-pole roof, handmade tiles and a large fireplace. The five-star element was most evident in the plumbing - interior and exterior power showers, a vast mosaic bath and a heated plunge pool on my verandah.
The plunge pool looked out across the valley at the Inca ruins on the far side. In fields all around, indigenous people were busy harvesting their tiny terrace plots and readying the soil for the new crop. Fortunately, the pool wasn't in their direct line of sight, but while soaking in it with my laptop beside me connected to the world via WiFi, I could hear them coaxing their oxen through the rich soil and shooing birds from beds of newly sown seed. A line of squat women carried sacks of freshly pulled onions along the track, sending a pungent aroma through the valley.
Phrases I had read about postmodern tourism came to mind: the effort to create occasions of "staged authenticity", to provide opportunities for "re-enchantment through interaction with the indigenous". This is what five-star travel means now, getting to the heart of it, the authentic rural experience, while still being luxuriously cosseted in a realm of fluffy white towels.
These farmers were producing the food that would be on my plate tonight - the same corn, beans, peppers and quinoa that their ancestors had been growing for thousands of years, produced in the same way, without machines or chemicals. The hotel's chefs had been trained in the best kitchens of Europe and the US, but they had left that training aside to focus instead on replicating the local dishes as authentically as they could, so that we might feel as though we were actually eating in one of the farmers' mud huts, sharing his experience with him.
We would be eating the same chicharron with sweet potato and corn, or causa with cilantro and kiwicha as he was; the only difference was that ours was served on starched linen tablecloths, with a waiter to unfold our napkins and an indigenous Indian in traditional garb to serenade us on the Peruvian harp.
The hotel manager was as debonair as you'd expect in such a place, but as well as knowing the best burgundies in his cellar and where to find the finest antique textiles, he was able to tell me exactly which field the corn on my plate had been grown in, and where in the valley the quinua came from and what flowers the bees that produced the honey frequented. In fact, he went into a passionate litany regarding the different types of grain grown at various altitudes and microclimates in the valley.
This was the future of elite travel - hoteliers who could differentiate between types of indigenous corn.
"What do you want to do tomorrow?" he asked. "Hike? Cycle? Ride? Help out at the mission of Sr Antonia?"
"The what?!" I spluttered.
"The mission of Sr Antonia," he repeated. "Every morning at dawn Sr Antonia runs a soup kitchen. You can help if you like."
The hotel cost €550 a night, which covered food, drink and most activities, including, if you wanted, to get up at 5am and help Sr Antonia. I didn't mind the getting up early, but after weighing my choice between helping at the mission or watching the sunrise from my plunge pool, I decided to let Sr Antonia feed the locals on her own. May my shameful soul burn in the hottest fires.
Later, I went for a drive up the valley, and it was soon clear why Orient-Express has invested in this far-flung location. The place is close to paradise.
The valley swells and contracts along its 100km length from steep-sided rock canyon to lush, gentle-sloped valley. It is stepped with ancient Incan irrigated terraces on which lush crops of alfalfa, potatoes and artichokes grow. All of it is overlooked by a ring of seven volcanoes, and beyond them the Andes stretching out forever. The skies are alive with different types of hummingbirds, butterflies, green parakeets and black eagles, but it is the condor that attracts the most attention. These vultures are the largest flying birds on Earth, with a wingspan of 3½ metres.
They spend their days far out of sight in the highest realms of the sky, but by some wonderful quirk of geography the canyon enables one to stand within metres of them for a short spell each morning. They use the rising thermals coming off the canyon floor to ascend into the sky from their nests on the cliffs, and if you stand at the edge of the canyon you get to experience an astounding aerial display as the massive birds wind back and forth up through the eddies towards you, until they are literally flying at eye level, coming within metres of you to get the most out of each thermal.
There is always a crowd of tourists waiting, clicking their Canons and Nikons and uttering sighs of awe. The condors seem resigned to share the space with them for that short spell, possibly realising that soon they will have risen far out of reach. Likewise the locals give themselves up to the tourists each morning, laying out weavings and handmade souvenirs for sale and allowing photos be taken of them in their floral blouses and ornate, multi-layered skirts.
Once the condors have risen, the locals return to their own lives for the rest of the day. You still see them in the landscape, herding calves, clearing ditches, pulling crops (it's hard to miss them in such outrageous shades of baby blue, lime green, pink and yellow) but they remain demure and keep to themselves. These indigenous people have managed to maintain their traditional customs and language despite Spanish presence in the valley for hundreds of years mining gold and silver.
They adopted the colonists' religion and maintain the crumbling old Romanesque churches that were built for them hundreds of years ago, but they have kept their old Incan beliefs alive, too - their version of the Virgin Mary bears a strong resemblance to the Inca deity Pachamama.
Likewise, although they adopt western farming methods, they also maintain the old Inca ways: drying and storing their ancient grains and preserving potatoes by freeze-drying them in a lengthy process that involves hauling them to the top of mountains to soak in freezing rivers, then sun-drying them in lower reaches of the canyon until they become like balls of chalk, which, when reconstituted, turn back into something akin to potatoes.
I know all this because the manager of the hotel told me. He said his guests expected him to know such things. Perhaps the managers of the Shelbourne, Dromoland, Sheen Falls and their ilk should take note. Elite guests seem to be becoming more exacting. Irish managers should consider brushing up on their dinnseanchas, their fulach fia's and their tarbhfheis rituals. Such knowledge certainly added to my time in the Colca Canyon.