Field Trip: Casa Blanca and Pachacamac

When I say "Field Trip," I don't mean a personal excursion. I'm talking about school buses, teacher supervision, Kudos bars, and the San Francisco Exploratorium. Well, that's only partially true, but for all practically purposes I went on a typical school field trip with the kids from the Villa Maria del Triunfo and Lurin schools. Before we hear the exciting account of Field Trip Saturday I want to share one more surprising thing I saw during the last week. Let me set the scene for you. It's about 7:15pm (metric time, but the time is immaterial for this story so just bear with me on this one), and I'm roughly halfway through my workout at the Master Gym. I've mentioned the Master Gym before, but to jog your memory it's a tiny weight room one block from the Casona. They have several signs boasting "spinning," but I'm not sure that two bikes really qualifies the gym to advertise spinning. Most of the metal objects have a light rust coasting, many weight plates are mismatched, some machines probably haven't been inspected ever, and the floor is covered with a patchwork of carpet, foam mats, and linoleum swatches. It's rustic (pun alert!) but sufficient for my needs. I was initially irritated that the Zumba classes were only offered at 6am and 4pm, but for 14 bucks a month that's getting a little bit greedy. Anyhow, I'm pumping some serious iron to Chris de Burgh's "Lady in Red," and I start to smell something burning. Normally I wouldn't think too much of a bit of smoke but I'm in a gym where I would hope people aren't smoking and working out. I glance around to see if I can find the offender, and sure enough there is a source of smoke within the gym. Is there an electrical fire? Is someone burning a confidential document? Did Oscar light up while doing the bench press? No, one of the employees is circulating amongst the fitness enthusiasts with a stick of incense to counter any unpleasant smells. Once he has made his rounds he leaves the lit incense stick on an stand to finish burning and really perfume the room. I'm open to different ways of doing things, but incense in a gym? That's a real roof dog situation if you ask me, but I'll roll with the punches. I finished up my workout and headed back to the Casona with my body tired and my chi and meridian flows well balanced.

Today was an eventful Saturday. Melissa and I left Barranco about 7:45am to head down south for a field trip with the five schools to the south of Lima. The purpose of this outing was twofold: to help the students develop a stronger identification with their community by showing them some interesting local sights and to give kids from all five schools a chance to interact with their peers from other schools. We arrived at the Juan Valer school, distributed the Buena Voz backpacks and t-shirts, and then joined one of the two buses of kids (85 total) to head out to the countryside. Our destination was the Casa Blanca (White House, too bad there aren't any interns!), a sustainable/organic farm and guinea pig ranch. Our second stop was Pachacamac, the sprawling desert site of an ancient religious sanctuary, but we'll get to that later.

Casa Blanca was started by Mr. Ulysses and his wife about thirty years ago as a natural and completely self-sufficient farm. No offense to the Pachacamac ruins, but they can't hold a candle to the wondrous world of Mr. Ulysses. If you need to take a bathroom break, now is a good time, because you're going to want to enjoy all the Casa Blanca surprises uninterrupted. Here we go. Mr. Ulysses is a sprightly, passionate Peruvian scientist/farmer. While the students are settling down for a quick introduction from him, he starts to chat with me and I get a little bit of his background. Turns out this guy has a PhD from Cornell in a branch of environmental sciences. Five minutes after he relates that to me I hear him extolling the virtues of "caca de guy" (loosely translated as "guinea pig doodoo") to the students. As you hear me say again and again, Peru is full of surprises. So on this farm he has a completely contained life cycle. He grows a variety of crops (yucca, corn, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, bananas, plantains, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lucuma [an exotic fruit], chilimoya [another exotic fruit], and some other things I can't remember.) for both human and cuy consumption. He feeds the cuyes some of the plants, and they do three things in return: poo, pop out 5-7 babies up to four times a year, and make the most adorable squeaking noises. Here are a couple pictures of the cuyes in their pens. First some precious baby cuyes followed by a bulbous pregnant cuy.


Mr. Ulysses uses their manure to create two products he applies to his crops and sells to other farmers. One is basic compost and the other is a nutrient-rich liquid he calls "Caca Cola" because of it's resemblance to the popular cola. Let's hope it tastes just as good!!! Instead of nitrogen fertilizers and genetically modified plants, Mr. Ulysses keeps it all natural with cuy compost and fertilizer and heirloom plant varieties. In appreciation of the cuyes' hard work, he sells them for S./ 20 a pop and/or eats them for dinner. Sorry fellas, no cedar shavings and exercise wheels for you!

He has a highly developed compost process which is definitely worth delving into a little bit deeper. That doesn't sound quite right. Whatever, we'll push on! So every few weeks the cuy pens are cleaned out and the manure is piled in alternating layers with dead organic materials from the crops. Mr. Ulysses describes these both accurately and deliciously as "crap sandwiches" (loose translation, my agro-vocabulary needs some work). These piles of manure and dead plants attract aerobic bacteria (everybody jazzercize!) which break down the material while generating a lot of heat (up to 70 degrees Celsius). Once the piles have decomposed sufficiently, they are dumped into a manmade "stomach." This biodigestor (his words not mine) is a large underground tank with four holes. The first hole is for dumping in water and the partially decomposed compost. The middle hole is for siphoning off the combustible gas that the anaerobic bacteria (there is no oxygen in the tank) generate. The third hold is for removing the yummy caca cola in equal proportion to which the water is added. The last hole, which is on the side of the underground tank, is for extracting the fully prepared compost after the entire three month process. Cuy crap, dead plant material, and water go in; compost, liquid fertilizer, and natural gas come out. No waste, very cool.

You might be wondering what happens with that natural gas created by the anaerobic bacteria. This is where things get really interesting and a little bit out there. A PVC pipe emerges from the middle hole in the biodigestor, proceeds through a slightly wider PVC pipe filled with metal scraps from a machine shop (I was told that this removes the undesirable odor and all impurities from the natural gas without the use of a traditional filter), and heads over to the gas room. The pipe enters the gas room through a hole in the wall and then splits into a number of smaller rubber tubes which are fitted with small metal valves. These valves dispense the purified and ready-to-use gas into...what else...various sizes of tire tubes. Mr. Ulysses stores his natural gas (which he uses to cook, heat his house, and power gas lanterns for light) in a collection of car, truck, and tractor tire tubes. I mean, I'm sure he has a lot of experience in this self-sustaining farm technique and knows what works and what doesn't, but it's still really fascinating to see a room full of inflated tire tubes which are the main source of energy for his house. It's also really fascinating (well, nerve wracking) to see him attach a tire to a gas stove and light 'er up. In a room full of gas tires. Safety first!

All his crops are irrigated, but he uses gravity and thoughtfully designed canals to avoid the use of water pumps. Furthermore, all his water is sourced from underground aquifers on his property. In addition to the cuyes, compost, and caca cola, he sells some of the crops that he and his family don't eat. More exciting, he sells three flavors of ice cream (lucuma [tastes sort of like honey], chilimoya [it's purple, that's all I know], and guanabaya [no idea]). I indulged and had a lucuma ice cream with my homegirl Dana.

She is the niece of my coworker Victor and definitely a cool cat. For the record, she ate the lucuma ice cream, a chocolate ice cream bar at the ruins, and promised to down a third ice cream once she got home. She's nothing if not ambitious. So I thought that this farm was really awesome. It's totally sustainable, self-contained, delicious, and full of adorable guinea pigs. Plus, the very vivacious Mr. Ulysses is 79 years young! Unbelievable! Must be attributable to the curative properties of caca cola and guinea pig gas-tronomy (pun alert!).

We left the Casa Blanca behind and headed out to the Pachacamac ruins. Pachacamac is the name of the creator of the world. Obviously. He makes earthquakes when he gets upset and has two faces for seeing both the past and the future. People would visit this site to make sacrifices, ask for advice (based on Pachacamac's ability to see the future), and pay tribute to one heck of a god. Unfortunately, Francisco Pizarro dropped by in 1533 and made a mess of everything. Only in the late 1800's and early 1900's was the site rediscovered and excavated. The excavation continues today and most of the ruins remain buried in sand and dust. The site holds ruins of various religious sanctuaries from four pre-Andean societies, most recently the Incas. The site is surrounded by a desert so the pictures really aren't that interesting, just a lot of beige on beige. However, the largest ruin, a temple dedicated to the Inca sun god, overlooks the ocean and has great views of the coast and two nearby islands. But rather than show you the ruins, sand, or islands, I would like to present the ugliest dog I have ever seen.

Yes, he has a mohawk. I immediately pointed out this creation to Melissa who informed me that he is a Peruvian Hairless Dog (as if I needed to be told), one of the noblest dogs in the land. According to the Wikipedia entry: "The Peruvian Hairless Dog is a breed of dog with its origins in Peruvian pre-Inca cultures. It is one of several breeds of hairless dog. It is not to be confused with the Xoloitzcuintli." It's a good thing I didn't mix him up with a Xoloitzcuintli. That would have been very embarassing. I touched his skin, and it felt pretty much like what you would expect. After exploring the ruins, taking a tour, learning about pre-Andean comings and goings, and oggling gross dogs, we all went back to Juan Valer and had some lunch (carapulcra, sorta like Peruvian chili). It was definitely the best field trip I've been on in a long time, despite the Peruvian Hairless Dog's attempts to ruin my day.