Local Observation / COCA

By Christina Odenberg

Long ago I was traveling around southern Peru. Along with some local pals we hired a car from the coastal city of Arequipa and headed east and inland and up thousands of feet into the fabled Andes. Our intentions were to travel over the first peak, or cordillera as they are known, stop at a restaurant and then wind our way down to a golden canyon where time has been idling in magnificent stillness. Placid in its perpetuity in a valley of hot springs and cold rivers and over which the condors cruise on high currents in their lazy loops.

A decade earlier a road was constructed. Before then llamas were the only mode of transportation, and largely they still are and lope alongside, heavily laden with whatever. Our Toyota motored smoothly careful not to blow smoke in the faces of the past.

Topography altered as we drove above the tree line to a purple moonscape with glistenings of ice and lichen. Midway was flagged by the restaurant, by which I mean a shambling lean-to of sticks and tarps. They served soups and teas. Also on the menu were tiny clear bags with dry coca leaves and a piece of rock. My Peruvian pals apprised me, ‘It’s for altitude sickness.’ You masticate, like chaw; everything dissolving meanwhile the volcanic rock activates the psychoactive alkaloid in the leaf. Then you wait. Apart from tasting disgusting first there is a numbing and then a slow deeper all-over numbing. No hunger, no fatigue, clear headed, I felt great. In a word, delightful. Inexplicably, my Peruvian friends were throwing up and fainting all over the place.

Back on the road we were held up by a couple of kids. Stern faced banditos with copper skin and red cheeks and baggy woolen clothes. Each was holding the end of a string. We parked and opened the windows. The children carefully laid down the string before scarpering over to inform they were charging a toll.

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