Peru

Dateline – August 19th 2007, Somewhere off the coast of Baja California

Heading home…. Sorry for the long absence (again). For those of you who might have been wondering, the ship and all its passengers are all doing fine. We left our last Central American port, Guatemala, four days ago on the 15th. It’s exam day on the ship so the students are all hunkered down doing their last minute cramming and/or paper writing (well, mostly… some have already finished, and a handful are… well… less concerned with their studies). The faculty and staff are also cramming… cramming to finish their paper-grading, end of voyage reports and packing up. I’ve been helping Dawn with all of her end-of-voyage duties as Registrar, and also doing some last-minute sunning and relaxing. Tonight is the Ambassador’s Ball, where everyone lets their hair down and celebrates our voyage and the end of the term (except for the faculty who will have lots of papers to grade over the following 24 hours).

We were physically unaffected by the devastating earthquake in Peru Wednesday this week, as we had long departed the area, but emotionally it felt like a wrench of the heart. While it was centered on Pisco and Ica, two towns most SASers didn’t visit, we all felt as though the quake was a blow to people to whom we are now closer. That, of course, is one of the best things about voyages such as this, or travel more generally… It makes the world a smaller, more comprehensible, and more human place. Events in far-flung places no longer seem so remote… the tragedies of people on the other side of the world are no longer so easy to shrug off.

So, with thoughts for the lives ended or disrupted by the quake… Peru.

Dateline – Peru – July 24 – 28, 2007.

We docked in Callao, which is really now just a sub-city to Lima, and it was, as-billed in our pre-port lectures, a very poor and rough-looking place. We were discouraged by everyone, from US consular reps on down, not to set foot in this part of town. This was unfortunate, because we (Dawn and I) really love to just walk off the ship and meet people. Instead, we had to shuttle through Callao into Lima proper for our first day’s excursion.

It turned out though to be an excellent trip, mainly for our first stop which was the excellent private museum of pre-Colombian Art, the Museo Larco. The grounds were beautiful with lots of flowering plants, and the collection was extensive and thoughtfully displayed. We saw works in many media from most of the indigenous peoples of the Andes, Amazon, and coastal lowlands that make up Peru. I’ve posted a few photos here for your enjoyment… Out of consideration for some of my more tender readers, I’ve not posted any photos of some of the sexually explicit pottery that the Moche were apparently fond of producing.

We were also entertained by the Lima street vendors, who seemed especially eager to sell almost anything. Here, one guy who was selling plastic spray nozzles to passing drivers (you never know when you might need one!) is cooling off another guy who was selling self-help DVDs. This photo was taken by Dawn….

On our second day, we headed north to visit one of Peru’s many interesting archaeological sites, the Caral Pyramids. Two things to mention though about sights along the way…. The first photo below is one of the thousands of guard-towers that abut gates of most businesses of any size in urban/industrial areas of Peru. These date from the ‘70’s and ‘80’s when many capitalists feared widespread socialist revolution or, at least, attacks by the Sindero Luminoso. While I rarely saw any of them filled with guards, they are an eerie testament both to political violence (which was a real threat then), but also to the sometimes extreme ends such threats lead societies to take in the name of self-protection when those threats become more generalized fear (or perhaps when they are somewhat exaggerated by politicians for their own ends…).

I also wanted to mention the endless (it went on for dozens and dozens of miles) sprawl of squatters’ cities and hamlets all along the coast north of Lima. The land itself is very barren, with sandy and/or rocky soil and almost no vegetation. I still don’t know (I never got an adequate answer) what the economic pull is for those folks, as most of these little towns are too far outside of Lima for the residents to be trekking in… There did seem to be some mining/industrial plants, but these seemed to be out-sized by the population surrounding them. The existence of these people appeared to be very tenuous.

After driving for three hours along the coast through Lima’ notorious winter fog (el Garúa), we finally turned inland and broke into startlingly clear blue skies shining down on huge, arid mountains, and sand-dunes. We had entered the area of Caral…

While Macchu Picchu is justly famous for the grandeur of its surroundings, it is not nearly as old (by thousands of years) as the sacred city of Caral, which was relatively recently discovered, and is still under-going excavation (the gentleman pictured below was hauling sand off one of the structures). Caral is the earliest site of civilization (on a grand scale) in the Americas. It is contemporaneous with the grand-pyramid building empire of Egypt, and has been dated to 5000 BCE. Like the pyramids at Giza, the pyramids of Caral sit on arid heights abutting a lush river valley, which is still under cultivation with the same crops as those sown 5000 years ago. The evidence thus far seems to indicate that the Caral complex was primarily a site for religious observances and perhaps for quarters for priests, acolytes, etc. Most of the population likely lived and worked closer to the river. The quiet, clear air and sense of spirit emanating from Caral was incredibly moving…

As was our service visit the next day to the Ermelinda Carrera girl’s home in Lima. This is a home for several hundred orphaned, or temporarily sheltered, young girls up through their teens. We brought lots of school supplies and personal items to donate to the school and were prepared to help them do some painting, but instead of working we were lucky enough to arrive on the day that they were throwing a party in celebration of their Fiestas Patrias (equivalent to our Fourth of July). Some of the girls put on a folkloric dance exhibition, while we befriended the ones sitting near us. Maria de Dos Angeles (sorry, but there were no photos allowed at the home) was 6 going on 20 and she was at the home while her single mother was hospitalized indefinitely (Maria didn’t know what was the nature of her mother’s illness). When I sat down next to her she was crying and didn’t want to talk, but she apparently found her own way out of her sadness because she was soon questioning me, telling me jokes, and asking me to dance with her. She was also a very quick and instrumental thinker… when we were passing around a bag of balloons she wasn’t interested at all in the balloons and wanted the bag instead. I wasn’t sure why, until later when they started passing around trays of snacks. While others were limited in what they could eat by what they could easily hold, Maria grabbed double handfuls from each tray and dumped her goods in the bag. I hope that her mother recovers, and that Maria is as good at seizing the few small opportunities that her very limited circumstances might provide her…

On Friday the 27th, Dawn and I spent the day wandering around the center of Lima between Plaza San Martín and Plaza Mayor. While the Garúa was as thick as ever, the omnipresent gloom didn’t seem to make much dent in the spirit of the Fiestas Patrias holiday. Lots of folks were out and about, though many of them were still working, including the street peddlers like this woman and her infant (from whom we bought some sweets), and Maria Gloria who was keeping her friend company while she operated a sidewalk kiosk (where I bought a ribbon-pin for the holidays [many Limeños smiled and were clearly pleased when they noticed that I was wearing it]), this traffic officer smiling with Dawn, and these laborers busy gutting and refurbishing one of the older buildings east of Plaza Mayor.

Lots of folks though were hanging out in Plaza Mayor (the main Cathedral is in the background of the crowd shot… the picture of the woman is by Dawn) to hear some popular music groups play and sing, while the national police kept a watchful (and well-armed) eye on the crowds in front of the National Palace.

We also walked by the beautiful Baroque-ish Iglesia La Merced, and then visited the Iglesia and Convento San Francisco (with all the pigeons, and the enthralled little girl…) which is one of the oldest (16th Century) buildings in Lima, many of the others having been destroyed at one time or another by earthquake or fire. While we couldn’t take pictures inside, it was one of the best church tours we’ve ever had. The crypt, where the bones of thousands of poor parishioners are piled in low-ceilinged vaults, while eerie, still resonated with the echoes of the lives of those interred there.

On our last day, Saturday the 28th, we had a walk-about in Miraflores, one of the more ‘up-scale’ neighborhoods (city-lets) southeast of Lima proper. While we had a good time doing some shopping, the highlight was the fabulous dessert we had at Restaurant Astrid y Gaston. While there we had the pleasure of meeting Jacqueline and Bob (a med-student and on-air personality for Clear Channel, respectively) who were visiting Peru from Los Angeles.

While I was battling a cold my whole time there, and while the Garúa is as dreary as everyone says it is, I think that we found a vibrancy in Peru that will draw us back. There’s always so much more to see….