Hamishsphere: Celebrating Peru with Mario Testino

by Hamish Bowles

Hamish Bowles at Machu Picchu.

Photo: Felipe Veloso/Courtesy of Hamish Bowles

1 of 9

The Mario Testino festivities continued as the international revelers headed from Lima to the mystic city of Cuzco, ancient capital of the Inca Empire and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Mario is currently working on a series of portraits of local people in their festive regional dress in the manner of a latter-day Martn Chambi.

I was lavishly installed at the newly unveiled Palacio Nazarenas, a sixteenth-century convent with a newly built wing affording enchanting views across the terra-cotta tiled roofs of the colonial town to the distant mountains beyond.

Giddy from the altitude, we were fortified with tea made from the potent leaves of the coca plant before setting off to explore the wildly atmospheric city. The conquering Spaniards constructed their churches and stately buildings directly on the Incan walls which were miraculously fashioned from vast stone blocks that slot perfectly one into the other with no need of binding material. The churches, with their silver and gold altars and powerful religious iconography, are forbidding palaces of worship that command respect and inspire awe. A treasure of the city is the Museo Arqueologico Peruano (MAP), a museum of Pre-Columbian art and conquistador art treasures from the collection of the magnificent Museo Larco in Lima, which is exquisitely installed in a beautiful colonial mansion steps from our hotel. On the morrow, we set off for Machu Picchu on the Orient-Expresss Hiram Bingham train and very Agatha Christie it was, too, with a luxurious antebellum dining car, a gleaming mahogany bar, musicians serenading with Jazz Age Latin-American standards, and an open viewing platform at the back of the train to watch the ravishing landscape, which included mountains, plains, and the roiling Urubamba River spinning slowly by. The enigmatic Machu Picchu naturally takes the breath awayand its not just because of the altitude. The sunworshipping Incans selected a mountaintop that is lit from dawn till dusk and is cradled by higher peaks and the distant prospect of snow caps. It is a potent and a powerful place. We were all euphoric on the journey home, and it wasnt just the pisco sours (although goodness knows they certainly helped). Dinner on board was thoroughly glamorous, with ageless Nati Abascal and Karlie Kloss engaged in a pan-generational supermodel face-off over the Peruvian delicacies.

The following day we hit the thrilling street markets of Cuzco for Rothko-esque local rugs, papier-mch face masks (bearded balaclavas with which the Incan Indians lampooned the Spaniards), gaily festooned white gessoed hats like the ones the local women wear with such

elegant distinction, and skirts whose fullness puts Christian Dior to shame. It was a saints day, and the citys main square was thronged with marching bands, schoolgirls in ribboned plaits, and latter-day Chambi figures.

Then we headed high above the city to the Inca site of Sacsayhuamn with its simply miraculous zigzagged jaguar-toothed walls composed of stones of monumental scale, which were apparently transported across a bed of river pebbles (the Incans having not invented the wheel at this point). The view of Cuzco spread far below is another wonder. Karlie wanted to adopt a jadorable baby llamaand who could blame her? Happily she settled for Peru an really has alpaca something blanket for instead. everyone.

Read Hamish Bowles's dispatch from Lima on the inauguration of Mario Testino's Arts Foundation. Learn more about Hamish Bowles in Voguepedia.