Heidi, the Carmelites and the Potion of Happiness

Livia, my mother-in-law, thanks to her good works and excellent connections in Cusco, was given free bed and breakfast with the Carmalite nuns on Plazoleta San Blas, less than 5 minutes walk from our hotel. Every evening would begin with Livia joining us in our hotel, before the five of us would journey out to eat. The journey didn't take long: Of 12 nights in Cusco, we spent 8 of them dining in La Granja de Heidi, a restuarant run by Karl-Heinz from Ulm, across the road from our hotel on Cuesta San Blas (it would have been 10 nights, but Karl-Heinz and crew are closed on Sunday). I know this sounds very unadventurous of us, but let me remind you that less than 24 hours into Peru, I had become, in the words of Brian Friel, tethered to the toilet. Bound by the bowels. Anchored by the ass. Karl-Heinz and Gudrun, over the course of our time in Cusco, gave back to me that which I missed the most: my good health. Thank you Karl-Heinz, Gudrun and staff, from the bottom of my, er, bottom.





Not only is their kitchen dependable, it is delicious. Their menu combines European, Peruvian and even some Asian influences, and for those who hanker after some Southern German specialities you will even find spaetzle. All of this is served in a warm and welcoming atmosphere which is made all the more beguiling by the Tower-of-Babel variety of languages you'll hear around you. The staff hails from Germany, Peru and France, and given our own familial linguistic confusion, we weren't sure any more either what to speak, or indeed in what language we were spoken to. It made cotton wool our of our brains - and all to the good. The effect worked well with the beer and wine, and plumped the cushions of our already relaxed mood.

At the end of each meal, instead of dessert, we would take things one step further by ordering a one last round of drinks: Mate de la Felicidad. Infusion of Happiness. Nobody is fully sure what combination of herbs Karl-Heinz and Gudrun put into this tea (other than they themselves, presumably). It is part of the mystery and magic of an evening in La Granja de Heidi. There is for sure some Cammomile, and surer still the ever-present Peruvian coca leaf. The rest is conjecture and speculation. While I am not normally adverse in this blog to indulging in both, it seems pointless when it comes to the Mate de la Felicidad. Nothing I could write could imitate the pleasure, the release, the undoing of mental and physical knots that this potion unfailingly effected.

And so the evening would end, sated, fluffy and softened further by a modest bill. But there was one last element to our predictable routine that lifted the experience from mere happiness into the realm of bliss. The dream of every married man: I accompanied my mother-in-law back to the large wooden door of her convent and said goodnight.

(No familial relationships have been injured in the writing of this blog)

Punakaiki

We packed our gold mining gains, and a souvenir pan (you never know) from Shantytown into the car, and continued northwards towards Greymouth and ultimately Punakaiki. This place is famous for its pancake rocks and its blowholes. The pancake rocks are a cliff formation peculiar to the area, formed underwater by marine animals obligingly turning into layers of limestone, sequentially and over a period of tens of millions of years. The finished product was thrust out of the sea by an earthquake, to form cliffs. The blowholes are holes (unsurprisingly) in the pancakes through which large volumes of liquid (maple syrup say, or perhaps just seawater) are squeezed at high tide. You can just see why people flock here. Just.

Punakaiki was the only other stop off on the West Coast that we thought was within easy striking distance and even vaguely interesting. Our expectations weren't high, and in one important way they were met: The food west of the Alps continued to disappoint. Had we eaten some of the pancake rocks themselves, rather than the disagreeable stodge for which we exchanged perfectly good real money in Punakaiki's only tavern, we would have been no worse off. If this is what the locals themselves regularly eat then clearly there is another variety of blowhole here whose eruptions are independent of the tide.

But all that was to come later.

When we first arrived, we went straight to the rocks, and took the path that led in a circuit from the main road to the cliffs, through abundant flax growth, and back. It was close to sunset and Letizia started snapping away in light that perfectly displayed the strange formations. There was something strange in the atmosphere that at first I put down to the rocks themselves, the noise of the waves' impact underneath us, and to the isolation lent by the surrounding flax.





But after the light had faded and we had found our motel - situated on a tiny sliver of land with the darkened beach on one side and an even darker enormous cliff on the other - I realised what it was that had struck me as odd earlier on. Since leaving Cork, we've either travelled inland, or on the eastern seaboards of enormous landmasses. This family of islanders had just seen a sunset over the sea for the first time in 5 months.

Tea, and a show...

On the Qianmenxidajie there is a teahouse, well indicated in the guidebooks, called Laoshe Teahouse (Laoshe chaguan) where for a reasonable price you can get watered and entertained together. We went there yesterday after a morning in the spectacular Temple of Heaven and a browse through the little alleys of Qianmen. For 210RMB (a little more than 20 euro) the whole family could be treated to a show of acrobatics, music, comedy, shadow play and the like. And the price included "tea and a snake".

What now? Snake is definitly on my to-eat list but I wasn't expecting to encounter any here, and certainly not with tea. Dammit - turns out it was "tea and a snack". The snake will have to wait (presumably in long grass somewhere). But despite this initial disappointment, the show itself was great. From the very start, the tea was flowing. I got a cup with some jasmine tea leaves, and the waiters come very regularly to add some more hot water. The girls didn't think much of it, but I sipped away and needed a refill each time.

First act: Shadow play. From behind the screen, a group of puppeteers recreated scenes involving the Monkey King and various other charaters I'm too ignorant to identify.

Slurp of tea. Then came some vocal imitators - birds, jets, trains. Nina and Sara lapped it up. More tea slurping. Peking Opera. Slurp.
Vase juggling. Slurpedy slurp. Another hour of all kind of wonderous entertainment involving magic, song and (apparently) satire, all accompanied by refills of tea.

The highlight for me was something called Kung Fu Tea. My colleague Simon Wang had told me about this already. 'Kung Fu' (actually Gong Fu) is an adjective that can be applied to any activity taken to its ultimate height in expert execution. In this case, two tea waiters performed synchronized acrobatics with very long-handled teapots, pouring tea in improbably difficult ways and directions. Sluuuuuuuuurp.

I don't know how many litres of jasmine tea I consumed, but when the curtain came down I made straight for the gents where I put on an inpromptu demonstration of the little-known, but exceedingly satisfying occidental art of kung fu pissing. I haven't included photos.

Liping and Ian: Today we went to the Summer Palace - photos will be uploaded presently - and on the way I chatted - yes chatted - with the taxi driver all the way there. I'm not saying it was the most scintillating conversation the man ever had, but personally I've been treated to worse by Dublin cabbies. So anyone in Cork who wants to learn Chinese, note that you have an excellent local teacher available in Xiong Liping.

Tomorrow we'll check out the Forbidden City before jumping on an overnight train to Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors, and of course, have more tea.

Giangi: I've reduced the exposure. Thanks!
Simon Moore: Now that you know the trip isn't an elaborate hoax, I'd like to see photographic evidence that your new offspring isn't one either...

Australia: Even Their Farts Don't Smell

I love this. The search for reduced emissions can lead to some really interesting places - a kangaroo's backside being one of them. Kangaroo stomachs are not only much more efficient than those of cows (getting up to 15% more energy from the same input) but there is no methane byproduct as part of their digestion process. An enormous 15% of Australia's greenhouse emissions are produced by cattle and sheep (in New Zealand it's more like 50%!!) so this problem is serious.

The solution is obvious: eat kangaroos!(*) Apparently that idea isn't very palatable to most. Some undoubtedly don't like the idea because they find kangaroos cute (my daughters - no strangers to methane production themselves - fall into this category). Others won't touch the stuff because kangaroos are, effectively, giant rodents (the Chinese for a kangaroo translates literally as "pocket rat"). But a growing percentage of Australians consider the meat of this iconic animal to be not only tastier, but healthier, than beef.

But what if the idea caught on, and everyone started eating their national symbols. Would we see Roasted Eagle on American tables? Braised Bulldog on sale in English gourmet pubs? Frogs served in French restaurants (oh - hang on...)

But back to greenhouse gas emission - what are we going to do about Guinness drinkers...?

(*) Apparently not obvious enough for some scientists, who think the most logical approach is to put kangaroo stomachs into cows and sheep. I wonder if any of these guys were on the EJB committee (Nerd Humour - ignore at will)