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Thursday, December 25, 2014

Decalage



In French, the word decalage means both time difference and jet lag.  To me the word evokes the slightly nauseous, hungover feeling that comes on in the airport after an overnight flight and sometimes lasts as long as a cold.  The detached feeling that life is out there, on the other side of a dirty window that you can't seem to figure out how to roll down.



There is a two hour decalage between Tacna, Peru and Arica, Chile, the two sides of our most recent border crossing.  There is some logic to this, I guess.  Chile is south, but also east of Peru, accounting for one time zone of difference.  In addition, Peru does not observe daylight savings time which is not surprising given the general lack of rules, timetables and infrastructure that is both maddening and charming about Peru. In Peru we had developed campers hours, waking early and going to bed early.  Though days were getting longer as we went south, our 6 am breakfast/ 6 pm dinner timetable served us well.

The crab Luc caught for dinner
In Chile, we were waking up with a start at 8 AM only to find the days overcast and the light slanted. Since north of Lima, we have been driving in the desert by day, sleeping by the ocean by night.  It seemed important to keep moving, though we didn't have a particular destination, and we kept putting off calling our friends near Santiago to let them know we were in Chile.  We didn't have plans for Christmas, but didn't want to impose either.  So more desert would go by, and another night at the beach, and advent calendars everywhere had fewer and fewer doors to open until Christmas, and we still had not called.


One of 3 fish we bought from fisherman who waited with us at a construction stop
The desert is an amazing place.  The Atacama, the driest place on earth, doesn't look much different to me than the desert in Southern Peru.  The roads are wider and faster in Chile, though, so a lot more desert goes by in a single day.  The Atacama has been a recurrent source of riches for Chile, with an uncanny ability to reinvent itself when the boom goes bust.  We drove by signs that pointed the way to abandoned mining towns and ghost ports, only to pass others where boats and trucks were lining up to ship off fishmeal or carry away some currently exploited ore from a mine.  In the desert, I read Desert Memories by Ariel Dorfman.  And when we were around Copiapo, a short book called Finding the Devil about the nearby San Jose mining disaster in 2010 from which all 33 trapped miner were eventually rescued.  (I am saving the recent official biography of the miners for the trip north).  I loved being in these places and imagining the experiences of other people who had been there.  It is my new version of audio books, replaying these stories in my mind as I drive.

The busy, windy mining town of La Negra
Statue El Mano - from the highway
Ariel Dorfman talks about the desert as being a place that forces reflection.  In Desert Memories, he comes to Antofagasta to revive the memory of a friend who was disappeared by Pinochet and consider his own place in the story.  For me, it was a place to keep the interior sound track blaring so I could keep at bay a closer examination of our obsessive routine.


Cactus in Pan de Azucar
Signs of a tsunami?

Learning to handle the big bike


Of course we did eventually call our friends, and I am writing this on the patio of Cristian Bauza's lovely home where we first visited three years ago for an amazing barbecue.  This house, a series of different buildings, has stayed in my mind a one of my favorite design-build homes.  He has since married and moved into Vina del Mar about 30k from here with his new wife, and her daughter and mother.  They come out here on the weekends he comes down from Valle Nevado.  We met them here two days ago for another incredible Chilean barbecue, and after a few beers he offered to let us stay here for a long as we like.  He and his family headed back to Vina that night, and well, here we still are.

Cristian and Kata


with Soledad and Cristian
The next morning I woke up to realize that waking up later (and staying up later) feels normal, and that the haze between here an the dunes and the strip of ocean we can see is exactly that, and not another day of decalage.

Tomorrow, Christmas eve, we will make our way to Vina, probably by bus rather than fret in the taco (traffic jam) with the van or the bike, and join Cristian and Sole and Kata and Gloria for Chilean Christmas.

Christmas Music by the pool
On the 26th, we'll head into Santiago to visit our friends Diego and Katrina and their kids, then rev up the Chilean version of our desert by day ocean by night routine and drive south to the lakes.





Saturday, December 13, 2014

Southern Peru

Playa Roja, Paracas National Reserve
We took our time north of Lima because we wanted to pass through the city on a Sunday morning when the traffic would be lightest.  This gave us the chance to spend a few days in the Lomos de Lachay National Reserve.  We had beautiful campsites and a great day of hiking, which was very welcome.  There were lots of flies, but in ten minutes, each armed with a section of El Comercio, we could eliminate the buzzing.  It was also too hazy to get a good picture, but from this strangely green place in the desert, you could see the ocean about 5k away.

Falcon in Lachay

Hilltop Jesus, blessing the park

Jesus Jewelry
Lachay trail
Lachay trees
Lachay Jen

Lachay flowers

Cactus at the Info Center
Campsite
Campsite sunset
From Lachay, we spent one more night north of Lima.  Unlike other travelers, whose destination is Lima, our goal was to avoid it.  We found a place about 20k north on our GPS, the EcoTruly Yoga Planetario Hostel and RV Park, where we were greeted by a monkey.  Besides camping and RV parking, the EcoTruly turned out to be a Hare Krishna monastery and retreat right on the ocean.  We had a tour, met some nice people, ate in their restaurant (good vegan but tiny portions) and learned a lot.  I was glad we stayed there.  We declined the option to stay for $5.00 each by contributing 4 hours of labor, but it was still a great deal.

Monkey at the ashram
Trulys (conical shaped buildings)
Learning a chant

Truly


We got a 5 AM start on our drive to Lima.  For me the scariest part was the pre-dawn fog on the switchbacks before the city.  Luc said that for him, it was figuring out how to deal with the collectivo taxis in the city outskirts who don’t hestitate to double park abruptly for potential customers (this means they stop abruptly in the center lane of the highway).  After a bit he figure out to stay left and power through; he has the biggest bike on the road, after all.  The Pan American highway goes right through the city, but it turns into a 6 lane city center, with buses, taxis, pedestrians and three wheeled carts loaded with produce or families darting in and out.  Oh, and it often goes from 3 lanes to two or one with no notice. In any event, we were through Lima and out the other side by 8 AM.  Sunday morning was a good choice, as there were few trucks on the road.

From Lima, we made our way quickly toward the border with Chile.  We only had a few days left on our car insurance in Peru.  So it was desert driving by day and beach campsites by night.  Not a bad way to travel. 

Luc and new friend at a gas station south of Lima
Playa Roja at Paracas National Reserve
Another Quinn shell

Playa Roja
We stopped in Nazca at the steel tower that provided a view of four of the geoglyphs called the Nazca lines (we could only make out two).  Luc’s comment was, “Is this some sort of joke?” Some of our friends had taken the air tour and had raved about their experience.  We were glad we spent the 2 soles each ($0.70) to climb the tower, but also glad we didn’t spend a half a day for the private plane tour.  Maybe we don’t know what we’re missing.

Nazca Lines
Puerto Inka
Unfortunately, the fisherman isn't Luc
Desert Ocean driving
Surfs up
Desert driving

We are now in Chile, and have experienced an unexpected dose of culture shock.  Until we crossed the border, I didn’t think much about the fact that we had seen virtually no high-rise buildings in Peru (though as noted, we don’t spend much time in cities).  Every town seemed in a state of perpetual construction or deconstruction.  Most buildings are made from adobe or red brick and built a story at a time.  Re-bar sticks up from the corners above the building ready for a second level whenever someone chooses to build it. In the meantime there is often a barking dog on the light-weight roof.  Other homes, especially in the desert, are made from straw mats, plastic sheets and rebar.  There are few signs of wealth, and many signs of how people get by with so little.  Any store with produce will have only a few of whatever they have to offer – a pile of 8 onions, a bunch of bananas.  In most shops, there are grills out front and you ask for what you want, so we had a chance to learn some vocabulary and play some charades.  There are many more 3-wheeled motorcycles (called moto-taxis whether they were taxis or not) than cars.  You can buy a moto-taxi for the equivalent of $1,000 US, so anyone who owns one is both the family driver and available for hire.  There was much traditional dress, but no ostentation.  One delightful exception to this was men’s haircuts, especially the younger men who often had elaborate designs shaved in. Too bad I don't have a final haircut picture.

Another night at the beach

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Ruined



As we are winding our way south down the Peruvian coast visiting pre-Inca ruins, I am simultaneously traveling down the Andes a hundred or so kilometers east with Dervla Murphy.  In the 1980s, she walked with her daughter, Rachel, and their mule, Juana, from Cajamarca to Cusco, roughly following the Inca trail and the path Pizarro took in the 1500s.



Previous blogs have created the impression that we are spending all of our time in Peru at the beach.  While it is true that we try to camp near the beach whenever we can, we have also visited fascinating (at least to me) archeological sites, museums, and otherwise famous places.


One of the beach highlights was a night we spent in Cabo Blanco.  In 1953, an American named Alfred Glassell, Jr caught a 1650 pound black marlin (the biggest black marlin caught with a fishing rod, ever) which reportedly inspired Hemingway to write El Veijo y la Mar and later to go to Cabo Blanco with a boatload of movie stars to film it.  Everyone we met over 30 years old said they remember him!


We spent a few days in Lambayeque while Luc changed a tire and did some tuning up.  Lambayeque is the site of the museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipán (around 1 - 500 AD) and the Peruvian government has created a world class museum.  (There is also an older, dusty one that I rather liked, too.)



One of the interesting things about the Tombes Real is that you enter from above, and experience the 12 royal tomb artifacts and recreations in the order that they were discovered by archeologists.  The void created by the section emptied by looters has been partially filled.  Apparently archeologist Walter Alva was tipped off to the existence of the tomb by a sudden flood of high quality gold objects on the black market.



Quite a number of the items were recovered, and there is a great photo of Walter inspecting the loot at the Miami airport with the proud customs agents.  We later took a bus out to the real Sipán site and experienced the enormity of the place.  Between the looters and El Niños it is a bit worse for wear on the outside, but still a fascinating visit.



We also followed our guidebook to the rustic Rancho Santana about an hour out of town where we spent a day on horseback.  We rode in a desert forrest and stopped at two small archeological sites.  It was good to get off the more beaten tourist path and have a chance to talk briefly with some of the local guys doing archeological work.  The ranch is run by a Swiss woman, Andrea, and her camera shy husband Miguel.  While we were there there were two young German girls working as volunteers to help with the horses.  There are many volunteer programs in Peru.  It seems it is still possible to travel cheaply and safely as a young person and have great experiences doing something useful.









During our beach stay at Chicama (see Thanksgiving post), we had a great hike across dunes, desert mountains and beach, followed by Thanksgiving dinner provided in part by Brian the Burrito Guy from California and a bottle of the preferred wine of Peru:  semi-dry (read really-sweet) red wine.



In Huanchaco (near the city of Trujillo) we stayed near the beach at the Huanchaco RV Gardens.  We were there 4 nights and enjoyed the company of 3 different french-speaking couples (well, Jean Michel's wife was back in France with her mother, but she was there in spirit).






The daytime highlight was a day we spent with taxi-driver Herbert visiting several different ruins with Monique and André from Belgium (check out their blog - great photos - www.ushulaska.be).  By far the most interesting for us was our first stop, the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna (Huaca being the word for the truncated pyramid shape) where the Moche people lived in 1 - 500 AD (same group as in the desert forrest).  The sun temple was once the largest manmade structure in the western hemisphere at 45 meters high.  It was looted by the spaniards, and worn away by El Niños, but it is still an impressive site.  It is not open now, but you can see it from the moon pyramid that is visitable with a guide.  This moon huaca has 12 levels, of which you can see parts of four on the inside.  The outside is pyramid shaped, and the inside is an inverted pyramid.  Every hundred years or so, after the rooms in the current level had filled up with dead Moche royals and priests, all the open areas would be stacked with adobe bricks, leveled off, and a new story begun.



We also visited Chan Chan, a huge site of the Chimú people (they surrendered to the Incas in 1477) near the ocean in Trujillo.  The walls are 12 meters high and the site spans 28 sq kms.  Most of it was store houses, but there are several spectacular plazas, some with amazing acoustics - we heard a tiny woman sing a song/chant that completely filled the place - and a huge reflecting pool for moon worship. Like a number of other cultures from this area (including the Incas) the Chimú valued cloth over pottery (Luc would probably agree about the low relative value of pottery).  As a result, many of the carvings seem very two dimensional, as though they are cartoon characters created from an early computer game or someone's alpaca sweater pattern.  It is interesting to me that textiles, woven by women, were the highest valued product of these cultures.  There was also metalwork, but the goal was not strength for weapons, as in Europe, but for brilliance and flexibility to create religious adornments.  Gold was thought to be the sweat of the sun and silver the tears of the moon.  The Incas handed over plenty of gold and silver to the spaniards, but burned all their cloth so it wouldn't be confiscated.




The evening highlight in the RV garden was the amazing fresh-from-the-market fish dinners we shared with our friends.  In Huanchaco they still use these caballitos de tortora boats for fishing.

We are continuing our thread down the coast, today we vistited Sechín, near the town of Casma.  This one is from 1600 BC.  You can walk around the 12 foot outside walls and huge walls of carvings of a gruesome battle with the victors holding clubs and the vanquished with their guts spilling out.







Tonight we are parked outside the Casa del Arquéologo at the site of Carál.  This is the oldest (known) city in South America, dating from 2600 BC.  Though we are next to the ocean we are surrounded by desert.  However, the people of this valley are able to coax sugar cane, rice, corn, tomatoes, red peppers, potatoes, mangos and many other fruits and vegetables I could not identify out of the soil.

Dervla Murphy, in her book Eight Feet in the Andes, does a great job of weaving together the story of the Incas, whose trail they are following, and her own adventures.  She retells the famous story, for example, of Francisco Pizarro and his 168 Spanish soldiers who captured the Inca leader Atahualpa in Cajamarca on November 15, 1532 and defeated his 4,000 soldiers.  The following July, after collecting a ransom of 11 tons of gold and 26,000 pounds of silver, Pizarro unexpectedly executed Atahualpa.  Charles V, the Spanish Emperor (who did not hesitate to finance his empire building with ransomed and looted Incan precious metals) viewed Atahualpa as a fellow monarch, and was much displeased.

Most historians attribute the defeat of the Incas to superior weapons and horses, but Charles Mann (1491) contends that the most effective weapon the Europeans brought with them was smallpox, which had already killed Atahualpa's father, brother, sister-wife, and many of the Incas before the Pizarro brothers arrived in Peru.

What I love about Murphy's writing is that she is perceptive and opinionated.  Her book, Full Tilt, about riding from England to India on a bicycle is one of my favorites.  I would save 8 Feet until you are in the Andes.

Here is Dervla's entry from December 2, 1984 (which I read on the same date) as she, daughter Rachel,  and mule (together, the 8 feet) walked in the Andes.

Camp in the high puna, 2 December
Rachel never once complained but perhaps she was mentally composing a letter to the NSPCC about being expected to walk twenty-two miles on half a tin of sardines at 13,700 feet a week short of her 10th birthday.

She later writes, "we miss a lot, in the pampered West, by never knowing real hunger.  Rachel said that now she knows how a large percentage of the world's population feels all the time."

On our trip, we are certainly not experiencing the privations of the Murphys after they had run out of cash and encountered a political demonstration that closed the banks at the only place she could have cashed a travelers check.  Even Murphy realized their situation was both self imposed and of short duration. "The certainty of plenty and comfort lies before us and we can not even begin to imagine what it feels like to go hungry and cold for a lifetime."

Luc and I do often wonder aloud at how much simpler our life is, and at the same time the incredible luxury we travel in in relation to most of the people we see.  Our little van is vastly more commodious than some of the meager shacks we see that house multigenerational families and their family business.