A history of Coca

We splashed out on a VIP bus to Cusco that had a tour thing thrown in. Meaning that the 8 hour bus ride included 6 stops and a buffet lunch so it wouldn't be too long just sat on our arses.
The next major town North of Puno was Juliaca. This is a large market town, mainly black market, that the government turns a blind eye to. You can get anything here but the main item for sale is Bolivian fuel. It's much cheaper than Peruvian and comes in yellow cans that are outside a fair few houses. The buildings here aren't finished either and in a further tax dodge the flash new bus station is unused due to the departure tax people have to pay. This means that all the buses are crammed on the street opposite. It's crazy really. It's an ugly place in general, dusty streets with flying litter abound.
The first real stop was at a village called Pukura. This is the site of some pre-Inka artifacts and a pyramid, not of the Egyptian scale however. This village was the site of many a sacrifice, all from the village itself and all had to be of pure blood and 'unblemished'. Many young virgins in other words. We saw a frog shaped alter that was thought to be used for chopping off the heads of the sacrifices. These sacrifices took place to get good weather to produce good crops and a harvest. No Micheal Fish on the BBC weather here then! Some of the walls here were built 2000 years ago and still survive today. When the Inkas arrived they continued to use the pyramid until the Spanish came along and built a church, typically.
We went high up onto the Altiplano again and stopped off at the highest point for photos of the surrounding mountains. Up here it's a rural life, but a good one, we are told. I can't quite see it myself but each to their own. People do live longer here than in the city due to less stress, larger lungs(gained due to the thin air up here) and more red blood cells(also a bi-product of living at altitude) that helps stave off infections and diseases. The land is mainly all owned by the farmers who are actually squatters here. They still use the old Inka system of one for all and all for one, sounds familiar. Every year the families of the community club together to build a new house for a selected family. It's mainly potatoes, Alpacas and Llamas up here. Not a lot else. Huge mountains too.
We stop further up the road at a place called Raqchi. This is an old Inka temple and has some unbelievable stonework that has lasted over 500 years with an original mud wall atop. The Inkas are so renound for their excellent stone masonary and you can see why. For the most important buildings, like this one, they didn't use any mortar. Instead they hand polish each stone to fit perfectly with the next, and not in the conventional way you see on modern houses. These huge rocks are carved with many angles and the effect is stunning. An Inka god is supposed to have arrived out of a nearby volcano and this temple is believed to be where that god was worshipped. It's a large site and has straight-as-an-arrow streets still intact. Many an earthquake and eruption rocks this area, as Peru as a whole, but theses mammoth rocks still stand the test of time.
We next stopped at another elaborate church that was full of 24 carot gold. The town surrounding it was very poor and it's annoying to see all that money go to waste in somewhere like this.
The tour guide was keen to stress the importance of Coca leaves. Peru is the biggest producer of Coca in the world. Many people look down on this, especially America, as it is from this plant that cocaine is made. To make it you'd need a hell of a lot and you also need to isolate one of the many alkaloids contained within the plant. You see Coca leaves all the time and their a huge part of the culture and have been well before the Inka times of the 1500's. This is partly due to the benefits you get from chewing coca leaves or having coca tea, of which we had loads. It really helps with altitude sickness, it sorted me out many times, as well as being beneficial for teeth and including many required daily vitamins. The leaf itself is so far away from cocaine, the grape and wine is much closer. The US government has tried to impose trade sanctions and other bribes to Peru to force them to stop producing the leaves. America is the biggest consumer of cocaine and Peru does supply a hell of a lot. But Peruvians are quite offended by this as the average joe on the street uses coca for totally different reasons that don't provide the high of cocaine. Now and again I see local women carrying huge bags of leaves bigger than themselves.
You can chew the leaves but you'll need a catalyst to make them work. This catalyst is a bit of hardened ash. You wrap the leaves around the ash and chew for about 40 minutes without swallowing the leaves. It numbs your mouth briefly but after that it's fine. Once in Cusco we did hear an American girl in a cafe complaing of altitude sickness. She refused coca tea believing it was cocaine, sniggers filtered around the place. If it was cocaine I'm sure there'd be even more tourists here.