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Founded in 1539 by Francisco Pizarro, Huamanga's surroundings offer the traveller several varied and tempting options: Huanta, Quinua, Cangallo and Vilcashuamán. The menu is as satisfying as that offered by the affable women of Huamanga's colourful market. Savour it with us.
Text: Rolly Valdivia
Photos: Carlos Salas
 In a land of hopeful devotion and deep nostalgia, an inspired master carver transforms Huamanga stone, or alabaster, into what the stones choose to become. "It is as if the stones spoke. They say make me into this, or make me into that…", he explains in a voice that goes from secretive to ironic in tone, as if he were revealing a mystery or playing a joke on the stranger who, insistent as a mosquito, asks, "Sir, where does you art come from?".
And the talking stones can be capricious. They are not content with being an archangel or a saint, sometimes they want to represent the whole world: and so the artist deciphers the demanding requests of his companions and sculpts magnificent works that express the deepest feelings and contradictions of humanity.
Confusion, doubt, belief or disbelief: One tries to listen to the stones, realising it is useless upon seeing the smiling face of the able sculptor as he confesses that he has been listening to them for fifty years, when he was still a child and wandered around Santa Ana, a neighbourhood of artists and designers.
The remarkable words of Julio Gálvez Ramos, grand master of Peruvian crafts, would stay with me during my days in Ayacucho (2,761 metres above sea level), named by the Liberator Simón Bolívar in 1825, although almost everyone insists in calling the place Huamanga still, in order, perhaps, not to forget the original name.
After that strange revelation, my sensations and memories would no longer coincide with those of my previous visits. In this same urban geography, and in the same forest of colonial churches (there are thirty-three), I had been struck by sadness more than once.
Yes, those were different times. Now all is, or seems, changed in this historic regional capital, for Ayacucho - which will never cease to be Huamanga - is no longer a place of terror. It is no longer a place of death.
Beyond the churches
Huamanga is cordial and pacific: we conversed in shaded patios, searched for God in the rosary of churches, quelled our hunger with "chaplas" - traditional local bread said to resemble the women of Ayacucho for it has no heart. We also took a look at the market: Cheeses, mountains of bread, baskets, Pantagruelian pans of "puka picante", the region's emblematic dish.
The appetising fare prepared for travellers by the experts of the Ayacucho Regional Chamber of Tourism, with the support of the municipal authorities of Cangallo and Huanta and other institutions, has as an entrée a roundtrip visit to the village of Quinua (at an altitude of 3,396 metres), via the fertile countryside of Huamanguilla.
Sleepy streets, white houses with red-tile roofs topped with little pottery churches: This is Quinua, 32 kilometres from Ayacucho, where artisans continue the pottery tradition of the Wari and Huarpa cultures. Our adventure continued with a visit to Pikimachay, a natural cavity in which stone relics of the primitive inhabitants who roamed the central Andes between 20,000 and 15,000 BC were found; and then there is Wari, the magnificent capital of South America's first empire (6th to 9th centuries after Christ). These are true bastions of history, situated 24 and 22 kilometres north of the regional capital, respectively.
The Curve of the Desert
We waited for daylight and set off: Cangallo (2,556 metres), Huanta (2,620 metres) and Vilcashuamán (3,470 metres) - all provinces included in the sumptuous banquet of images and memories offered by the Northern Circuit of the Ayacucho region, a seductive alternative with something for everyone.
To reach Cangallo we drove 100 kilometres over an unsurfaced road: Up, down, stopping at the top of a hill or at an austere cattle ranch. The town is beautiful and surrounded by soaring mountains and the Pampas River - vertiginous, serpentine and crossed by a suspension bridge that rocks and dances like a pendulum.
Celebrated Pampa Cangallo, the home of the skilled Morochucos - country folk, horsemen; Huanucopampa and San Lorenzo Menor hill, with Raimondi cacti reaching for the sky, and the invigorating veils of water of the Batán, Pumapaqcha and Qorimaqma waterfalls, finally satisfy the restless traveller.
And then there is Vilcashuamán, the land of the sacred hawk, with its temples to the sun, moon and the god of the European conqueror: Inca architecture, Cusco architecture, with trapezoidal doorways, monolithic lintels and niches that ennoble this simple and quiet village 118 kilometres from Huamanga.
And finally there is Huanta, a charming little valley famous for its avocados and fruits… but something must have been wrong because at a curve in the road the foliage disappeared and all was austere earth, desolate, with enormous cacti reaching for the sky, dry mountains and twisted trees and hardly a trace of green in Muyuccurcco, like that lost desert known as the Emerald of the Andes.
But that face - little-known and fascinating - was revealed to us from the thorny summit of Huatascalla hill, the perfect viewing point over the canyon of the same name. A twenty-minute climb was rewarded with views over the faraway countryside and the Cachi and Urubamba rivers - tributaries of the imposing Mantaro which, incredibly - flowed calm and clean. It was good to see.
The 48 kilometres that separate Huanta from Ayacucho are the last morsel of the banquet. What a pity there would be no second servings for now. All that remained was to seek out the market women again with their plates piled high with "puka picante".
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