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the
chullpas
of Sillustani were built. For all we know, the Birdmen were jumping at Sillustani at the same time as their tower-jumping cousins in Europe were plunging to their deaths.
    While the llamas grazed, I paced around the ruins. Manuel pulled a few coca leaves from a pouch and started to chew them. He was lying on a great slab of trachyte, gazing up at the turbulent mass of clouds.
    ‘What do you think?’ I asked. 
    ‘About what?’
    ‘Do you think once, long ago, men jumped from these towers and flew?’
    I had expected Manuel to laugh at the question. Instead, he put a coca leaf on his tongue and closed his eyes.
    ‘They may have jumped, and they may have flown,’ he said. ‘But why did they wish to fly?’
    ‘As messengers from one world to the next?’
    ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘They wanted to reach the real world, to leave the illusion.’ ‘This is an illusion?’
    Manuel sucked at the quid of coca in his cheek.
    ‘Look around you,’ he said, his eyes still closed. ‘None of it exists at all’
    ‘That’s a question of philosophy.’
    ‘To reach the
real
world you must die first’ said the llamateer. ‘Jump from the
chullpa
and even with the best wings you’re likely to die,’ I added. ‘There are other ways to die, other ways to fly.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘In your head, in your thoughts’ said Manuel. ‘You mean by taking coca?’
    ‘No, not coca.’ Manuel let out a breathless chuckle. ‘Stronger stuff than coca.’
    ‘What about by inhaling the smoke of llama wool?’
    ‘No,
mucho mas fuerte
, much stronger.’
    ‘What could be stronger than llama-wool smoke?’
    Manuel opened his eyes. ‘Search and you may find it,’ he said.

7
Festival of Blood
    The Israeli couple sitting opposite me on the bus from Puno to Arequipa were locked in a passionate embrace. Their bodies were contorted around each other in a double helix, the sound of their mouths sucking, like Japanese blowfish. The Andean ladies with pigtails and multiple skirts did their best, like me, to avert their gaze. They slurped at cups of orange jelly, soaked up the blaring salsa music, and giggled spontaneously at bumps in the road. And there were many bumps, for the dirt road from Puno to Arequipa is one of the roughest on the continent.
    Every twenty minutes the bus driver would slow his vehicle, sound the Klaxon, and grind to an uneasy halt. The entire contingent of old women with bundles on their backs, students and dancers, theologians and salesmen in threadbare suits, would troupe out. All were searching for the same thing - pots of orange jelly. Their demand for it was seemingly insatiable. The man sitting beside me asked whether I might keep an eye on his cardboard box, full of live guinea pigs. As he scrambled for the door, desperate for jelly, he twisted his nose towards the Israeli sweethearts. In the unwritten lore of the Andes, such people were not to be trusted.
    Peruvian bus journeys are always eventful. Whereas in other countries a long ride in a disintegrating bus is a vile prospect, in Peru it’s something to relish. Like children ecstatic for a fairground ride, customers fight each other to be the first aboard. They clutch their tickets with anticipation, thrilled at the idea of a jolting, dust-choking, twelve-hour trip.
    Part of the hysteria was due to the date. It was the 27th of July the day before Peru’s day of independence. Everyone was hurrying back to their villages in time for the
fiesta
.
    Digging a white plastic spoon into his sixth tub of phosphorescent jelly, the man thanked me for looking after his
cuy
so ably. The cunning Israeli guinea pig thieves, he hinted, had been thwarted.
    He slapped his hand in mine.
    ‘My name is Manolo,’ he said. ‘We are brothers. Come with me to my village, come to celebrate!’
    I explained that I was en route to Arequipa, where I had heard a man was building a glider of traditional Incan design. A throwaway remark, made by a backpacker in Cusco, was