collectivo misterioso

one of the easiest and actually one of the few ways to quickly get around this country is the collectivo taxi. they are white toyota vans (usually) that have had everything stripped out of them and small cushioned benches put in, as many as they can possibly fit in all sorts of configurations. you catch these ¨taxis¨ at various locations in towns along the andean highway or on the highway itself. the seats can accommodate maybe 12 people. i think there were 25 people in our collectivo the other day. just when you think it´s full, the van pulls over and a few more people squeeze in. people shift their knees, pull their bags closer in to them, turn their head to accommodate a stranger´s backside . it´s kind of like the L train at rush hour...

for S/1 (that´s peruvian shorthand for 1 sole, their currency, which is about $0.33 in US dollars) you can ride the 20 or so miles from ollantaytambo to urubamba. another S/2 will take you another 20 or so miles to the town of chinchero, which is where we went today (for the second time).

we first went there last thursday with the name of a textile cooperative and the name of the woman who runs it. this particular cooperative has been around for a long time and has been a model for many of the newer cooperatives, including the ones that the museum here in ollantaytambo works with. long story short, we ended up at the wrong cooperative. it turns out there are 15 of them in chinchero. we got the full tourist treatment there and then got down to business and conducted some interviews with members of the cooperative. after asking around, we finally found the cooperative that had been our original goal only to find out that the woman we were sent to talk to was out of town for the day.

so, a solid appointment with the head of the cooperative and 2 more collectivo rides took us back to chinchero today and to the center for traditional textiles of cusco. this time we filmed other people getting the full tourist treatment, ate our second guinea pig of the trip and interviewed the head of the cooperative.

with 2 tapes of good material and 2 stomachs full of papas and cuy, we headed back to the highway to find a collectivo to take us home. many other people were there to do the same thing and there was nothing in sight. there´s a lot of dust in this country. there´s a fine layer of it on everything. it lines your nose and coats your mouth. it gets kicked up by buses and so we sat there gathering dust and the sun began toasting the tops of our heads and still nothing was coming along the road. finally a bus pulled up and there were already people pressed against the window, yet 15 or more piled on before we even walked over to it. we flopped down on the dusty roadside again.

about 20 minutes later a nearly empty collectivo pulled up. ¨Ürubamba? Urubamba?¨ a young boy hanging out of the window asked us. ¨Si, si!¨we said as we jumped on. The collectivo began to pull away leaving behind the others who had been waiting along with us. We tried to ask them why they only picked us up and not the others, but i don´t think we got a clear answer. ¨Ollanta?¨they asked us. ¨Si,¨ i said with some surprise. Not only were we in an empty collectivo with seats to ourselves, but they were going all they way to Ollantaytambo. I kept waiting for a catch. Apparently there wasn´t one. They picked up a person here, a few people there, didn´t seem to be in a rush, didn´t seem to mind passing 15 people on the highway who needed a ride. so we had one of the most pleasant rides of the trip so far (save for the johnny cash soundtracked taxi ride we took on out first attempt to get to ollantaytambo before the rocks and protests put an end to it).