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.

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.