Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Sacred Valley of the Inka





Thursday, May 8 – Day 142
I toured the Sacred Valley of the Inca’s today. The valley runs from Pisac to Machu Picchu and beyond. The Wilcamayu River runs along the valley floor all the way to Machu Picchu, eventually enters the Amazon, and ultimately flows into to the Atlantic Ocean. The name means “river of life” and Wilkamayu is also the name that the Inca’s used for the Milky Way.
Pisac looks kind of like a mini-Machu. The terraces are believed to have been used more as an agricultural laboratory than for production. Each terrace has its own micro-climate, and it is believed that the Inka would experiment with different strains of crops here. Peru has 3,000 different kinds of potatoes, and 800 different types of corn. Outside the ruins I had a roasted corn on the cob that had individual kernels the size of sugar cubes.

The three Inca villages of Cusco, Pisac, and Pikillacta form a perfect equilateral triangle on a map. Each leg is precisely 30 km long, and all three cities are at the exact same elevation. And nobody knows why. There is no line of sight between the cities because of the mountains, and this was done over 500 years ago. I think it’s probably just a coincidence.
Ollantaytambo contained the most important astronomical observatory in the Incan empire. Pisac also had an observatory, but the Spaniards destroyed them both. They wanted to convert everyone to Catholicism, so they busted up everything that they thought the Inka used for religious purposes. They didn’t know that they were rather precise scientific instruments.




Wednesday, May 7 – Day 141

I got away from the tourist area this morning and found the central market. When you walk in, there are about 30 ladies selling fruit drinks that they make the fresh right there in front of you. Is that kind of like Jamba Juice? Anyway, Rosaria mixed me up a mango and leche shake that filled my glass twice and cost less than US1.00. Walking through the market, you can see that these people don’t lack for anything in the way of food. It’s all here, and it’s probably fresher than anything we can buy from our grocery store in the US. I think that some of the pigs and chickens were probably alive yesterday, and I’m sure that they don’t use a lot of chemicals and pesticides on the fruits and veggies.
Outside the market (and in other places around the city), there are all these cell phone chicks. In the picture, you can see that the girls have three or four cell phones with bright green lanyards. They dial the local number for you and time your call with a stop-watch, then charge a rate that that kicks the local pay phone company’s ass. It’s nice to see a little capitalism at work here.
People have been living in the Cusco valley for some 10,000 years, and this was the center of the Incan culture. From here, the Inka ruler managed an area that included most of Peru, and some of Bolivia, Ecuador, northern Chile, and northwestern Argentina. At its peak, the civilization had around 9 million people. The culture’s most important deity was the Sun, and Qorikancha, the “Temple of the Sun” here in Cusco was the most sacred shrine. It once contained fabulous treasures, however, it was all looted by the Spaniards, melted down and shipped home.
The Spanish conquered the city in 1532, and they began construction of the city’s main church two years later in 1534. The main “cathedral” is built on the site of the last Inca king’s residence. The Spaniards demolished a number of buildings and temples in the nearby villages and brought the stones to Cusco to build the Catedral, and it took 90 years to complete.
The church is really stunning, but inside are even more amazing artifacts – like the original cross that was used in the very first mass after the conquest. There is line-up of life-sized portraits of the current, and all the former Bishops of Cusco. Since the current Bishop is alive, he’s wearing a smile in his portrait. When he dies, it will be replaced with another portrait with a more somber face. All of the dead Bishops are entombed in the church’s catacombs.
One of the most revered objects in the church is the “black Jesus”. It’s a close to life-sized crucifix that’s made of wood, but Jesus is black. There was a terrible earthquake here in 1650, and being a Spanish colony, the people of Spain prayed to the crucifix for the quakes to stop. In 1725, the crucifix was brought to Cusco and placed in one of the alcoves of the church. This is the city’s most revered religious icon, and Jesus wears a sterling silver crown of thorns and an ornate original Inka “skirt” (I don’t know what they call the thing). Every Thursday, they change all the flowers and the “skirt”. Every May 25th, crucifix it’s taken out on a procession, kind of like the Virgin del Carmen in Santiago.

Cusco, Peru




Tuesday, May 6 – Day 140

Cusco is a really cool city, and it’s been around for nearly 1,000 years. With a population of 500,000, it’s also fairly large. The elevation here is 11,150 feet, and a lot of people get altitude sickness – no wonder I felt dizzy carrying my stuff out of the airport. The locals suggest drinking Coca tea to help acclimate. It tastes pretty much like any other green tea to me, but the crazy thing is that you can buy great big bags of coca leaves here right on the street.

Plaza de las Armadas is a beautiful square with two large churches. I walked into one of them this evening, and there was a service going on. Besides the service, people were making confessions, and others were praying at the various altars in the alcoves. At one end of the church was a large silver cross about 10 feet tall. There were families lined up to pray, and when it was their turn, each member would put a hand on the cross while the father said the prayer. And this is on a Tuesday night.

I went to a restaurant across the street from my hotel and had an alpaca steak and fried guinea pig for dinner. The alpaca was great. The guinea pig, on the other hand, took a fair amount of work to eat and didn’t seem to have a lot of meat on it. It’s is usually served on special occasions and they deep fry the whole animal, including the head (note the sprig of parsley in the pig's mouth), then serve it up on a plate or on a stick. I think that it’s a different animal than the guinea pigs that we know as pets, but I’m not really sure.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Calama

Monday, May 5 – Day 139

I catch a bus to Calama, and prepare for the worst. If I can’t get a tourist card here, I’m just going to show up at the Santiago airport tomorrow morning and be an ugly American until they let me on the plane.

Inside the front door of the police station is a surly officer that is not interested in trying to understand my problem or my broken Spanish. He gets tired of me and just points to a door down the hall and tells me to go there. Inside, to my surprise, there are three pretty attractive girls. They’re also friendly, and get a laugh out of my situation – I really don’t think that they get a lot of tourists in their office. I told them that I’d take them all to lunch if they took it easy on me, and bam!, two minutes later I have my replacement card and we're going to lunch. The policeman at the front looked a little pissed as I walked out the door with the three girls, but hey, that’s what he gets for being a jerk.

Calama exists because of copper mine here. The Chileans claim that it's the largest open pit mine in the world (I think it may be the largest producing mine, but the Kennecott mine is Utah is bigger - like anyone really cares about mining anyway). Anyway, it's a really ugly place, and I'm happy to just be passing through.

Geyesers of Tatio......And a Problem








Sunday, May 4, - Day 138

I got up at 3:30 am to catch a 4:00 am bus to go see the Geysers of Tatio. The geysers are 140 kilometers away, and sit in the shadow of Cerro Tocopuri, an active volcano with a summit of 5,808 meters (over 18,000 feet). At 4,321 meters (over 13,000 feet), the geothermal field we visited is the highest in the world. They are at their best between 6:30 and 8:30 am, which is why you have to leave at such an un-Godly hour. We got there just as they were beginning to spew, and it was -15 degrees celsius, or about 5 degrees farenheit.

There is magma 3,000 meters below the field, and the ambient temperature and air pressure moves the ground water around in such a way that they meet every morning and produce the steam. Since you can just walk around on this field, I moved around from vent to vent keep warm until the sun finally cleared the top of the volcano.

On the way back, we stopped by a little village called Machuca. Here, with the help of the government, some native people have built a relatively new pueblo based mostly on ancient traditions. They have always used this land, and now they get solar power and a few other modern conveniences. I kind of think that it is set up as a tourist trap, but there’s nothing here to really do but walk around and look at the church.

I thought about going to Bolivia for a couple of days because it’s close. It seems, however, that I’ve lost my Chilean Tourist Card, which is a pretty big set-back. Though I’m not sure what the card’s purpose is, you have to have one to leave the country. They give you the card as you enter the country, then you have to give it back when you leave. Nobody else will ever ask to see it, and it doesn’t appear that the border agents do anything with it, other than to stack them up as busloads of people cross into Argentina, Bolivia, or Peru.

To get a new card, I went first to the local police here in San Pedro. The officer there said that I need to see the “aduana” (tax) people, and they have an office that is not far away. The lady in the first office pointed me to the other side of the building, and of course, they pointed me right back to where I started.

From there, I was referred across the street, and that office referred me to office next door. So on my 5th stop, I finally met someone that seemed to know what was going on. Without even looking at me, he said that I had to go to the office of the Policia de Investigacions Extranjeros, which is in Calama. That’s ok, I have to go there tomorrow to catch my flight back to Santiago.

The only reason I’m a little concerned about this is that you need this card to get out of the country. The only web-based information I can find on this says that there is usually only one office in each State that can provide a duplicate tourist card, and in this State, it’s not Calama. It’s Antofogasta, a city that’s about 300 kilometers from Calama. If I don’t get this done tomorrow I’m really screwed because I get back to Santiago at 10:00 pm, and I have a 8:00 am flight to Lima and then Cusco on Tuesday morning. So I won’t have time to chat with the Policia de Investigaciones in Santiago, my US$800.00 airplane ticket is non-refundable, and a bus to Cusco, the only reasonable alternative, will take 4 to 5 days to get there. And oh yeah, it looks like there’s a US$100.00 replacement fee for the tourist card.

Valle de la Luna




Saturday, May 3, - Day 137

Today I went to the Valle de la Luna, which is about 10 miles from San Pedro. The place is called the Valley of the Moon because that’s what people say it looks like – the surface of the Moon. There’s a weird cocktail of minerals here that form some really strange patterns and formations. If you just stand quietly, you can hear the formations crack and groan as the minerals heat and cool at different rates. Besides the rock formations, the main attraction is the Great Sand Dune. It is immense, and was formed by thousands of years of wind erosion. Everyone climbs a path to the top to watch the sunset.

San Pedro de Atacama




Friday, May 2, - Day 136

I got up early and walked around.

As with all cities in Latin and South America, there’s a church on the plaza in the center of town. Nobody knows when this church was built, but the first recorded mention of it was in 1745, and it was already in service. So it is really, really old. And it’s made of mud. How can that be? Well, I’m in the northern part of the Atacama Desert, which is one of the driest placed on Earth. Some of the areas here have never recorded any rainfall. Ever. The adobe walls to the church are over 5 feet thick. And while the exterior roof has been replaced, though replaced with mud, the interior, for the most part, remains made of the original timbers.

I went on an amazing astronomy tour this evening. It was all in Spanish, and once again, I was the only one from the US. The guy that runs the operation, though, used to work at the Palomar Observatory and lived in Escondido. He’s got a great set-up about 6 km south of town with 8 different telescopes of various sizes. Saw some amazing things, and he did a great job of describing the cosmos. Each telescope was focused on a different object, so you could just walk around chose what you wanted to see. With no moon, the timing was perfect. The sky was incredibly dark, and the black clouds in the Milky Way were as pronounced as I’ve ever seen.

We saw a couple of satellites, which are always cool, 5 shooting stars, all of the visible zodiac constellations, some stunning southern hemisphere globular clusters and nebulae, and a couple of nice deep-space galaxies. This was a much better tour than the public tour at Mammalluca, and was exactly what I was hoping for.

San Pedro de Atacama




Thursday, May 1 – Day 135


I flew to Calama this afternoon (2 ½ hour flight from Santiago), and had a window seat that gave me a great view of the Andes. The mountains are so spectacular that I just stared out the window the whole time. Meanwhile the rest of the cabin was stuck with some stupid American TV show called OC.

Arrived at the Calama “airport” at about 6:00 pm (the tarmac can hold up to 3 planes), caught a bus, and got to San Pedro de Atacama at about 7:30 pm.
San Pedro is a small town that’s been around since about 1450! It sits in a little oasis in the desert and is at an altitude of 7,900 feet. No wonder I felt a little dizzy when I got here. The surrounding desert contains a large number of minerals including a high level of arsenic, which has leached into the groundwater so you have to drink bottled water.
About 50 km away, several countries are contributing to the construction of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or “ALMA”. It’s will be the largest and most sensitive collection of radio antennae array in the world, and could cost as much as $1.5 billion by the time it’s finished in 2012. There will be up to 64 mobile antennae, each with a diameter of approx. 35 feet and weighing in at 115 tons. The antennae will be moved about in order to tune into various radio waves from space. And, I’ll bet they can get just about any sporting event they want. Ha!

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Colo Colo





Tuesday, April 29th – Day 133

I came back to Santiago because I fly up to Calama on Thursday.
Colo Colo is playing tonight, and this may be my only chance to see a top-level soccer match while I’m here. If you read the previous post, I mentioned that Colo Colo is the working man’s team – kind of like the Oakland Raiders of Chilean soccer. That’s because Colo Colo is a poverty stricken barrio here. Two people I know said that I should avoid the game because their stadium is in a bad neighborhood and their fans are unruly (local girls). One person said “Dude, you should go!” (local guy). I took the subway.

Walking across the parking lot of the stadium, I could hear what sounded like (and turned out to be) the largest diesel generator in the world. I know the game is on TV, but c’mon, there’s only one small TV truck. Turns out that the use the generator to power the stadium lights. Electricity is not that consistent in this part of the city, and a sudden loss of power could be a real problem.

I know enough to stay away from the cheap seats, so I buy the most expensive ticket available - $7,000 pesos. It’s general admission, and stadium feels virtually empty, except for one corner where the knuckleheads gather. Their section is packed, and is separated from the rest of the stadium by a 15 foot fence that is topped with barbed-wire. It kind of looks like they’re in a prison yard.

In this parts of the world, whistling is the equivalent of “booing”. The first people to come out onto the pitch are the referees, escorted by riot police, and they are greeted by nothing but whistles. Then the other team comes out and there is more whistling. When Colo Colo comes out, the knuckleheads start singing. And they continue to sing, non-stop, throughout the entire match.

There are different songs for different situations. At the beginning, the song is about how Colo Colo is going to kick your ass tonight. There’s another song for making fun of the other teams mistakes. Colo Colo got behind, and there’s a song for encouraging the team to work harder to score. Once they scored, there’s a song to tell their team how good they are. Then, they go back to “we’re going to kick your ass tonight”. Anyway, this goes on the entire night.

My only disappointment is that they don’t sell beer. I guess that would be sort of like throwing gasoline onto a fire. But since everybody should be sober, it looks like you can bring in whatever fireworks you want. Several times, the fans set off stuff that blasted a hundred feet into the air with two or three rounds of explosions.

Colo Colo appears to be the perennial champions of the Chilean professional league, and they have the trophy room to prove it. Ultimately, this match ended in a 2-2 tie, so the fans were not terribly happy or sad, and everything was pretty orderly as we left. To get into the subway station, you had to walk through a gauntlet of riot police, probably 30 men on each side. It was a pretty strong show of force, and would certainly take the edge off of any situation that might come close to getting out of hand.

La Serena / Colquimbo






Monday, April 28th – Day 132

I was going to say in Pisco to catch some more stars last night, but it was cloudy, so I drove to La Serena. Colquimbo is a small town a few km to the south, and a nice stretch of beach connects the two cities.

Colquimbo looks kind of like a much smaller version of Valparaiso. They have this odd looking cross that was built to celebrate the year 2000. Not sure if it’s finished or not, but you can go up to the top and walk out into the arms. You get great views, and between each of the widows they have busts of all the important Cardinals from Chile.

The beach was beautiful and fairly deserted as we are past the tourist season.

A Couple I Forgot - Shopping

Wednesday, April 16 – Day 121

Went to the Parque Arauco, shopping mall today. It’s on the east side of town in an area called Las Condes, which looks like any major city in America. This is the wealthy part of town, and it is full of gleaming new hi-rise office buildings and condos. The Harley dealership is nearby, so I picked up a t-shirt, and then stopped by the bar at the Ritz Carlton for a very nice wine tasting and a cigar. After blowing a couple hundred bucks on some fabulous vino that I’ll never be able to get back home and hanging out with the beautiful people, the pisco sour happy hour back at my hostel provided a stark contrast in lifestyles.

I’m staying in pretty cheap places because, well, it’s cheap. There’s always a lot of people coming and going, so its’ easy to meet and exchange information on various places. The downside is that they are all tourists, and most are trying to get by on US$20.00 a day while I’m more like a US$20.00 bottle of wine with dinner sort of guy.

Anyway, pisco is the “national liquor” of Chile, kind of like the Brazilian caschaca or the Argentine fernete. It’s a 35 to 50 proof, and distilled from a particular grape that was imported from Peru a long time ago. The grapes are grown specifically in the Elqui Valley in the north, and there’s even a town there called Pisco. The drink is made with lemon or lime juice, sugar, ice and a small amount of egg white. The whole concoction is blended into a foam, and then topped with cinnamon or bitters. Properly made, they are really pretty good. Lean too heavy on the pisco or the lemon, however, and they taste like crap.

A Couple I Forgot - Plaza de las Armas



Tuesday, April 15, - Day 120

Plaza de las Armas is the central square of Santiago. It used to be an army training ground, and this is where it gets its name.

The Catedral, sits on one corner of the Plaza, and it’s the 4th church built on this site. The first was built in 1541, the year the city was founded, and all three previous buildings were leveled by earthquakes. Construction on this building was started in 1748.

The church is very ornate, but not overdone, and there are a few prominant dead guys inside and a line of people waiting to confess their sins. There is a special alcove dedicated to Pope John Paul's last visit that is absolutely amazing. With actual worshipers inside, I decided against taking any pictures.

Inside the front door and to the left is a separate small sanctuary, and on its altar is a +/- 5 ft. statue of the Virgin Mary holding a baby Jesus. It's called the Virgin of Mount Carmen (the place in France where it came from) and was made in 1823. Mary and Jesus wear very ornate outfits, and crowns that were blessed by the Pope. The Pope then gave the crowns to the city 1936, making this statue the primary religious icon of the city. It's taken out and carried around the city in a procession once every year.

A couple days after I visited the church, a local homeless guy wandered in and set the statue on fire. The outfits and the crowns, were completely destroyed. About 80% of the original paint was burned off the statue, but most of the damage is said to be superficial. I stopped by today, and they now have a flag with a picture of the statue in it's place.

There are other similar statues of Carmen, and this picture came from the church in Pisco.

I wonder if this guy has any chance of getting into Heaven?

A Couple I Forgot - La Moneda


Monday, April 14 – Day 119


Filed for an extension on my taxes today. My estimate is that I’m going to owe Uncle Sam a few grand, and to avoid penalties, you’re supposed to send him a check along with the form. I mailed from here in Chile, using the cheapest international postage available and kept the receipt just in case. I’ll be interested in seeing how long it takes that check to clear. Ha!

Palacio de la Moneda, built in the late 1700’s, is the former mint building. After Chile’s independence, it became the residence of the country’s President. On September 11, 1973, the day of Pinochet’s coup, it was bombed by the air force. President Allende survived, but committed suicide in the palace before he could be arrested by Pinochet’s men. The palace was rebuilt and serves as the office of the President, but is no longer a residence.

Pinochet’s coup took place just a few years before Argentina’s “Dirty War”, which makes me realize that, with “Operation Condor” being a multi-country effort to stamp out subversives throughout South America, this whole Continent had to be pretty a screwed up place.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Pisco





Sunday, April 27 – Day 131

I mentioned before that pisco is the national liquor of Chile. It’s made here in the Elqui Valle, and the city of Pisco is only about 20 miles from Vicuna – how convenient. It’s a tiny little town at the end of a two-lane road that dead-ends into a mountain.

Pisco is made from a grape that has a lot of natural sugar, so if you ferment it all, it makes a wine with a pretty-high alcohol content. It’s further distilled, like brandy, and then aged in oak barrels to give it various taste characteristics.

They make a lot of very cheap pisco, and that’s the stuff that you use to make a pisco sour – add the lemon juice, ice, sugar, a touch of egg-white, and cinnamon. With better pisco, you just use 2 parts pisco and 1 part lemon juice, and shake over ice. The best pisco is taken straight-up, just like brandy.

Cerro Tololo






Saturday, April 26 – Day 130

I’m the only American on the tour today and it’s done entirely in Spanish. That’s OK, my Spanish is getting pretty good and I know enough about telescopes to make it work.
There are numerous observatories atop Cerro Tololo, but we common folk are not allowed anywhere near the really cool stuff. We started with a tour of a 1.5 meter telescope that is housed in one of 5 smaller observatories that are right next to Cerro Tololo. We’re able to walk around and get right up next to this scope, then the tour guide described how it works and moved it around and to show us all the parts.
Inside Cerro Tololo, we are only allowed to stand in one spot, and not even the tour guide gets to be close to the instrument. With a primary mirror of 4 meters (over 12 feet), it is absolutely huge, and just being able to walk in and look at it makes the trip worthwhile. Even though this telescope is a bit of an antique, it costs about US$10,000 per night to use, and every night is booked for the next three years. One of the current projects is, you guessed it, confirming that Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies at redshift 3.1 are the first high-redshift items to be identified as the precursors of typical present–day L* galaxies. For a sense of scale, look at the guy walking at the base of the observatory.
The largest telescope on the mountain is the Gemini South 8.1 meter scope. Its primary mirror is 26 feet across, making it one of the 5 largest telescopes in the world, and it cost US$176 million to build. No wonder they won’t let tourists come in and kick the tires.
One of the more interesting points that the guide made, was that professional astronomers actually spend very little time looking at things through these big telescopes. Almost all of the telescope’s time is devoted to capturing non-visible information. Starlight is diffracted and its spectrum is analyzed reveal the various elements of its composition. Redshifts and blueshifts are analyzed to show if things are coming or going, and all of this is being done by computers that are sometimes on the other side of the world. Pretty crazy stuff.

Vicuna





Friday, April 25 – Day 129

Took an overnight bus to La Serena, which is about 400 km north of Valparaiso. It’s a coastal city of about 125,000 people, and is the second oldest city in Chile. From there, I rented a car and drove 50 km inland to a small town called Vicuna.

Vicuna has a population of about 3,000, and is popular for only two reasons; first, Gabriela Mistral is from here – she’s another Nobel Prize winning poet (1936), and second, the cluster of observatories on top of Cerro Tololo. This is the southern end of the Atacama Desert, which has some of the darkest skies in the world. Most of the world’s leading astronomy organizations have facilities and equipment here.

As city lights began to affect the performance of the telescopes, the scientist worked with the city to convert all the outdoor lights to sodium vapor bulbs because the wavelength of sodium doesn’t interfere as much with the starlight. The sodium bulbs actually produce more light that mercury vapor bulbs and cost less to operate, but they are more expensive. For the city’s cooperation, the scientists built a public observatory for the city and gave them some pretty cool equipment.

The city offers guided tours for $5,000 pesos, so I went up this evening and had a look. We got to view a few planets through their 12 inch Schmitt-Cassiagrain (2.5x larger mirror than my telescope, but 15x more expensive), and then looked at some cool stars through a 14 inch Dobsonian. There were a few too many people on the tour for my taste, and we only got to see 5 or 6 objects over the course of an hour and a half, but just being out under the stars was worth it. I still learned a lot and got to see some Southern Hemisphere stuff that we never get to see from the North.

About a month ago, I got on a list for a day-time tour the namesake Cerro Tololo telescope, which has a primary mirror of 4 meters. It was one of the largest in the world when it was built in 1960’s, and the telescope’s mount alone weighs 50 tons. The tour starts tomorrow at 9:15am, and the front gate to the mountain is about 20 km away. Despite my best intentions to go to bed early, I found myself in a local dance hall at 3:15 am. I really hate it when that happens.