Peru: life at the top of the World.

It is a cold morning in late August, and ice covers the ground in the Andes mountains of Peru. Except for some footpaths and a few stone huts scattered in high valleys, the Q'ero Indians have hardly made a mark here.

Their ancestors, the Inca, ruled the Andes before Spanish explorers conquered them in the 16th century. The Inca did not know about the wheel. The Q'ero do not use it either.

Thirteen-year-old Luisa and two of her cousins herd llamas and alpacas up a steep slope. The girls continually chase after straying animals to keep the herd together.

The thin air, which makes my heart pound, does not affect them. Like most people living at high altitudes, the girls have developed larger lungs and extra red blood cells.

When they reach a plateau (flat area), Luisa and her cousins let the animals graze on the surrounding slopes. The unobstructed view allows the girls to spot and chase away foxes, pumas, or condors that try to prey on their herd's young.

Luisa pulls a small loom from a blanket on her back. She also uses the blanket to carry her schoolbooks and to hold her 2-year-old sister.

Using a large stone, Luisa hammers the loom's four stakes into the ground. She then kneels to weave a small bag to hold coca leaves.

Ever since the time of the Inca, Andean Indians have valued coca leaves, which stimulate (speed up) the body's nervous system. The Q'ero chew the leaves to ease fatigue, hunger, pain, and even sadness. They also use the leaves in religious rituals, since coca is the most direct link to Pachamama, Mother Earth. The Q'ero revere Pachamama along with the sun, the Apus (mountain spirits). stars, and lightning.

"You love weaving, don't you?" I ask Luisa through an interpreter. Luisa only speaks Quechua, the Inca language.

"Oh, yes. I do," she says, smiling. "It's my favorite pastime.

"Couldn't you say that of every Q'ero?" I ask. "I see them weave whenever they can. They always spin wool as they walk."

"We weave our own clothes, blankets, and bags, and always need to replace aging ones," Luisa says. "But it takes so much time to [prepare] the wool of our animals, and then weave."

In addition to weaving, schoolwork, and household chores, Luisa tends to her flock each day.

"I've done it since I was about 5," she says, "first with my father or an uncle, and from the age of 7, with others or by myself.

"But two years ago, our men built a school, and a mestiza [a woman of European and Indian ancestry] came from Paucartambo, a small town, to teach. Once a month, she rides a horse back home. Since the round-trip takes three days, she stays away for a week. She's gone now, or I would be at school and herding on weekends."

Luisa is a happy child. She loves her parents and is a second mother to her younger brothers and sisters. She shares her mother's chores whenever she can, and often travels long distances with her father.

Corn and Potatoes

In Charcapata, Luisa's hamlet, there are one or two radio sets. The village has no electricity, television, books, or shops. The Q'ero have only each other's company.

When school is in session, Q'ero children study math and Spanish.

"I love math," says Luisa. "But the teacher flogs [whips] me on the legs when I am not attentive; and that I don't like."

The morning passes quickly. Occasionally, Luisa and her cousins race to return a bleating baby llama to its mother. When hunger calls, the girls eat toasted corn or tiny boiled potatoes.

Besides ulloco and oca, which are also tubers (bulb plants), potatoes and corn are the Q'eros' main food. On special occasions, such as the celebration of a birth or marriage, they might eat llama or alpaca meat.

The Q'ero typically leave some potatoes outside to freeze overnight, and then pound them with bare feet to squeeze out the water. They repeat the process for several days. The shrunken, dried potatoes, called chunos, are used to thicken soup.

With the corn they grow, the Q'ero prepare tamales (corn dough inside leaves), soup, and chicha, a pleasant sweet-sour drink. They also toast the kernels like peanuts.

"You should see the things we make with corn at harvest time," Luisa says. "Corn harvest is a very happy time.

Hard Work and Laughter

Fruits and vegetables do not grow in the cold climate where the Q'eros' woolly flocks force them to live. The cold even spoils the potatoes, which often freeze before ripening, making them edible only for llamas.

Most potato crops must be grown at 10,000 feet, and the corn much lower, at the edge of the cloud forest (rain forest in a mountainous area). The Q'ero maintain houses at each level--stone houses near the potato fields and wood houses by the cornfields.

Above the timberline, stones are the only building materials available. The stone houses have no windows or chimneys and are dark inside.

Q'ero families build two or three houses in different valleys. After flocks wear out the pasture in the first valley, families move on until the pasture grows back.

The poor diet of the Q'ero makes children dependent on their mother's milk until they are several years old. It might also be the reason that these Indians only average about five feet in height, and that children often do not walk before the age of 2.

But to judge by the way they hoist my heavy luggage over their horses, the Q'ero are amazingly strong. They own many saddle horses, yet they prefer to walk, and think nothing of doing so for 12 hours or more.

Late in the afternoon, Luisa and her cousins return to Charcapata. After leading their animals into a stone corral, the girls join their families for spinning, weaving, potato peeling, conversation, and laughter. Some of the children go off to play with other cousins. (The village is an extended family where everyone is related.) If an adult is playing the flute, the children may even dance.

The Andes are close to the equator, so night falls just after six o'clock year-round. Right away, the air gets considerably colder. By then, everyone is inside by the fire. For an hour or so, I hear more laughter through the small wooden doors. Later, silence falls on the valley and the white peaks above, and the stars shine brightly in the sky.