Everybody loves their mummy

Black & White Ball (and other social engagements)
Friday was a full day. Our niece and nephew, Dominick and Nicole, plus Carter and I went out to Chaclacayo to the Peace Corps training center. The most recent group of trainees were being sworn in and it is fun to see their excitement: they've been assigned their sites and the whole experience is clearly becoming real for them. Jen and I also get the privilege of seeing volunteers later, at the end of their term, and seeing how they change. So I know that 2 years from now, these new volunteers will be talking about their joys and tribulations (learning the local dance, connecting with the village kids, sampling local cuisine like fried guinea pig brains, pooping in the bushes with makeshift toilet paper, etc etc). Jen deals with her fair share of crises, so ceremonies like this swearing-in are feel-good events.

By good fortune, the training center just happens to be in the same town as the Hogar we visit. So after the reception, we take our niece and nephew over to meet some of the kids we know. Being their on a Friday evening is different: Jen helps with homework while I pitch in around the dinner time with bathroom trips and toothbrushes, mostly for those with limited mobility. There are volunteer tutors and I see that the kids get some computer time. There is even one who is watching an anime cartoon and Dominick and him have a brief anime-geek moment, even if they can't speak each other's language. [As an aside, Dominick researched and found a local mini-mall that specializes in anime...and when I took him there last week, he almost peed himself he was so excited by the 15 stores all focused on anime and video games merchandise.] Anyway, the kid at the Hogar quickly hid the cartoon because the Doctor came down for dinner and does not allow the computers to be used for stuff like that.

We got home at 9pm, but our Friday was not over. Jen and I had tickets to join several people from the office at a "Black and White Ball", all to celebrate Marcela's birthday (Marcela works in the office and also tutors Carter Spanish 2X per week in our home). Since Peruvian nightlife doesn't really get going until 11pm, we had plenty of time to don our B&W attire and still be some of the first guests to arrive. The venue served ice and mixers, but we all came with coolers to prepare cocktails and snacks. Something fabulous about Peruvians is that no dance floor stays lonely for very long. The mix of music would swing around through American 80s music, Latin dance-pop, and traditional oldies from the Andes or the Amazon. Also, the soundtrack to Grease. Peruvians love the movie Grease (though here the cable guide calls it "Vaselina"). Anyway...we didn't get home until 3:30am.

Skull from the burial area, still with jawbone, skin & hair

Cerro de Oro UNCOVERED
I have written in the past about the Huari ruins and burial grounds we have visited a few times (click here). After struggling out of bed Saturday morning, we took Dominick and Nicole and headed south of Lima to the site where we met up with Greg "Goyo" Plimpton, one of the few silver-haired Peace Corps volunteers. Dominick and Nicole were treated to the obligatory walk through the grave-robbed area, with the millions of bones and skulls and artifacts. In addition to the broken pottery, twine and woven fragments, Nicole and I each found a weaving shuttle, and I found an almost complete cotton tunic. But then Goyo walked us over to the archeological dig. It was his energy and bullheadedness that finally brought an

Goyo, at the dig

The mummy's tomb.

archeological team to the area and the results are amazing. To his surprise, the team completely ignored the burial area, useless to them I suppose, and started literally brushing sand away in an blank spot of earth. But they knew what they were doing, they uncovered the outlines of walls, then painstakingly dug down to reveal the whole buildings and even some walls still plastered smooth. Then, incredibly, they realized one wall was hollow and broke through to uncover a tomb with a fully intact mummy and several artifacts. And then, they found another one! The mummies have been taken to Lima for analysis. The artifacts include a heavy bronze knife (curved), a sculpted jug, some kind of complex decorative weaving...all seeing the light of day for the first time in 1000yrs. This stuff was all gone by the time we visited (these artifact photos are from Goyo), but it was great to see the site and to know it is being properly appreciated in at least a small way. Peru has tons of mummies, so this won't make the news probably, but to me it feels personal and amazing. I hope Goyo knows what a cool thing he's done.

Paracas / Islas Ballestas
Afterwards, we continued south to Paracas...also something I have written up previously (same link as above). It was chilly, but the kids and I played table fusbol and we all wandered around the beach. The boat trip out to the Islas Ballestas on Sunday morning was the same as before...dolphins, sealions, penguins, millions of cormorants, boobies, Inca Terns, etc etc. By the time we got back to shore midday it was beautiful out, so we ran back to the hotel for a swim and some lounging around. Then, on our way out of town, we stopped at a little lunch stand in the village so Jen and I could share a mixed cebiche and a mixed fried seafood. It had fish, octopus, shrimp...and then as we left we noticed that sea turtle was on the menu too. We really hope we didn't eat turtle by mistake, but there were some unidentified things in our mixto.

Anyway, it is Tuesday as I write this and I just dropped off Dominick and Nicole for their long flight back to Portland, OR.

P.S. Yesterday, Carter advanced a belt level in taekwan-do.









Below are some extra photos:

Intricate woven object from the tomb.
What is it?!

The bronze knife and other stuff.

Coool animal ceramic...but what animal?

The weaver's shuttle from the burial area

Plenty of donkeys in the area.

Jennifer schooling the new generation.

Machu Picchu

There are some things that are touristy for a good reason: Yosemite, Alcatraz, etc. Machu Picchu is a phenomenal experience, something that all the tourism can't diminish. Our morning train crossed the high-altitude farmlands outside of Cusco, over 3 hours wending its way downhill and into the steep ravines where the Andes begin to meet the jungle. The train was a "Vistadome", with windows in the ceiling and very comfortable. The route through the Sacred Valley is chock full of Inca sites, but from the train we saw adobe homes and donkeys and fields full of birds. We are already talking about returning to the area, it needs a week to do it justice. Eventually the hills sharpened up and the Urubamba River canyon closed in. After passing Ollantaytambo, one of the last stands for the Inca, the cloud forest ecosystem grew up around us. There is much foliage, granite cliff faces are peppered with basketball-sized epiphytes (plants who do not need soil to survive) while many trees are host to large epiphytes with big red flowering stalks. Looking up through the ceiling windows, we caught site of the snowy crag that is Mount Veronica, and looking down we begin to see ancient Inca terraces and structures built up the steep slopes and along the river. At one short stop, a little old lady ran up with a bouquet of local flowers (orchids, lilies, etc) and Jen ran out and bought them for a dollar. The lady suddenly had to scamper off the tracks of the train from the opposite direction, then stood laughing and blowing us kisses.

Putucusi hike

Aguas Calientes is the little tourist town down below the Machu Picchu ruins, named for local hotsprings. The streets are lined with restaurants and stores for travelers, with hawkers who don't quite realize how off-putting their constant calls are: "Pizza! Very good! Meester, pizza, you try!" Our little hotel was perfectly clean and comfortable, but nothing special. Part of the view was the soaring cliffs, but part was a tangle of stairways and wires and the neighbors laundry room. Everybody but Dominick headed out for a hike up Putucusi (Happy Mountain), the peak opposite Machu Picchu. We were unprepared for the steepness and were surprised to find that a good distance of the trail was wooden ladders. Carter loved climbing the ladders, though of course Jen and I could imagine the headlines if something awful happened to him: "World's Worst Parents Allow 7yr Old On Cliff Ladders." In the end, we did not make it all the way to the top because the clouds threatened rain and the idea of backing down slick ladders was unappealing. Still, it was really fun.

Aguas Calientes

Dominick and Nicole pretty much slept from the afternoon into the night, so that left Jen, Carter, Mariza and I to a mediocre, overpriced dinner at the hotel restaurant. The barker/maitre'd/bartender/chef was a gregarious guy, but his repeated statements that the place was "3-Star" did not make it so. We were abed soon in order to be up and out by 5am to catch the bus up to the ruins. The line was already a few blocks long, so we were grateful when a woman came up the line selling coffee, strong and dark as you wish. Once the buses started moving, it was clear that the operation was as swift and organized as the Berlin Airlift. After another line at the entrance to the ruins, we hired a guide and went on in.

The ruins

There is too much about the ruins itself to lay out here. There is plenty to marvel at in terms of engineering and ingenuity (water from 2km away! masonry so finely matched that the seams are hard to see!). The insight into the culture and beliefs is also compelling, with stones set as sun dials or to mirror the exact ridgeline of the local mountains, windows set to align with the solstice, and areas for worship, agriculture, fabrication and both a tony part of town and a middle-class neighborhood. Machu Picchu was clearly a significant hub, but perhaps not as significant as a handful of other sites nearby: Ollantaytambo fortress, or Vilcabamba, the final holdout of the Inca, or their capital of Cusco, of course.

Looking past the farm terraces, up to the
peak of Machu Picchu Mountain

After a couple hours at the ruins, and after our bag lunch, some of us headed up Machu Picchu Mountain. There is a small peak rising above the ruins (Wayna Picchu), with ruins atop that people hike up to, but our route was much less traveled (perhaps because it is a steep, 1800ft climb up a lot of stone stairs). Carter was by far the youngest on the trail and the subject of endless commentary by our fellow hikers, and our niece Nicole muscled through it too. They were troopers and seemed unfazed by the sharp incline or the sheer drops, though we were all pretty pooped in the end. From the top we could see down to the ruins and the local river canyon, folded upon itself like origami. The descent was perhaps more agonizing than the ascent, but eventually we met up with Dominick and Mariza and caught the bus down to town.


The hotel was very decent about giving us a room to shower in even though we had checked out. Plus, we had plenty of time for a lunch by the river in Aguas Calientes, so we were clean, happy and tired when we caught our late-afternoon train back to Cusco.

Here are some extra photos:

On the trail up Machu Picchu Mountain

Peak of Machu Picchu Mountain, with ruins below

 

 

Nicole atop Machu Picchu Mt., with
Putucusi & Aguas Calientes below.

Along the tracks.

Cusco

We are in the middle of a 2 week visit by our niece and nephew from Oregon. They were here for less than 12hrs before we packed them up and we all headed off for Cusco and, ultimately, Machu Picchu. Dominick, Nicole, Carter, Jennifer, Mariza and myself. The flight to Cusco cruises over some snowy crags of the Andes before banking sharply around a mountain and landing in the town at 11,200ft. I had been drinking coca tea all week, plus we had all superstitiously taken the anti-altitude pills, and in the end no one suffered overly much from the altitude. Cusco was the center of the Inca empire and, later, the symbolic victory of the conquistadores. Many, many of the narrow streets are lined by ancient stone foundations with lots of colonial structures built right on top of the Inca masonry. For palaces and temples, the Inca masons were so precise that no mortar was necessary.

Daybreak down the street from our hotel.

Our hotel was on one of these small streets, a typical colonial building set around a courtyard, with a breakfast room looking out over the terracotta roofs, many with the ceramic bulls that Cusqueños place up there to protect their homes. We immediately set out for a walk, succumbing happily to the first poncho saleswoman we encountered. Eventually, we found a place for dinner where I enjoyed the very local trout. Cusco is the hub through which travelers get to Machu Picchu and we had to leave the hotel for our train at 7:30am. Even so, we were all up before daybreak to go see a local market. The market was a failure (closed), but being up at daybreak was fantastic. We walked the streets, some of us stumbling upon one of the most famous Inca foundation walls, a mortarless wall that includes the famous "12-angle stone". We still had time for breakfast and the half-hour taxi ride out to the train station.

36hrs later we returned from Machu Picchu (see the next post for that trip), and checked into a different hotel. This hotel was bigger, snootier, but very nice; it was clearly once a very important building and was right next door to what was once the Temple of the Sun, the most important of Inca temples. Jen and I were celebrating our anniversary (16!) in a happily NONfancy way. We picked up some street sandwiches (pork, onion, avocado) and a couple of beers and ate in the corner of the room as Carter slept. There was plenty of time on Sunday prior to our return to Lima, so we walked the city again. Our first stop was the Temple of the Sun, but it was closed. There was a very cute little girl, dressed in native dress and hugging her lamb. We were taking photos and talking to her when another tourist came up and accused us of harassing her, a poor native girl alone in town. It was a strange moment and it was only later that I put together the proper imaginary response: the girl was put there by her family, his belief that little girls in Cusco just wander around in full fancy dress with their lambs was naive, and after 500 years of oppression and corruption and poverty, it just didn't seem so bad to give the girl a dollar for the privilege of appreciating the native dress. What, he would prefer that she grub for potatoes instead of milking some of the huge flow of tourist money running through Cusco?
 

Dominick at the market

Anyhow...we headed off and this time found the Cusco market open. We had fun exploring the exotic offerings: pigs heads, trout roe, fabulous fruit smoothies, aromatic herbs and many things that remain a mystery. Eventually we found our way around a couple of other plazas and the central plaza. It's a beautiful town, and the sun was out, so it is easy to forget the bloodletting that permeates Cusco's history: battles and executions and later even more executions. Many people feel a spiritual power in the area, but I'm not convinced that it is anything more than this powerful resonance of a history both glorious and terrible. But forget all that, it was a lovely day and we found a cool, weird little lunch place. It supports a charity for children, near as I can tell it is a charity that runs community events for kids with clowns and facepaint, etc. They served me a very nice quinoa stew and our vegetarian niece Nicole was able to enjoy a papaya/banana pizza.

Carter's "vintage" poncho.

Mariza and the 12-angle Stone