Ica, Pisco & Nasca - Impressions

More Horror from the South

Well, my friends. To show you once again that traveling is not fun at all, I will tell you what happened to me in a span of less than three days. Warning: this is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach !

After a nice day of relaxing in the desert oasis of Huacachina, I decided to participate in a little desert tour involving dune buggy riding and sandboarding. I was told it was jolly good fun ... this dune buggy was a monstrous thing. It could hold about 9 people and was open, with roller bars for protection. And it was FAST ! Woooheee !!!
We stopped a few times for the sand boarding, a higher dune every time. Now there were several techniques to this, but I went for the most adventurous (of course) ... going down in snow board stance, however not zigzagging, but straight down. To my suprise it went pretty well, whizzing down again and again, the envy of all, and ending up without too much eating of the sand.

Then the second dune. This one was much higher, but my confidence was at a peek. Smirking at the others going down "sled" style or trying the zigzag, I prepared for my big moment. With loud support from the others I speeded down the dune, faster and faster, screaming my lungs out. ALLRIGHT !!!
The end approached ... stopping hadn´t been on mind much and flashed through my brain that I actually hadn´t had one single succesful stop. Oboyoboyoboy !! I did stop ... in style ... making a perfect salto mortale, landing on my head, bouncing a few more times on my hip and leg until the final stand - or lie - still. (Yes, I didn´t think you could bounce on sand either).

Wowsers ... I decided to skip the third dune for a bit, but still did the fourth, truly HUGE, in zig zag style ... mucho mas lentos :-).

When I woke up the following morning, my body presented me with a unique combination of physical sensations:

• Surprise surprise ... a raging headache
• Muscle soreness all over my arms, shoulders and whatmore from trying remain inside the dune buggy
• Muscle soreness in the rest of my body because of the sandboarding
• Painful left hip and leg from the sand bouncing
• A neck as stiff as a sandboard
• Annoyingly sunburnt shoulders and upper arms
• Oh yeah, and a nasty cold from the speed in the buggy ...

Try to imagine the sound coming out of my mouth when I tried to get up ... try again, think more elephant ...

However, this was nothing compared to the horror I had to endure the following day. Having taken the bus to Pisco, I hobbled through town looking back at my hair being dragged on the streets. Yes, it was time. I had to have a Haircut. Understand this, since I was 12, I had gone to the same hair cutting thingy. Nobody else had ever touched my hair. I was scared shitless. (Remember, even Super Grover is afraid to have his hair cut).

They already saw me coming, sharpening their tools of death in the glistening sun: the Barbers. Hey wait a minute ... this is cool. Of course, male barbers ! No mere female is allowed here to touch the hair of a MAN. That is a MAN´s job. (For you non-Dutchies, in Holland 99% is female). I sat down in Carlos´s chair, ordered my flavour of the month and off he went. Fast, professional, and beter still ... we talked football ! I can never do that back home. With his infinite football knowledge he said, yes, he knew Feyenoord. Second in the tables at the moment. And he was pleased to inform me that Barcelona trashed Real Madrid 3-0.

And the result after paying 5 soles (just over 1 euro!!!) ... yes, I am back to being the God-Man of old. Walking back to the hotel I passed the tour operator I booked a tour with earlier, and the little fellow working there, overtly gay, asked me out for a beer right away. There you have it !

[stud again]

It doesn´t end here, but I will spare you the story of the boat tour to the Ballesta Islands where I had to put up with a boat full of tourists (bah!) and customary treat-you-like-a-child and never-shut-up ´guide´ ... I want to go hoooome ... ;-)

Lima & Caral - Impressions

The Past and the Present

What is it that attracts me so much about history ?

I believe my real interest got sparked by my high school first grade history teacher, who would tell us so vividly about ancient Mespotamia and Egypt. I didn´t follow it up though, choosing the ´Way of the Computer´ for my future. But the last few years it has come back ... big time. Spending my free time with my nose in the books, and better still, spending my travel time in the places where things actually happened. And the more I read and saw, the more I started to understand. Not only the world of yesterday, but also (and especially) the world of today. It might be a cliché, but history does repeat itself. And the fascination only grew with that.

Usually, the start of history is defined as the time we humans started recording our comings and goings in writing. The need for writing came from accounting at the start of more complex economies, where people stopped solely spending their time providing food and all other requirements for themselves and their families, but also started specialising: producing food, making clothes, making pots, etc, all became specialised professions, whose products needed to be traded.
This brought people together and created the first cities. And where many people are together, a form of higher authority developed to keep everything under control, mostly in the form of religious movements who built stone monuments to strengthen their power.

These developments, also called the start of civilisation, are interconnected and (as far as we konw now) first appeared in southern Irak (Mesopotamia) around 3000 BCE, shortly followed by ancient Egypt, and a number of centuries later in India and China. From my adventures you have already discovered how rich the history of Peru actually is (and haven´t even been in the main Inca lands yet), but the beginning of civilisation in South America was much much later ... until a few years ago when Caral was discovered, 200km north of Lima in the coastal desert.

Caral, a city of stone pyramids as old as those of Egypt, evidence of temples, specialisation, trade with the mountains and the jungle far away. And even an accounting system. A "Quipu" was found here, which is a series of knotted strings, that was also widely used by the Incas 4000 years later. (Interestingly, in Peru, the accounting systems never turned into ´proper writing´ as it quickly did in Irak and Egypt. And neither was pottery or metal working developed here).

I visited this site yesterday and it blew my mind. Imagine a city of more than 3000 people which was as ancient to Alexander the Great as he is to us. I must admit my fascination for all this might make it seem better than it would be for most people (a few piles of rock maybe), but I was in awe. There are 7 main pyramids, between 10 and 30 meters high. People are restoring them at the moment, rebuilding the pyramids with the original stones, and will be for quite some years to come. It has actually just opened for tourism (they were building the baños as well). Houses were found, evidence for human sacrifice, food, reed bags in which they moved the stones, and even the stone quarry itself, on top of which they built another temple. And one of the most interesting buildings they uncovered is (Rachel, are you reading this?), a small music amfitheatre. They have found over 50 musical instruments and inscriptions of musical performances.

I have seen quite some sites now in this fine land, but Caral was by far the most impressive. I wonder if the Incas can top this ...

Enough of the past (for now). The rest of my second stay in Lima I spent with the lovely Rachel, who is teaching music to high school students in Lima for 4 months (and is almost done). I met her in Huaraz many years ago it feels as we did the Santa Cruz trek (the first one) together.
She showed me that Lima also has a nicer side to it, Miraflores, Barranco and the seaside. And I finally had my birthday cake ! :-)
On Saturday night we went to see a "peña", a show of Peruvian folkoric dancing. It was great ! They performed music and dances from all over Peru (and let the public dance in between dances). An extremely good show and an extreme challenge for a budding photographer ... those stupid dancers didn´t want to keep still ...

As a final note, the rumours that I have lost weight are grossly exaggerated. I am eating fine and retaining my slim figure as always. And I have decided to take a holiday from my travels. The next few days I can be found in the desert oasis of Huacachina, posing that fine slim body of mine in the comforts of a hammock. There !

Chiclayo - Impressions

The Chiclayo pictures. The last two are not by my hand, alas ...

Zandhappen (Eating Sand)

As I start writing this, my ears are still full of sand (although my mother might argue they always have been), the result of my last days around Chiclayo. Chiclayo itself was not much to my liking, I must say. Not the biggest (still 400k people), but certainly the most modern city I have seen here, but it just doesn´t work, the town I mean. For everything you want to do, you end up walking all over town for hours to get or do it ... Bulldoze it all, think it through this time and then rebuild it, I say !

And it´s not like I don´t do enough walking already. I actually had little think about that today, why I do that, walking everywhere. When I figure it out, you will hear it in these here pages of course!

Let´s refresh your memory a bit. We are at the coast again, what in this parts means "desert". Do you still remember the Moche ? Fierce bunch of guys and girls who dominated the entire north coast of Peru around the year 500 ? I visited their main capital, the Huacas de la Luna y del Sol in Trujillo. Well, the local capital 200 kms up north is called Sipán and there is something special about it. It has the same weathered Huacas, but in 1987 they found a grave, an another, and another, and a few more ... and two of the graves were of local warrior-priest-rulers, the big shots. And the biggest shot they call "The Lord of Sipán" or "El Señor de Sipán" (almost like Señor Hans).

So my first sandy day here was examining these Huacas and the graves, which were kept open with replicas of the findings within, and then speeding towards the town of Lambayeque, where they have built a brand new museum to house all the objects they found in the graves. And what a museum ! "El Señor de Sipán" is considered de "Tutanchamon" of Peru, but the Egyptians can take an example on how to build a museum for something like this. They show everything, copper and golden jewelry, clothing, pottery, weapons and ... the skeleton of the man himself. Lordly stuff ! I was not allowed to take pictures ... yes I was very disappointed, but that couldn´t dent my sense of awe. This is a must see in Peru. (On the right there´s a link to the official site of the museum. It´s in Spanish, but try it.)

The Moche (or Mochica) came to their end around 700 and here around Chiclayo and Lambayeque a local people took over. They were called the Lambayeque or Sicán people and they built a huge city of adobe in a sand forest north of here at Batan Grande. A little thing about "adobe". Adobe is mud brick. It´s essentially dried mud with grass or straw. Most of the desert civilisations in Peru built their temples in mud brick (and most people still use it). The trouble with this, is that it erodes pretty easily. That´s why you see these weird grooves like river valleys in them in the pictures. They ARE little river valleys ...
Now this sand forest was huge and I decided to walk (duh), going from high point to high point until I saw the huacas rising above the forest. This sand forest was like our dune areas in Holland. A lot like it actually (but then bigger), so I felt at home right away. I ended at the large Huaca del Oro after four hours and decided to take the road back (1 hour ...). It was tiring but very cool, another "discover the temple yourself" day :-)

Remember "El Niño" ? It happens once every many years and they very probably had one around 1100, which killed off the sand forest city. The Sicán people didn´t give up though and built a new one just around the corner at the current town of Túcume. No 5 hour walks required this time, thankfully, just a little stroll through the town (where the local 4 year olds were having a protest march, hilariously cute!). From the holy hill there was a nice view over the 10-20 pyramids littered onto the sandy landscape.

But I didn´t linger long, more sand awaited. A nice afternoon on the windy beach was my reward for all the sand eating in former days. And so am I back to emptying my ears into this keyboard here before me ... my bus to Lima leaves tonight. Just north of Lima, one more sandy adventure awaits, a very special one: Caral ...

Chachapoyas - Impressions

One little thing before the pictures. It seems more SMS messages were sent for my birthday than I finally received when I got to Chachapoyas. Only one got through in the end. (And yes, I am more popular than one SMS on my birthday ... at least 4 or 3 or something). So if I haven´t reacted to these, you know why ... ignorance is bliss ;-)

And remember ... when you click the pictures, they get bigger ... really :-)