Agua Caliente Peru

The tiny tourist driven town of Agua Caliente has changed since I visited about two years ago.  It is still cramped, too many people crammed into a very small valley under continual threat of seismic instability.  In terms of what will happen if there is an earthquake, disaster does not begin to describe the outcome.

On the other hand the locals all go about life with a lot of energy, and most of them appear to be happy in their tourist sector jobs.  The other thing to notice is that the divide between the tourist side and the local side has blurred even more, making for a better experience for me.

Another change is the statues now showing up on the tourist side.  I have not given a thorough look on the local side to see if there are some on that side as well, but here is a sample of the pieces I noticed.  Almost all of these pieces appear to have been carved in place.

 

Machu Picchu the return visit.

So, I wanted to return to Machu Picchu, and my major excuse was to go back with a better camera.

The second time around, the trip was easier in that I knew what I was getting into and the run around getting both entrance and bus tickets was easy.

The climb was a little harder as I am not in as good condition as I was in last time.  I avoided going up to the gatehouse, and started from about 4 stories lower down.

So, in no particular order, a load of pictures from one of the most photographed places in the world.

You can see three distinct styles in this one picture.  In the foreground, carefully formed stone with no mortar, on top of the wall in the middle, roughly shaped stone with mortar, and in the distant background, megalithic stone with no mortar.

Taken from above, this shows the water channels with catchment basins, used in the domestic side of Machu Picchu.

Next post will have a few pictures of the altar of the Condor.

Urubamba

Pictures taken on the way from Cusco to Urubamba.

The crops most frequently grown in this area are maise, potato, sweet potato and corn.

Panoramic of Cusco.

I do not know if this will get edited down by the host, but here is a panoramic stitched from 5 photos taken from an over look of Cusco on the 16th.

It did edit this down on the upload.  The original has about 10x the pixels.  Still a nice image tough.

Chan Chan Peru

Chan Chan is the name for a set of ruins just outside of Trujillo Peru.  It is the original name of the place and translates as Sun Sun.  The city was a major and thriving place of the Chimu, but when they were conquered by the Inca in the late 1400s it slowly faded away.

When the Spanish came to power in the area, they established the walled town of Trujillo less then five miles away.  This makes me scratch my head a little.  They went through a lot of effort to establish a new town, wall it, dig wells and all of that instead of clearing out the sand from around the walls of Chan Chan.  the major difference would have been in the size and construction of the walls.  Chan Chan is from a pre-gunpowder era and though the walls are both high and strong, they are not designed to either withstand cannon nor have people walk along the top.

My view is though that they really did not need to withstand cannon in this area, but the adding of a walk way along the top of the wall would have been much less effort than creating a whole new wall.  In addition to that, it would have placed them on top of the looting grounds instead of five miles away.  The Spanish looted quite a few of the graves of Chan Chan, and records claim they took out approx the modern equivalent of $5,000,000 in gold.

The original colours of the place quickly fade when exposed to the elements, and what is left is the natural colour of the clay.  The dominant colours before time and exposure got to them were gold on the walls and bas relief items and white on the floors.

The wall on the right is the exterior wall, with a lower wall on the left separating it from the city and giving a road that went the whole way around the city.

Fish were one of the staple foods, and are shown in the stylized waves, while below them the pelican which the Chimu used to fish for them, much like the cormorant is used in Asia is also displayed in many places.

Fishing nets were also woven from the reeds pictured above, and were given much prominence in the decoration and construction of the walls and dividing areas, including use as windows in some of the domestic areas.

The well above is quite large and part of the area was given over the the growing of the reeds.  The wells were dug to around four meters below the average ground level and were very reliable both in quantity and high quality of water.  Over 17 wells were active in side the walls, with this one being an example of the larger ones, and I did not get the chance to photograph any of the smaller domestic wells.

For the rulers, tombs are unearthed above were created.  After internment, additional celebrations were held and objects of wealth were added for a period of ten years.  After that, the tomb would be sealed.

And last for this post, sea otters.

On the Road Again

I have not written on the blog in quite some time.

I spent a lot of the summer in Canada not doing much, merely hanging out with various friends and family.  It was very fine, but also felt a little bit like I was wasting my time, waiting for the traveling to start again.

I flew from Saskatoon to Lima Peru and then from Lima to Trujillo, and sat on my butt in trujillo not doing much.

So, it is time to get moving a little again, and time to post a few pictures, first from around Trujillo, then tomorrow a few from Chan Chan, a set of ruins just outside of Trujillo.

First up, a couple pictures from Plaza De Armas, the central public square of Trujillo.

The traffic through the square is quite busy, and one of the roads leading East-ish from the square is closed to vehicle traffic and is lined with small and medium sized shops.

My local guide on the walking tour of Trujillo also lead me to the university, the gate most used by the student is the following one, it was hard to get a decent shot and thus the two pictures.

And last up are a few pictures from the mosaic that goes around at least two sides of the university, a distance according to the guide of over two kilometers.  What is likely the largest mosaic in the Americas.

Pictures vrs words

It is quite true that pictures tell stories, and that they are worth many words, however pictures do not capture the full mood of the photographer.  Even the most evocative photos still skip the back story of what lead up to the photo.

I was traveling from Kamloops to Penticton, taking my time and using highway 97.  The morning was slightly cool, with very little wind.  The highway is an older one, but well maintained and I was really enjoying the ride.

There are times when the road seems to stretch in a good way, when the views take their time to unfold and you can see the view slowly alter from one great vista to the next, not zipping by in hurried glimpses snatched between vehicles and tricky turns.

Monte Lake lay on the right side of the highway, with the rolling edges of mountains behind it.  Pines reaching upward and patches of the hills covered in buffalo grass turning brown as the spring rains left and the summer heat hit.  The intense green of the willow and other shrubs lining the lake and the few patches of bull rushes growing around the edges.

The lake itself was not quite still.  Minor movement on the surface kept it from being a true mirror, but that added to the over all view, drawing your mind to the stillness implied.  The sun had not risen quite enough to hit the surface of the lake, but shone strongly on the slopes above it.

There were only two boats on the water that I could see, a canoe sitting placidly with two people fishing, and near them a small boat slowly leaving a wake behind it as it trolled across the lake with an electric motor.

There was a dichotomy involved, for the view because it called for a quiet, a total lack of modern traffic noise that was not happening.  The bike below me, the tunes playing in my ears, and the occasional other car or truck added their voice, but in my mind the scene called for silence and that is how I will remember it.

There was a pull out coming up, one on my side of the highway, and I could easily pull to the side and reach into the saddlebag for my camera.  It would have been a slight delay with no real consequence as I was not on a time schedule.

But I rode on instead, thinking at the time that I would try to paint the picture with words, allowing my words to give echoes of my emotions, rather than capture my mood with an image.