July « 2007 « Lanikai Underway

Peru Pictures, Part 2

Posted by Doreen in !Pictures, Inland Travel, Peru
Saturday, July 21st, 2007 @ 3:29 pm

More pictures from the Trujillo area and from Lima.

One of the hairless dogs that is a descendant of the pre-Colombian dogs in the area.

Fishermen heading out from Huanchaco to fish in their reed boats.

The gilded altar of the Iglesia de la Merced in Lima.

A mural in one of the side chapels of the Cathedral in Lima.

Choir and altar in the Lima Cathedral.

The plaza side of the Bishop’s house, next to the Cathedral in Lima. This is one of the better examples of the “hanging balconies” that are on many of the older Lima downtown buildings.

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Peru Pictures, part 1

Posted by Doreen in !Pictures, Inland Travel, Peru
Saturday, July 21st, 2007 @ 3:03 pm

Pictures from the Chiclayo and Trujillo Areas

At Sipán, a new tomb is being excavated. Site near Chiclayo.

The ruins of the pre-Inca mud city of Túcume. Site near Chiclayo.

Huaca de la Luna, the excavation of one of the outer walls. Site near Trujillo.

Chan Chan, the largest adobe city ever found. This is an area inside the Tschudi Palace. Near Trujillo.

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The famous “Nazca Lines”

Posted by Doreen in Inland Travel, Peru
Saturday, July 21st, 2007 @ 12:26 pm

See the Map!

Thursday July 19: this morning was our air flight over the pampas of Nazca and Palpa to see the Nazca Lines from the air. The flight was in a small four-seater plane with 3 passengers. The pilot banked over the large, light figures etched into the darker desert floor giving both sides of the plane spectacular views of the lines. Both Bill and I had our cameras clicking between looking. It was quite fantastic how the 2000-year old lines still show up to the naked eye and we both got some good photos as well. The lines are of three periods: the first are mostly rectangles, trapezoids and triangles, the second represent figures of animals and the third set are just lines. From the plane we also got some great views of the fertile river valley with its patchwork of green fields in the dry desert.

Friday July 20: we took another tour and learned a little more about the Nazca people and their “lines”. The tour was again with Juan, of Nazca Tours, who had been our guide to the cemetery ruins earlier. He is very knowledgeable. Today we toured the pre-Inca aqueducts and got a close up view of one of the many trapezoidal “Nazca Lines”. The aqueducts have been dated to 400AD and many are still in use today. The longest lengths of them are underground to slow evaporation in the desert heat. A series of wells, or “windows” with spiral walkways down into the aqueduct, serve as inspection sites similar to the manholes in the streets of today. Even today the farmers will crawl thru the aqueducts to remove accumulations of sand and debris. The aqueducts feed water into large covered pools for distribution, as needed, to irrigate the fields. The aqueducts get their water from underground rivers flowing down from the Andes and under the desert. During a dry period the Nazcas had discovered this underground water source and tapped it.

The “Nazca Line” that we visited today is one of the trapezoidal ones and seems to mark the underground river that feeds the aqueducts that we had just visited downhill.

We also visited the Paradones ruins. These are Inca ruins (much later than the Nazca) and contain the remnants of walls for artisan’s shops, animal barns and a watch tower. This is one of the many Inca fortresses built to guard the lands that they had conquered.

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On to Nazca, Peru

Posted by Doreen in Inland Travel, Peru
Saturday, July 21st, 2007 @ 12:06 pm

See the Map!

Tuesday, July 17, after a day of rest in Lima and some internet access, we moved further south today. We are in the small tourist town of Nazca. It was a seven-hour bus trip starting with a 4:30AM departure from Lima. The trip continued thru the coastal desert, first along the coast and then moving inland a bit to climb some of the low, barren hills just to the east. Before getting to Nazca, the Pan American Highway passes thru the Nazca Plains, one of the sites of the famous “Nazca Lines”. These are designs that the early inhabitants of the area etched into the rocky desert as gifts to their gods.

After we checked into a hotel room and had lunch, we checked out several tour agencies before scheduling a flight to fly over and see the lines. The flight was for early Thursday morning when the sun would be low enough to bring them out. We also took a 3PM tour today to the pre-Columbian Cauchilla Cemetery site. In the past, the graves had been ransacked by grave robbers and the mummies, pieces of cotton cloth, broken pottery and bones were left scattered over the site. More recently the site was protected by the government as an Archaeological Park. The graves were unburied and the remains replaced back into them and then they were left open for tourists to view, although each is covered with a sun shade to guard against further sun damage.

This tour also included a traditional gold-extraction demonstration and visit to a ceramics shop. Both shops were back in town. The gold shop had bags of crushed ore from which gold was extracted in the old manner, using large quantities of mercury! The small amount of gold gotten this way is used for making jewelry. The ceramics shop also uses the pre-Columbian methods. The craftsman was making copies of the pottery recovered from the graves and his pieces were quite fine. The guide for the day was quite full of explanations and spoke fluent English, German, French and Italian, as well as his native Spanish of course.

The town of Nasca is un-remarkable itself. An earthquake in 1996 flattened most of the older adobe structures and the town has been rebuilt with modern earthquake-resistant methods using cement, rebar and bricks. Additional new construction continues today. Some of the poor outlying areas are being slowly rebuilt with adobe, but many of the dwellings are of woven mats (even the roofs), although it rains so infrequently that shade is more important than the water proof-ness of a roof. The mats are woven of either split bamboo or reeds, while the material is still green and then the mats are dried.

East of town is the largest sand dune in the world. It is climbing up over the hills in that area.

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Museums of Lima

Posted by Doreen in Inland Travel, Peru
Monday, July 16th, 2007 @ 4:12 pm

The reason to spend time in Lima is to visit the many great museums. Bill and I visited two large Archaeological Museums while here and a smaller stamp museum in the old post office.

Friday we visited the Museum del Nación. We spent four hours checking out the history of Peru beginning with the early cave paintings and progressing thru the many civilizations leading up to the Incas – who only ruled for 100 years before the Spaniards arrived. We had seen parts of this before while in Chiclayo, but this helped put various parts together better.

Sunday we spent 5 hours in the Museum of Anthropology, Archaeology and History. This museum covers a slightly longer period of time as it begins with the hunter-gatherers crossing into the Americas and ends with the election of the previous president (not the current one). Much of the museum is devoted to pre-Columbian civilizations, covering much the same information as the Museum del Nación, but it contains much more original pottery and cloth pieces. One wing was devoted to the Spaniard’s arrival and rule and another area dealt with the revolution and the struggles of the Republic. One particularly interesting room contains a time-line around three walls, from about 1800 to 2004. Above this line were listed important events in Peru’s history and below the line were important world events from a Peruvian’s point of view.

We left the museum quite tired and caught a taxi back to Plaza San Martin. The next two hours were spent relaxing with a few beers while we watched the Soccer America’s Cup finals at a sports bar.