Tarma is a very pleasant town of five thousand inhabitants in an ideal location in a narrow valley which it seems to fill at the base of high mountains. Its altitude is 10,010 feet above sea level but it lacks the chill of such highly situated towns east of the cordillera. Here the cold winds from the high paramos and ice peaks do not reach owing to its sheltered position. The air is fresh, but not raw and reminds one of the first breezes of spring. I was told by the accommodating Italian hotel proprietor that the climate is that of a perpetual spring.
The city is compactly built with one- and two-story adobe houses, those on the main streets being painted light colors or whitewashed. In the center of the town is a treeless plaza but beautified with shrubs in which is a round cement fountain and an octagonal frame bandstand. At one side of this plaza is the parish church in charge of an amiable fat priest, a cholo who has but a slight strain of white blood as can be observed by his dark, heavy jowled features. He was clad in a white robe of coarse wool over which hung a dark cape. He seemed very much interested in us and gave us letters of introduction to other priests along the road which we would follow. These he handed to Prat who accidentally lost them on purpose; the Catalonian in his heart was an agnostic, and a Roman Catholic only in his bringing up. He would walk a block out of his way to avoid meeting a priest, yet when he was sick would always want to have one about him. He would never enter a church and would make sacrilegious remarks, yet when a thunderstorm would come up, he would cross himself and mumble prayers only to forget them as soon as the sky became clear again. Padre Troncoso was the name of the Tarma priest and he delighted in having me take his photograph. He teaches in the parish school and asked me to take a picture of his highest class which consisted of sixteen boys, most of whom were white.
The Hotel Roma is a two-story structure with a carved wooden balcony on its second floor; its exterior is much like many buildings in Stamboul. It is a very comfortable and clean place with good food. There is another hotel in Tarma, the Umberto, which is well spoken of. The most curious sight in the small city is the cemetery. It reminds one of a Chinese burying ground. It is filled with many grotesque monuments, some of them having tiled roofs. These individual tombstones are of adobe, and are whitewashed over. They contain several niches into which the coffins are placed and they are so narrow that the gruesome burdens may be put in them at either end.
Cemetery, Tarma
We left Tarma early in the morning and followed the Acomayo River a couple of hours to the town of Acobamba, a pretty village much resembling Tarma only smaller. We watered our mules here, tarried about an hour, and then continued for another two hours to the city of Palca which is very much like both Tarma and Acobamba, although smaller than the first-mentioned place and larger than the last-mentioned one. It is a poorer place than Tarma, but it has a larger church. This building is several hundred years old; it is of adobe, and has a broad façade from one side of which rises a four-story belfry capped with a steeple. The valley is here very narrow but beyond Palca there is a widening where the Acomayo flows into the Rio Palca. This river we followed the rest of the day. The scenery between Tarma and Palca is much the same, and is distinguished by the number of century plants along the roadside and the abundance of calla lilies along the river bed. Some of these lilies were spotted and likewise had light spots on their leaves. Leaving Palca there was a much more varied vegetation. This was noticeable when we crossed the river and we proceeded along its south bank. The mountains were still barren but were beginning to show unmistakable signs by the increased number of bushes on their slopes that we were approaching a wetter climate. The river itself had all the attractions of a clear, rushing mountain torrent working its way among the rocks and bowlders; its banks of shale rock were steep and thickly clothed with vegetable life of many species. Among the latter were wild verbenas of the brightest scarlet, purple begonias, several varieties of fern, wild tobacco plants, and a creeper much like the wild cucumber. An hour beyond Palca we arrived at the hill of Carpapata down whose sides the road zigzagged in many windings. The natives have made a short cut between the zigzags which saves a couple of kilometers but which is too steep to be descended in comfort. Up and down this short cut they drive their llamas which take readily to its steepness like mountain sheep. Arrived near the bottom of the hill the road leads along the ledge of a cliff high above the turbulent river. To look down or up is apt to cause giddiness. This is the famous scene that is portrayed in the geographies of half a century ago where a llama train is meeting a mule train on a curve at the side of a precipice. The view with the river flowing at the bottom of the gorge is truly impressive. The mountains on either side are sheer and rocky, their upper slopes covered only with grass, their bases clothed with shrubs. Straight before us leading to a veritable land of promise lay the road, threading its way on a gentle downward grade, perpetually alternating from the convex to the concave on the ledge of the mountains. Ahead of us on the other side of the canyon a single mountain appeared clad with forest trees up to its very summit, the first that I had seen in Peru. As we drew nearer it became a scene of enchanting beauty, with its colorings of light green and gray. From the underbrush near its summit there was poured forth a large waterfall, which dashed down its entire height in three separate cascades for several hundred feet.
Towards evening we reached the rest house named the Huacapistana Hotel, at an exact altitude of 5600 feet above sea level. This is the real gateway to the tropics. The hotel, owned by an Italian, is built on a narrow shelf of land in a flowery meadow above the river and below the road. It is a clean well-kept two-story building with half a dozen guests' rooms. Adjoining it and separated from the meadow by a stone wall is a barn and a corral for horses and llamas. The climate is fresh but it is much warmer than at Tarma. A mist gathered over the river that night which made the atmosphere rather chilly. This is frequently the case and it does not lift until the sun is well out the next morning.
We got an early start the next day and found the road, which was now smooth, wet, and slippery from the mist. The tree trunks and branches were rich in symbiotic life, with ferns, lianas, and orchidaceous plants of many species. The wild cotton trees were laden with festoons of roseate blossoms, and from the extremities of their slender branches would be seen hanging large wasps' nests. Other nests such as those of bees and ants of a gray color spotted the rocks or any available bare space on the smooth bark of a tree. The effect of the giant tree fern spreading its graceful fronds over the path was enchanting; beneath its shade grew seemingly every other species of fern which one has ever noticed in hothouses at home. We passed several small coffee plantations; in the clearings near the houses were banana, orange, and papaya trees. The tit-shaped fruit of the latter is so common that it is left unpicked for the birds to feed on. The pods attain maturity in regular sequence from the lowest to the highest, swelling in size, changing from green to yellow, and becoming soft and possessing an insipid sweetish odor. In the matter of vegetation generally, the above description may be fairly said to characterize the whole region; orchids, scarlet cannas, the broad-leafed caladium or elephant's ear, purple, white, and pink begonias, scarlet verbenas; creepers, ferns, and mosses; forest trees, reeds, grasses, and plant life generally, interspersed with huge bowlders and masses of weatherbeaten rock of a chalky whiteness, all contributing to the formation of the most perfect fairy scene imaginable.
Occasionally one would meet with a blaze of color from some wild cotton trees, laden with flowers, pink, yellow, and even blue; and equally striking was the effect of a species of wild runner bean with dark green leaves and thick bunches of vermilion flowers hanging in tresses, and appearing to nearly smother the tree which gave it support.