home now, here are the pics

We're back in Houston now and are happy to have brushed our teeth again. So here are the pictures that go with the post below.

Back in time in the north

After trying every conceivable rationalization for spending $1000 to fly ourselves to Trujillo we were forced to concede defeat and board the stupid 2 day bus. Though we begrudge the bus it should be said that the bus in Peru is far superiour to anything Greyhound has to offer. Actually we lucked out in a way because the first leg of our bus ride arrived a few hours early so we were able to get an earlier bus to Trujillo, which, though it arrived late allowed us to avoid 2 consecutive nights sleeping on the bus- sort of.
We spent our first day in Trujillo wandering the Plaza de Armas and Plaza Mayor. This city boasts fabulous carved balconies like Cusco, but has the additional fun element of fantasical wrought iron decorations on the lower windows. Another unique aspect of Trujillo's street scene are the vivid colors of the beautiful colonial architecture. We also toured the small archaeological museum in town which presents an overview of the various cultures that have inhabited Peru since about 10,000 years ago.
The next day we got up very early in order to be ready to head out to Lambayeque. This was not necessary as we ended up sitting around until after 9:30. Clara, after describing how to get there solo must have decided that we weren't up to it because in the end she came with us. We are telling ourselves that it is because we told her we wanted to see as much as possible and not that we looked like pansies. Anyway, after a 3 hour bus ride to Chiclayo we took a taxi to Lambayeque and went to lunch. We had a couple of Peruvian potato dishes which were amazing. Brad thinks they would have been better hot but no one is asking him. Then we drove out into the hinterlands to the village of Tucume. There, down a very special "road" are the ruins of a large city/ ceremonial center. El Nino rains have damaged the exteriors of the pyramids but enough is left give you an idea of how advanced these cultures were.
In the north each site has a history with several cultures. Each group of people basically built their stuff on top of the previous groups'. The earliest empire of the north coast was the Moche starting about 2000 years ago. After them you have the Lambayeque, then Chimu, then Inca. There are some that I'm leaving out but in the end it all went to the Spanish who looted every grave they could find and melted everything into ingots and sent it to Spain. At Tucume the ground is literally covered with potsherds. I asked Clara who was able at a glance to identify them as Moche and Chimu. Each of the groups had amazing ceramic and textile tradtions and sprawling trade networks evidenced by the discovery up and down the Andes of articles from all of these peoples.
After Tucume we raced back to town. We were to learn that when Clara said "vamos" she meant it. She would head out and not look back. (Clara owns the hostal we stayed in and was the first officail guide in the area. She worked the digs where all the objects in the museums were found. Anyone who has done any archaeology in Peru in the last 40 years, she knows them. She met Thor Heyerdahl when he was in Peru working on the Kon-Tiki. I will add that she is at most 5 inches taller that Zada.) So, we were off to the museum that showcases the fabulouness of the the Lord of Sipan. He was a Moche big wig about 1500 years ago at the north end of their empire which is around Lambayeque. There's a link on Zada's blog to a photo gallery of his trappings. The best thing we learned at the museum was all of the traditional remedies these people used. Our favorite, guinea pig massage. Seriously. Also, for asthma and arthitis they would cover you with the puppies of the hairless Peruvian dogs. These treaments would have been carried out by a shaman with great seriousness and ceremony. So take a moment and try to picture one of these priests, decked out in his gold and silver, with a magnificent headdress and robes, rubbing a live guinea pig on a man's sore leg.
The place was awesome and sadly, because of our "Peru time" start, we had to race through the last bit. We did see what was left of El Senor, which isn't much. Clara vamosed us back to the bus station and we got back quite late. The next morning we accounted for the difference in Peruvian ideas about punctuality and got up a bit later. Clara took us and a few other hostal guests on a tour of the archaeological sites around Trujillo. Our first stop was Chan Chan, the capital of the Chimu empire, built around 900AD. Most of the original site has been destroyed by a thousand years of exposure to the elements but you can still tell how large the place was and what skilled builders they must have been. Here, unlike Tucume, a few of the walls retain hints of their original painted color. As amazing as it looks today it must have been unreal when it was all painted blue, yellow and red. The Tschudi complex (a mere 1/25 of the enormous site) has been well excavated and we admired the beautifully carved sea life reliefs. The various decorative maritime elements are rendered naturalistically and abstractly in different sites. The interiors walls are an elaborate lattice-work representing nets as well as providing light/air flow and privacy. These people were phenomenal engineers and their adobe brickwork is all trapedzoidal with rubble fill and stuccoed over to fresco. This shape and the small stone fill provides tremendous stability in this quake-prone region. Clara also pointed out that all modern construction had been essentially destroyed several times in past disasters, but this site is still wonderfully intact.
We marvelled at the wonderful artistry and Zada pestered a few more hairless dogs then jumped back into the minibus to the next ancient wonder. This was the Huaco Arco Iris. WE haven't raved enough about the incredible irrigation/ aqueduct / hey these people built huge civilizations in the desert aspect of all these cultures, but its is really late/early and we've been on a bus/ van/ taxi/ plane/ shuttle since Tuesday and although our appreciation and enthusiasm for the extraordinary accomplishments of the Pre-conquest civilaztions has not in any way waned, it is getting harder and harder to string these adjectives together in any kind of meaningful way. Don't worry though, once we see you, you'll hear far more about all of this than you could ever have imagined.
Anyhow, Arco Iris - the rainbow. This sacred site had three levels and the reliefs are amazing - They feature - I'll just include a photo ... it is pretty obvious what with the serpent rainbow and such.
The last site of the day was definitely one of the best things we saw in Peru. It was the Huaca de la Luna, the Temple of the Moon. This is a Moche construction originally so it's over 1500 years old. It's next to the Temple of the Sun which hasn't been excavated and so looks like a muddy, tiered hill. Clara led us around to the the reliefs and frescos, many of which are so well preserved that the colors are intact. The highlight was north side of the pyramid which has seven stories of painted carvings is stunning condition. The walls of each story were over 100 yards long, each level having a different repeated image. And though each image was the same, the faces each had a different expression, some smiling, some angry, and so on. Our favorite was the image of the the creature with the body of a man, head of a jaguar, and the tail of an iguana, each holding a severed human head. Also, check Zada's blog for the wall that was a spectacular patchwork of images, possibly their entire cosmographia.
It's now 4:51 here at Washington Dulles Airport baggage claim and we are running out of ATT wifi time so we'll be going now. When we get home later today we will put in some pictures so you can see what we have been gibbering about. Thanks fo visiting and we'll talk to you soon.

Drum roll please...

Machu Picchu! We dragged ourselves out of bed at about 4:30 to get ready and to make sure that the innkeep got us the taxi we asked for. One cannot catch a train for Machu Picchu in Cusco, though there is a train station there. You must go out to Poroy, a town 20km from town with nothing but the train station. (Or, to put it in other terms, it is 30 soles away in the morning and 40 soles back to Cusco at night, especially when your train is late. And there are only taxis there by arrangement.) We had heard from other travellers that the track was closed by a recent landslide and that we would have to take a bus about half way before getting on the train. Fortunately the engineers at Perurail decided to go for it and we got the whole train ride experience. (That landslide was no joke, we drove through the site and saw that it was still sort of sliding. The trench that had been dug for the train was up past the windows. There was a posse of engineers and heavy equipment operators there watching us go through at a snail's pace.) The train was beautiful and the Vistadome afforded us views of snow capped peaks and the rural countryside.
The train disembarks at Aguas Calientes, a charming little village created entirely for tourists to Machu Picchu. The way out of the train station to the bus station is through a giant tchotcke market - subtle! The bus ride was truly special. The views were truly spectacular as we wound our way up the steep mountainside on the one lane road. The turning radius on every vehicle in Peru has been incredible! These enormous touring coaches whipped around hairpin turns like nobody's business. The real excitement came when another bus approached from the other direction. I'm not sure if the two continuing on there respective ways, all but scraping the paint off eachother, or the pulling over of one to the crumbling lip of the mountain road to allow the other to pass, was more heart-stopping. Whatever, we arrived with our hearts racing. We checked our fleece jackets since it was much warmer here than in Cusco what with having lost about 4,000 feet of elevation.
We passed through the ticket booth and walked down a short path and then there it was, just as it looks in the postcards, Machu Picchu. First we climbed up to the to the building known as the watchman's hut. From there one has a sweeping view of the whole site. And there were llamas up there! It is immediately obvious that this is no American park from the lack of safety rails along the edges of drop offs hundreds of feet high. It is difficult to come up with words that do the place justice. Nothing seems adequate to capture the awe inspiring nature of the site. Impressive, amazing, breath taking, astounding; they all fail to convey the immensity and the majesty of it all. It took us about 3 hours do do a walk around the city. We noticed that the masonry was nicest on the temples and ceremonial building and less so on the other constructions. The temples were made entirely of the kind of well cut stones we saw at Sacsaywaman. The other buildings had walls composed of an inner and outer layer of stones with earth inbetween. As we walked along we saw lizards, llamas and the elusive chinchilla. Chinchillas, though well camouflaged with Incan stonework, are extremely amenable to being photographed once you find one. We ended up with about 20 photographs of the same chinchilla in the same pose. It was in all ways a perfect day.
The train ride back was long and soporific as most return journeys. And then we were late. Fortunately our faithful taxi driver, Enrique, was there to meet us. He took us to the Plaza with his entire family squeezed in the back. Then we had the absurdity of trying to find dinner. We ended up at the McDonald's (seriously) for french fries. Obviously we were too tired to care much about food. Anyway, that was the primary goal of the trip and it was wonderful.

The Incan capital

Cusco! First though we had to endure yet another over night bus ride. The best thing about the night bus in Peru is that you can't see just how demented your driver is. You can't see just how sheer the drops by the road side are or just how close he is getting to them. We arrived in Cusco about 5am and were not met by a driver from our hotel. The security guard at the terminal got us a "safe" taxi who drove us to the Plaza de Armas and then told us we could walk the last 600 meters up hill to our hotel. (We were to discover that many of the streets in Cusco date back to before the advent of horses or cars and so are more like broad, steep, cobbled staircases than actual roads.) Little did we know that the theme of "your fat American behind needs to get out and walk" would become the leitmotif of our stay in Cusco. And walk our fat behinds did.

After recovering for several hours in the arctic lounge waiting for breakfast we headed out on a walking tour recommended by the good people at Lonely Planet. Cusco is an absolutely gorgeous city of spectacular colonial architecture. However, it is at 11,000 feet and will take your breath away in a variety of ways- visual splendor, elevation, and air pollution. Exploding hearts and lungs aside we enjoyed our 8km walk. The high point (ho ho ho) was the ruined Incan fortess of Sacsaywaman. It sits outside and well above the city center. After walking all the way up there we found a parking lot. The bitterness was actually twofold since there was also a lot at the lower entrance as well as one at the top. Zada was thrilled to discover the presence of llamas and alpacas grazing around the site. The stonework was unbelievable, immense stones, far from their origin, so precisely carved that no mortar is needed to hold the structure up.

Another wonderful discovery was Jack's, an Australian ex-pat's contribution to the rich fabric of Cusqueno life. They have breakfast all day. The food was incredible, the desserts were richer than an Incan burial. We crawled back up our hill to rest before going out to the traditional Andean dance and music show. We asked our inn's receptionist to call us a taxi as it had become dark and quite cold. She told us that we didn't need a taxi because we could walk. We agreed that we could walk but told her that we didn't want to which is why we were asking for the taxi. Anyway, the show was very interesting though the music was distorted by the antique sound system. The theater was built in the 1920s and is just now being renovated. However the air conditioning works beautifully. At this point we might ask what it is about the people of the southern hemisphere and their refusal to acknowledge the existence of winter? Both here and in New Zealand, though it is 40 degrees the doors and windows are open and there is no heat turned on. Then it was back to the inn to rest up for the big day.

The White City, Arequipa

This tiresome thing won't let me put the photos where I want them. So, the 2 on top belong to the paragraph about the convent at the bottom. The 2 pictures with mummies are with the paragraph about Chauchilla Cemetary.

We have made it as far as Arequipa. That's the big city in the south of Peru. It was founded by the Spanish way back when, 1500 something. It is gorgeous and has 2 giant volcanoes looming over it, Unapato and El Misti. They're both near 20,000 feet. Arequipa is about 7700 feet above sea level which you really notice when you walk up hills, of which there are many.

So let's begin in Lima. We landed at about 12:15am and spent around 90 minutes on immigration and customs business. We got a $40 (that's US) taxi for the bus station around 1:45. During our ride we saw the Lima night life including its hopping casino scene. There are also more taxis than you would think the economy could support. Anyway, we pulled up at the bus station around 2:15 to find it extremely closed. The taxi driver got out, locked us in, and asked the security guard what time the place opened. The answer was 4am, which is when our bus was supposed to leave. He then said "You can't stay here, it's not a safe area. That seemed an understatement what with all the barred windows, graffiti and people just sitting around in the street at 2:30 in the morning. Fortunately he found us a gas station across the street with a table where we were able to sit for 90 minutes. So we drank Coke, ate Kinder eggs and played cards while the night shift workers and the security guard talked and restocked the snacks.

The bus station opened around 3:40 so we ran over and got on board. When we pulled out it was still very dark and there was a thick fog over the town. The sky lightened around 7 and we could see the depressingly foggy countryside - depressing, as we despaired of our Nazca Lines overflight. The bus drove south on the Pan American Highway through microscopic towns. There is a huge amount of construction going on everywhere. Farther south the fog lifted and the scenery improved. Peru is a beautiful country, but on this Southern coast it is the beauty of the desert. It's very sparse and rocky.

Then we got to Nazca. This is one of the driest places on Earth. They get about 5mL of rain annually. Half a centimeter of rain and you can really tell. It is extremely dusty so that it's kind of hard to breathe. Our guesthouse picked us up at the bus station and then arranged a flight over the lines for us. A flight over the Nazca Lines goes like this: First, you get into a very small airplane and put on your seat belt and headphones. Next you pray while the plane takes off because it sounds like the engine is working really hard. After a few minutes you are over the desert and the pilot banks steeply left and right over the figures while telling you about them. The tilt is so great that the images are being pointed to by the wing tip. It was all very cool. The lines are all wonderful to see but tough to photograph in a bouncy little plane. It was an amazing experience and we all enjoyed it tremendously.


The next day after breakfast we went to the Chauchilla cemetary. It's a collection of pre-Incan burials, about 1600 years old. Many of them were destroyed when grave robbers ransacked the place 60 years ago and scattered mummies and bones and cloth all over the desert. You can still see bones and scraps of cloth all over beside the path. Fortunately a few of the graves were not discovered by thieves and have been subsequently excavated. Some of the burials are reconstructions that archaeologists built using the remains scattered on the desert. If you look at the picture of the mummy with the receding hairline you'll notice several bundles with him. Those are other mummies buried with him. He's in the fetal position and facing east which is all symbolic of rebirth in the afterlife. The other picture shows a mummy with a big nasty dreadlock which is his actual hair. Apparently it shows that he was an important figure in the community. This was also an wonderful experience. The site is about 10/15 miles outside the city and the physical surroundings were spectacular. Gorgeous, delicately hued peaks ringed the sandy plateau. Later that night we went to the Maria Reiche planetarium for a presentation about her astromical theories about the lines and some star gazing. This was our second trip to the facility - it is housed in the luxe Nazca Lines hotel - we splurged on lunch earlier in the day and were vastly impressed with the brocade tablecloths with the Nazca Lines woven into the fabric!

We took the night bus here to Arequipa and arrived yesterday morning. We went to our hotel, La Casa de Tintin, which Zada insisted on. It does indeed have Tintin accents here and there. We ate breakfast and then walked to the city center. The Plaza de Armas is beautiful with the cathedral framed by volcanoes. We first went to the museo santuary where Juanita the ice mummy is kept. We had to wait about 30 minutes for our tour to start so we sat in the gift shop with everyone who worked there watching the Argentina/Germany soccer game. Don't know if we shared Zada's weird germany fetish with everyone yet, but about 6 months ago she became obsessed with learning German and all things Germanic. At a stop at the Academy she insisted on purchasing a German soccer shirt and has been almost painfully gung-ho about them winning. It was 1-0 Germany at that point but then they scored twice more. We were unable to cheer as the Peruvians were rooting for Argentina. But they're not here now so WOOOHOOO! GO GERMANY!

Juanita was truly fascinating and the guide (you aren't aloowed to roam on your own as the artefacts are beyond priceless) made it all very poignant and engaging. She is encased in a super thick glass freezer, kept at -20. The whole museum is very cold and dark to maintain the delicate textiles and ceramics found with the child sacrifice burials. Then we went to the Santa Catalina convent which was stunningly beautiful. It's like a small city with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. The walls are painted these wonderful shades of blue and orange. It's huge so we had to stop at their cafe for a snack about half way through. Real brewed coffee and a menu of desserts named for the seven deadly sins - rightfully so, as the chocolate cake was richer than anything at the Chocolate Bar. It's pretty luxurious as convents go. Apparently it's where the second daughters of wealthy colonial families went. They had servants and slaves and basically lived it up there in the convent unil Pope Pius IX sent a new mother superior to clean things up.

From here we go to Cuzco. we get there on the 6th and will have a day to get aclimatized to 12,000 feet before Machu Picchu on the 7th.

Are we there yet?

No. In fact, we're still in Houston and it's only Sunday night. However we are pretty much completely packed and if it were Wednesday morning we'd be so ready. In the midst of all our preparations we did find time to go down to Padre Island for a sea turtle hatchling release. Baby sea turtles are the extremely precious and we took probably 400 pictures but I will only attach one. We should arrive in Nazca around noon on the 1st and hopefully we will be able to post some photos of the mysterious Nazca Lines. That's if the weather cooperates. Wish us luck on our absurdly circuitous route to Peru... via Toronto.