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Sunday, August 09, 2009

Chauchilla Cemetery

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 26, 2008.

Pati arrived back at the airport to collect us and we drove away to visit an ancient, Pre-inca cemetery. I was the last one in the van and so had to sit in the backward-facing seat. The bumpy road and lack of a stable horizon made my nausea return in full force. I leaned back, shut my eyes, and waited for us to arrive. After what seemed like an eternity bumping and sliding down roads made of compacted sand, we pulled up under a thatched shade overlooking a sandy plain that sloped down to a green valley lined with huarango, or South American carob trees.

At first glance I saw nothing but sand, rocks, and a few shallow depressions. Small wood-and-thatch sun shades dotted the plain, connected by rock-lined paths. My feet sank into the fine sand as we walked. Susi explained that this place was a cemetery for the local Nazca people, and that it had been extensively plundered by grave robbers, ancient and modern. Because of the dry conditions in Nazca (most years get less than 4 inches of rainfall) the graves were little more than shallow, stone-lined pits that were easily accessible to anybody who happened by. In the 1940s there was a severe drought in Nazca. The people applied to the government for help, and the government suggested that the Nazcans dig up the tombs and sell the grave goods to buy food. Many people did just that, taking the precious metals and fine textiles and leaving the mummies sticking out of the sand, exposed to the elements.

Looking across the plain, I saw now that each depression was in fact a disturbed grave. More touchingly, I saw that many of the bits of trash strewn across the sand were grave goods; pieces of pottery, cloth, cotton wrappings, and even small bleached human bones strewn about, destroying their archaeological value and displaying an appalling lack of respect for the people that lived and died here.

We made a slow loop around the cemetery, visiting all the thatched awnings. Underneath each one was a pit where archaeologists had gathered up some of the scattered mummies and their grave goods to show what an undisturbed burial might look like. Susi told us that the Nazca people believed their loved ones weren’t dead as long as they remembered them, so they regularly visited and cleaned the tombs until the Spanish came and put a stop to it.

More pictures of Chauchilla cemetery (warning: includes photos of human remains) »

The Nazca Lines

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 26, 2008.

On the morning of May 26 I faced one of my greatest fears about the Peru trip. We left the hotel early and drove down rutted sidestreets to Nazca’s small airport, where we were to board a small plane for a flight over the Nazca lines. I was excited, but also afraid. I’m prone to motion sickness, and I dreaded the notion of getting sick on a tiny plane, but even worse was the thought of someone else getting sick.

Our first stop was a dingy concrete building across from the airport proper, where a dozen “airlines” competed for tourists. We passed shacks for “Aero Ica”, “Aero Condor”, and several others before stopping at “Aeroparacas”, where tickets were negotiated and purchased. We sat back down outside for a few minutes before our guide for the morning, Susi, announced that we would be flying right away. The butterflies in my stomach were busy waging war with flamethrowers and explosives as we bundled into the van and were driven back across the road and down to the airport entrance.

Nazca Tourist Airport is little more than a dusty field surrounded by a fence, and exists primarily to carry tourists on short trips over the lines, but it carries itself with the grandeur of a tiny JFK, complete with boarding passes, security checkpoints, and certificates stating that we have paid the mandatory airport tax. All these things were handled fairly informally - Susi told us the fancy new terminal with its carved wooden pillars, floor-to-ceiling windows, thatched roof had only been open for two weeks. A sign listed the things that could not be taken on our flight: explosives, batteries, aerosol cans, oxygen tanks, flammable materials, and paint. Who brings paint onboard a five-seater Cessna?

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Sunday, July 12, 2009

From Huacachina to Nazca, Peru

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 25, 2008.

We drove on through the desolate outskirts of Ica and stopped at a roadside restaurant in Huacachina, the only natural oasis in the Peruvian desert. There, towering dunes ringed a small green lake, maybe a hundred yards across and ringed with palm trees. Huacachina was developed in the 1940s and was once a popular resort or balneario, but now it looked run-down and rough. I read later that tourists who wandered too far away from the promenade were liable to be robbed in broad daylight by desperate locals. The area immediately around the lake seemed safe enough and was overrun by young families and couples on honeymoon. Aside from the water, Huacachina was known as a place for “extreme sports”. High up on the dunes we saw groups of tourists sandboarding (sliding down the hills on small modified surfboards) and tearing up and down in dune buggies. Pati asked if we wanted to do any of these things, but no one was interested.

Inside the roadhouse we sat down at a long table to eat lunch. I had chicken soup, served with lime wedges and hot rocoto pepper sauce, and seco, a beef and carrot stew with a side rice and beans. The soup was simple and delicious; strong broth, tender chicken that fell off the bone at the touch of a spoon, a whole hard-boiled egg and spaghetti noodles. The seco was equally tasty, and the beans reminded me of the Mexican home cooking my grandmother used to make.

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Sunday, March 01, 2009

Ica, Peru

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 25, 2008.

Early in the afternoon our Peruvian Mystery Machine pulled up at El Catador Winery outside Ica. The further we got from the coast, the higher and drier the terrain became. Already we were driving through low foothills the color and texture of old, crumbly chocolate. Every river valley was plowed into fields and dotted with more of the reed-and-stick shacks we had seen along the coast. Ica itself was little more than a large village, a disorderly cluster of crumbling buildings baking in the semi-desert heat.

El Catador was down a side street in a neighborhood of trash heaps, rusted cars and stray dogs. Glicerio parked the van underneath a shelter made of huge logs and thatched with some kind of palm fronds or reeds. I have no idea where they got such massive beams, as I never saw a tree higher than fifteen feet until we got to Cuzco. From outside, the winery looked disappointing and flyblown, but as soon as we stepped through the door it was transformed. Inside was a restaurant with picnic tables under a shady awning made of the same log-and-reed construction as the parking shade outside. The walls were brick painted with restful shades of red and white, and all the trim was painted white in the colonial style.

A young man named Jesús met us and led us back outside for a tour of the winery. We went down a set of stairs and down an alley. Jesús was dressed for work, with a dirty T-shirt, jeans, and a pair of heavy gloves. The back of his T-shirt read:
“Si a Ica vino,
y no tomó vino,
A que mierda vino?”

Which means, “If you came to Ica, and you didn’t drink wine, what the hell did you come for?”

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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Pisco, Paracas, and the Ballestas Islands

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 25, 2008.

I stumbled downstairs at 3:00 AM and into the empty dining room. A minute later a waiter stepped in and asked if I wanted toast. I stared black off into space as I ate, sipping strong coffee with milk and trying to wake up. Jiri and Alena came down a few minutes later, looking bleary eyed. Jiri gave me a gruff good morning. I went upstairs to brush my teeth, and when I came back down the whole group was waiting. At 3:30 a van pulled up; we loaded our bags and climbed in.

Lima’s streets were deserted at such an early hour. We drove through the southern suburbs and headed south on the Panamerican Highway. Night gave way to a hazy blue morning, enveloped in thick fog. Most of the time we were just up the hill from the ocean, but the fog was so thick we could rarely see the water. The landscape was stark and sandy, dunes scattered with mounds of pebbles, rocks, and garbage.

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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Lima, Peru (Part III)

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 24, 2008.

Inside the Church of San Francisco, I bought a ticket and waited around in a lobby with wooden benches for my guide. The English-language group had just left and wouldn’t be back around for a while, so I joined the Spanish tour.

Our guide was Julia, a thin, serious-looking woman with enormous bushy eyebrows. She had the brisk demeanor of a lawyer. Julia marched us from room to room in the monastery, pausing occasionally to announce, “Ahora apreciamos…” (Now we will appreciate…”). We saw paintings of all shapes, sizes, and styles, beautifully carved wooden altars, and intricate Spanish tiles called azulejos (“Brought from Seville,” said Julia).

In the monastery’s library we saw prayer books big enough for an entire room of monks to read from them at once. Finally we made our way down to the catacombs, but I found the atmosphere there disappointingly neat and tidy. Sure, there were bones, but they were all hygienically disassembled and put away. There were no armored conquistador skeletons moldering in niches or macabre Inca burial displays. Instead, the bones were sorted by type and stacked neatly in square holes. The whole thing looked more like a well-run timber warehouse than a charnel pit. The one truly impressive sight in the catacombs was a thirty-foot deep well filled with bones arranged in a spiral pattern. But of course they didn’t let me take pictures of that.

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Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Lima, Peru (Part II)

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 24, 2008.

On my first moning in Lima I slept very late. It was almost noon by the time I took a shower and went downstairs to see about a taxi.

“Where can I find a cambio (money exchange)?”, I asked the front desk girl.

“Just a minute,” she told me, and shortly thereafter a small man wearing a bright orange vest walked in. The desk girl explained to me that this man was a roving cambista and would give me a better rate than the bank or a casa de cambio. I gave the man a handful of 20-dollar bills and he counted off a roll of worn soles. I thanked him and he disappeared out the front door as quickly as he had come.

“You should never do that on the street,” the desk clerk cautioned me. “We only deal with that man because we know him.”

The bellboy hailed me a cab. The driver’s name was Charlie, and he greeted me by blasting a “New Kids on the Block” tape.
“This is from the 90’s!” he said.
“I know, I remember it being on the radio when I was a kid.”
“How old are you?” He asked me.
“Twenty-four,” I said. He stopped the tape and put in some 80’s music instead. I think it might have been INXS.

We got on the freeway.
“This is called the freeway!” Charlie announced, pointing at a sign indicating, “Via Libre”. I nodded.
Charlie’s driver’s seat was surrounded by a wire cage. His windows were down and he was driving at 60 or 70 miles an hour, so half of his words were drowned out by the roar of traffic. He asked me lots of questions, and I nodded a lot.
Charlie asked me what life was like in the United States. I never know how to answer this question. How do you sum up an entire life’s experiences in a couple of sentences, especially from the back seat of a taxi going 70 down the Via Libre?

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Monday, February 02, 2009

Lima, Peru (Part I)

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 24, 2008.

On the plane from Fort Lauderdale, most of my fellow travellers seemed to be Peruvian (or at least not American). I sat next to José, a friendly accountant who looked like a young Hugo Chávez, and his pretty daughter María. María was upset because a snippy male flight attendant made her check her bag. They both spoke excellent English, but they allowed me to answer them in my rusty Spanish.

It was a long flight, and I slept fitfully. We landed early in the morning and I waded through a crush of tour drivers, taxi touts, and assorted other people with signs. I waved away shouts of, “Taxi! Amigo, taxi?” until I found Walter, a tall man with grey hair and thick-rimmed hipster glasses. He held a sign with my name on it, and the name of “Greenberg, Eric”.

I introduced myself and we chatted a bit while we waited for Eric Greenberg. Nearly an hour passed and he didn’t come. The arrival lounge emptied out and employees began roping off and cleaning areas of the floor. After verifying that there was no one stuck in customs and paging him repeatedly, Walter finally decided Eric Greenberg wasn’t coming.

We left the airport and got into a small white van. As we drove through Lima’s suburbs, Walter named each one for me. Callao, where the airport was; San Miguel, home of brightly-lit casinos and “Pollo a la Brasa” restaurants; Pueblo Libre, a slum; San Isidro, a residential neighborhood; and finally Miraflores.

On the way there we talked food. Walter laughed when I told him most Americans would never eat cuy (guinea pig). He told me about the native food ceremony called a Pachamanca. I told him that Peruvian food was gaining a reputation in the United States, and that the restaurant T.G.I. Friday’s had just introduced a new menu item called “Peruvian Pollo y Papas”. As I was trying to explain the meaning of “Thank God It’s Friday”, we turned a corner. Walter smiled wryly and pointed out the giant neon sign a T.G.I. Friday’s. I laughed, but I was more than a little appalled.

It was 4:00 AM when we pulled up to the Hotel Carmel. I was dirty and tired after many hours of travel. For the first time in 25 hours I slept lying down.

Full set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daverodriguez/sets/72157605445867877/

Fort Lauderdale River Cruise

This post is based on a journal entry originally recorded on May 24, 2008.

I almost didn’t make it to Peru.

10:00 at night, on the way to the airport Ramada, Michelle was reading off a last-minute inventory of things I need. “Clothes? Check. Money? Check. Passport? Hmm… Umm… Shit.” Did I pack it or not? We pulled in to the hotel and I ransacked my bags. Not in my backpack. Not in my daypack. Michelle looked very grave. She assured me in her loving way that if we had to drive an hour back to Toledo to get it, we would. That would have put us back at the hotel after midnight, just in time for our 4:00 AM wakeup call.

My work bag was sitting on the back seat. Ordinarily I would have taken it inside before going to the airport. I looked inside, and by some miracle, the passport was there. I don’t remember putting it there, don’t even know why I would have. Maybe the cat put it in. At any rate, I was more relieved than I thought humanly possible.

Twelve hours later, I was in sunny Fort Lauderdale. I stepped out onto the humid air of the curb and a minute later my parents pulled up in their HHR. They looked the same as ever, my dad upbeat in shorts and a t-shirt, my mom looking tired and comfortable and glad to be someplace warm.

We drove north into the city and stopped at a place called Las Olas Riverfront. Las Olas is a two-story open air shopping plaza with restaurants, a small museum, and a boat that tours Fort Lauderdale’s many canals. After a breakfast of pizza, my parents and I sat at picnic tables outside a bar and sip Cokes and catch up. Not a lot happens Later that morning we trooped back upstairs and went to see “Bodies”, an exhibition of brightly-colored rubbery corpses in a variety of inappropriate poses. I have now seen what a skinless body looks like when playing basketball, and I can confidently report that a preserved body, sliced very thin, looks an awful lot like pancetta. To cap it all off, they had a complete circulatory system floating in a tank of mineral oil, quietly flaking off little bits of rubbery venous fish food. I was reminded that there’s a reason people have skin.

After our mid-afternoon grossout we got onboard a large boat called the “Riverboat Cruises I” and sat on the upper deck to take a cruise of Fort Lauderdale’s canal system. The so-called “Venice of America”, Fort Lauderdale’s watery back alleys are lined with giant mansions owned by everyone from Leonard Nimoy to the family that brought America Vicks Vapo-rub. We went as far as the dock where cruise ships depart for the Caribbean (sadly, there was no one in port that day except for a single “mega-yacht”), before coming back and eating dinner at an Irish Pub called Briny’s.

I spent several more hours with my parents and then then drove me back to the airport and dropped me off for my overnight flight to South America.

Full set is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daverodriguez/sets/72157605439487916/.