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The internet is slow and expensive and often when we send a message which we later find has not gone. Likewise our telephone is expensive to use anywhere around South America so apologies for the limited communication.
Fri 16 Oct At sea
Sat 17 Oct Manta, Ecuador. A lovely day. The fishermen we saw in the port have brought their catch to the beaches. We take the shuttle into this small town where the Saturday market is in full swing. Loud South American music blasting from the trees in the square, beautiful young girls in tight blue jeans, super high stacked shoes and (super stacked) tangerine t-shirts parading for a glamour competition, market stalls selling assorted clothing, trinkets and food. The fresh fish are dangling by strings from the hands of the men returning to homes or cafes with their purchases from the beach. There is a competition for public seats in the park. Some are taken by groups of (sometimes toothless) local men sharing a bottle of whiskey or just sitting and the others by overfed Americans, Canadians and Australians from the ship trying to use the free WiFi. The local people use taxis or local buses to get around but look well fed and clean. Not many tall people in this part of the world.
Sun 18 Oct At sea and today I read "Saturday" a novel by Ian McKewan. A very powerful story about ordinary people and life changing events.
Mon 19 Oct Salaverry (the port for Trujillo), Peru. Arriving at 5am we are amazed by the thousands of birds sweeping across the sea to settle near our ship as it berths. They are grey pelicans and align themselves in V formation some distance away before making the descent onto water or pipes in the harbor. Today is damp and there is a chill in the air so we decide to take jackets on our Achaeological Trujillo tour. Our first impressions from the bottom of our double decker bus leave us very quiet. Household and building site rubbish border the roads; rows of shacks made of cardboard, plastic or discarded pieces of timber. We are puzzled by what appears to be hundreds of jails. We learn that everyone builds a wall around their property to deter squatters and what we are looking at are factories surrounded by high walls topped with razor wire and the occasional watch tower. As we continue our journey we still see walls but the space within is empty, then finally we see front walls only with nothing behind them. These are substantial walls and must cost a great deal but the end result is mystifying when the average wage of cane cutters is US$15 per day. (Private school tuition costs between US$20 - $1000 per month.) The financially deprived live in straw houses and aspire to an adobe (mud & straw baked in the sun) shack and when life is good then a brick house. In our 7 hours of driving we saw maybe 10 homes that were of a slightly better construction, most were very simply made and very small.
This area on average receives rain less than 1 week each year and the production of corn, cabbages, asparagus, sugar cane and artichokes relies on irrigation fed from the rivers coming down the valleys from the Andes. Mostly, the area is desert with huge stony sand hills or rocky mountains and the main income derives from mining gold, silver and copper as well as shoe manufacture and artichoke exports. It is under some dome like sandy hillocks that the treasures we see today were buried.
El Brujo is our first destination, a series of temples built in about 300 AD by the Moche (1- 880 AD) who worshipped the sea and we walk up a steep hill at this coastal site to view this substantial adobe complex where "the Lady of Cao" was found. She was a 23 year old shaman of importance and her wonderfully preserved body is displayed in the museum below. The treasure buried with this lady included 7 types of printed textiles, two large sheets of linked gold plate coverings for her body and nose rings, earrings and necklets made of silver, gold and semi precious stones. There was a wonderful carved wooden eagle (300 - 600 AD) that probably sat atop a gold staff, arrow throwers made of gold and jewels and some excellent frescoes depicting the soldiers following two "gladiators". The gladiators were obliged to fight and the winner claimed the other's clothes and weapons and the loser was sacrificed in a public ceremony to appease the gods who caused too much rain to fall. This period coincided with a persistent El Ninja weather pattern.
Next stop was Chan Chan a World Heritage site covering 40 square kilometres and originally bordered by 7 metre high adobe walls. The interior was a veritable maze of rooms and public squares all divided by adobe walls and some walls still show the original relief motifs and the brightly coloured frescoes. There is a major restoration underway but the size of the site is so large it will likely continue for generations.
Our final stop was the Temple of the Moon and again a work in progress as we stepped inside what was essentially a pyramid of huge proportions. Here the frescoes were better preserved and followed a similar theme of sacrifice with fish, birds, the sun and moon symbols easily identified. This temple faced the Temple of the Sun which has been unearthed but not had the restoration done yet. Between the temples lay a city of perhaps 60,000 to 100,000 people in modest homes made of straw and adobe.
It has been estimated that 150 million adobe bricks were used in this construction.
Neil has had to limit his walking today and viewed the final temple from below. Panadol and Nurofen helpful for his knee but he will need an ortho appointment when we reach home.
Tue 20 Oct Callao (the port for Lima), Peru. More fishing boats but this port looks seriously industrial with container ships alongside and hundreds of new cars on the wharf. I can see thousands of homes from our balcony but only about 20 trees. I have been ignorant about rainfall on this coastline; it rains only one week per year so it is basically all desert.
There is a free shuttle bus available and we take it to exit the port area and find ourselves in a "secure area" where tourist police warn us it is dangerous to step away from the taxi pick up zone, a rather strange looking man wears a bright green mesh vest emblazoned with "BOUNCER" and a group of excitable taxi drivers in assorted battered cars that we are instructed to employ. We are a party of four and squeeze into a dump of a car with Daniel who has spent 20 years in the USA and speaks good English. We agree to pay US$20 for 4 people and off we go. A moment of panic when he leaves the main roads and takes empty roads in a poor section of Callao (Cay-ow). Again we are subdued when we pass houses made of rough timber, straw, packing cases or iron sheet, and especially so when we pass a huge jail for juveniles with walls nearly 10 metres high. Daniel gives a running commentary but it does not distract from his cheerful but insistent driving, cutting in, cutting off and running red lights. He drives us to an exclusive suburb halfway to Lima called Miraflores. This is a real surprise with very elegant shops and great looking restaurants to match any in Melbourne and all perched on the side of a precipice overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We hear that when the (political) prisoners who were isolated on a stony island we can see in the distance rioted the President of the day ordered that the prison be bombed !!! We travel to a local market area but Neil and I had not taken much cash so we put off buying anything which is a pity as the handcrafts were wonderful. Daniel had been concerned that his horn was not working (following an accident with a truck before he met us) but it mysteriously recovers and he has a fabulous time tooting his horn for the next 10 minutes. Having heard that the Chinese, Colombian and Mexican warlords run the show here, I am concerned when he cuts off a BIG black Jeep with some men hiding behind dark shades within. Back to the ship having seen some local life and we enjoy a bar b que on the open back deck with Margaret and John. Dinner is not under the visible stars however as there is a constant haze most days of the year due to the height of the Andes and the confluence of the two currents - hot from El Nino and cold from the Antarctic - in this region.
Wed 21 Oct Callao (Lima), Peru. Neil stays home today as there is at least 1.5 hours of walking and his knee is sore but John takes his ticket and we head for Lima in a new bus equipped with a careful driver. It takes 1.5 hours to reach to city and we start with a tour of the convent museum adjoining the Church of San Francisco. No photos allowed but the cloisters are beautifully tiled to about 2 metres in yellows and blues then there are frescoes above and intricately carved vaulted ceilings throughout. Paintings of the Stages of the Cross from the Reubens school, circa 1650-1740, decorate the refectory and there is plenty of gold, silver and emeralds in this church. We duck our heads to enter the catacombs and learn we are standing on 10 layers of human remains. John and I decide the humidity and low ceiling is too much and take the exit with 2 other men as the remainder of our group continues through the maze of tunnels under the church, expecting them to follow us in 10 mins. After waiting nearly half an hour we decide there must be a second exit but we are directed back inside and reassured "only one exit". From the courtyard outside the church we see riot police assembling and others disappearing down side streets with riot shields so feel it prudent to reconnect with our group ASAP. This month is the time for religious fiestas and a group of gowned priests enter the church followed by a crowd of about 200. The falconer meantime is letting his bird loose in the courtyard to scare off the pigeons while someone else brings crumbs to feed them. On the third excursion into the museum we finally join up with our group and it is off to the Cathedral at a fast trot which leaves the older man with his stick nearly two blocks behind the group leader. I pause to negotiate a purchase from one of the necklace sellers and suddenly there is a policeman arrives and observes the transaction from his Segway. We are good but I am a poor buyer on the run and what was presented to me as stone looks remarkably like plastic back in my cabin. I have made another donation to the community. The French Quarter and the financial sector of Lima are very grand and match anything in large European cities. The area around San Isidro and Miraflores is lovely too but the remainder of the city is still very poor and has no charm. Mostly it is iron barred windows, glass topped fences and window ledges and electric wires ready to shock an intruder. We leave the port in late afternoon as a fine mist comes in and admire the skill of our pilot as he turns the ship in a confined space just missing a container ship. The pelicans and other sea birds are down for their evening feed of fish in the water we have vacated and I think they maybe have a better life than some Peruvians.
Thur 22 Oct Coquimbo (La Serena), Chile is off the agenda as the area was badly affected by the recent earthquake. We have seen many UN vans, Humvees, graders and other earth moving equipment at the previous port waiting to be returned to somewhere.
Thurs 22 Oct General St Martin, Peru, in the Attaca Desert is our alternative port. There are a number of excursions (sea life on the Baleros Islands; sand buggy riding in the desert; Inca ruins and lunch in a hacienda; visit to a red sand beach) planned but we decide to take a shuttle to the very small village. We berth about 6.30am but there is the opportunity to view "The Candelabra", a geolith dug by man about 200 AD. It is a three pronged work of art somewhat like a trident on the face of this rocky outcrop and visible some distance out to sea. It is 170 feet tall and etched to a distance of 2 feet to reach the lighter coloured rock to give it luminescence when the sun shines on it. The misty cloud is still prevalent here so one presumes the sun used to shine on this artifact nearly 2,000 years ago.
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