The main ingredient in chicha morada is purple corn, which you boiled with cinnamon bark, lime, pineapple skin and the corn cob. Complete instructions are on Saturday in this weeks blog!
Ive been hearing a lot from my friends and family about the wildfires in Washington, Oregon and California. The red skies, even at 9am, the ash covering their cars parked outside and the choking smoke all make the west coast sound apocalyptic.
I sympathize with their predicament and unfortunately I can also empathize a bit too well. The smoke in Cusco isnt as thick as in Seattle or San Francisco, but its also tragic: the Machu Picchu National Sanctuary is burning.
The fire started on Friday, near the train tracks. Though the fires on the west coast of the US were almost all started by the same dry lightning storm in August, naturally caused fires are unheard of here. Most wildfires are caused by people burning the stubble in their fields, in preparation for planting. They prefer to burn on windy days, since winds help the fire to move more quickly over the ground, only burning the tops of the dried stalks or weeds. Obviously, on windy days, these fires are much harder to control. The blackened hills around Cusco are an eyesore, but not as much as the blackened hills around Machu Picchu. Very few photos have been released and there are
The corn on the left looks black, but it turns anything it touches purple, including the limes and cinnamon stick.
almost no eye witnesses who dont work for the government, since its almost impossible now to get to Machu Picchu.
There are only two ways to get to Machu Picchu: walking the Inca Trail or the train to Aguas Calientes, followed by a shuttle bus up to Machu Picchu. Nobody is able to get there on the Inca Trail, because it has been closed since January 23, when a mudslide killed three porters, washed away a section of the trail and caused the emergency evacuation of hundreds of other workers and tourists. It was scheduled to reopen on March 16th, but the pandemic caused the government to close all borders, airports, businesses, tourist attractions and national parks on March 15th.
Since the start of our quarantine here six months ago, the train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes has been tightly controlled by the government who were intent on evacuating everybody from Aguas Calientes. Only a very few residents were allowed to remain. Under normal circumstances, there are only about 4,000 residents. Its such a small town that there is no hospital or clinic and help is a train ride away. Considering the problem that poses during a pandemic,
When I took the kernels off the corn cob, my fingers turned purple, even though the corn was dry and so were my hands.
This isolation posed a problem in getting firefighters to the fire. Only the remaining residents of Aguas Calientes were close enough to even get to the fire. They were short on trained firefighters and fighting a very uphill battle. The canyon walls around Machu Picchu are very steep, but also covered with dense vegetation. This is the edge of the Amazon and normally it is a very wet and humid place. Unfortunately, the normal dry season from June through August was extremely dry this year, and the expected September rains have not yet come.
The videos I have seen show high flames, which look like theyre from a fire hot enough to scorch deep into the earth, killing tree roots. If that is wrong, if the fire moved quickly over the ground without burning deeply, maybe plants back with the rains, whenever they finally arrive. However, if everything was burned, the rains will only bring more mudslides, potentially destabilizing the entire area on which Machu Picchu is built. There is a lot more information that will have out before we will know how
After I strained the kernels out of the chicha, I tried peeling them. The kernels are white inside and dont have much flavor.
