The coast of Peru is incredibly dry, because the 20,000 foot Andes block all the precipitation heading westward (the jet stream blows east to west in the Southern Hemisphere), so the clouds drop all their moisture in the Amazon basin.
The Nazca Lines. Nazca was the center of a civilization with the same name that pre-dated the Incas by 1000 years. They created dozens of pictograms by removing the dark colored rocks that lay atop the lighter-colored sand of the desert floor. Many animals are represented, including a condor, monkey, owl, whale, and dog. Some are almost 1,000 ft in length. The lack of wind and rain (1 cm per year) has preserved the images. I took a small plane flight over the Nazca Lines. My favorite is the hummingbird, below.
The strangest image is of "the Astronaut", below, which many people cite in support of their belief that the Nazca were attempting to communicate with alien life.
Colca Canyon. East of Nazca and a long daytrip west of the city of Arequipa, it is one of the deepest canyons on earth at 10,470 ft deep (second only to nearby Cotahuasi). Below left is near the entrance of the canyon, demonstrating some of its extensive farm terracing. Below right are 3 friends I made on the daytrip, Paola, Mirabel, and Cristy. All 3 were visiting from Lima.
Right: The view from Cruz del Condor, the deepest part of Colca Canyon and where condors can frequently be seen.
Below: A juvenile condor photographed with my pathetic telephoto lens.
Left: A pic of an adult condor at the same site that I copied from the web.
Left: A blue eagle in the village at the entrance to Colca Canyon.
Arequipa. This colonial city is Peru's second largest, at 2 million people, and is considered its most stylish.
Right: The plaza in Arequipa, with Mt. Chachani hulking in the background.
Arequipa's Santa Catalina Convent. OK, so I was overcome by the beauty of the place. Given its religious and institutional setting, coupled with the play of color and sunlight at the convent, it reminded me of the asylum in St. Remy, Provence, where Van Gogh convalesced and produced his "brightest" work.
The convent has an unusual history. It was founded by a well-to-do middle-aged widow from Arequipa in 1580, who hand-picked the original nuns from wealthy local families. Each family would pay for construction of a house within the convent's walls (the size of a city block) for their daughter. All second-born daughters of prestigious families in Arequipa were expected to join (first-borns were married off). The convent was exceptional world-wide in that the nuns were able to maintain their upper class lifestyle with gold-plated tea sets, up to 4 servants in each household to take care of all domestic responsibilities, etc. (These servants received food and shelter in exchange for their labor.) (Because each house was owned by a family, up to 4 members of the extended family -- cousins for example -- were allowed to live in it along with 4 servants.) A pope finally put an end to all the fun in the 1800s. And, in 1970, when the convent was on hard financial times, the management decided to open it to the public and painted it the pretty colors seen here. Up to that time, it was made exclusively of unpainted white stone quarried locally. It is still a functioning convent, but it has a much smaller population of nuns now and they don't interact with tourists.
Juanita, the sacrificed Inca maiden. I was surprised to learn that the Inca people engaged in human sacrifice, albeit to a limited degree. They would only sacrifice a person in times of national emergency -- earthquakes, war, and imperial succession are examples. The remains of a dozen or so human sacrifices have been found on the volcanoes surrounding Arequipa. Volcanoes (as well as nonvolcanic mountains) were considered individual gods. (During my trek, I encountered piles of stones on every mountain pass that were erected as tributes to the mountain gods.) The Incas reasoned that volcanic earthquakes and eruptions were expressions of an angry god. As an offering to placate a god, the person sacrificed had to be as nearly "perfect" as possible. So only early adolescent virgins without physical defects, from the wealthiest families, were sacrificed, in their best clothing. In fact, it was an honor to be selected by the priests for this duty, because it was believed that the person sacrificed would attain immortality to live with the god. (Was there any connection between this honor and the later tradition among the Arequipa's wealthy to give their second daughter to the convent?)
In Arequipa's Museo Sanctuarios Andinos, one can see the best-preserved of the human sacrifices. A young teenage girl dubbed "Juanita", she was found just below the summit of a nearby 20,600 ft peak named Ampato in 1995. She also has the most ornate clothing and is the sacrifice found at the highest elevation, all indications that she was considered particularly important. She was discovered by an American mountaineer-archaeologist named Johann Reinhold, who followed a trail of straw to the summit of Ampato that had been exposed by melting secondary to renewed volcanism of a nearby mountain in 1995. Deteriorated sandals were found along the route. The Incas had placed the straw for traction on the snow. It is estimated that each climber used 7 pairs of sandals to reach the summit. Juanita apparently had been on the summit, because her remains were found 300 ft beneath an empty burial site there, among debris that had slid from the summit during an earthquake 2 weeks prior.
An autopsy conducted at Johns Hopkins University revealed only a small amount of corn, coca leaves (of religious significance and used to minimize altitude sickness), and chicha (a fermented corn drink) in her GI tract. A CT scan showed that her internal organs were completely normal. She had one physical abnormality -- a fracture of her right temple, consistent with blunt trauma.
All the human sacrifices found on these peaks received the same blow to the head. It is believed that Juanita and the others participated in religious ceremonies in the Inca capital of Cusco, then trekked by foot 150 or more miles with a retinue of priests to the volcanoes surrounding Arequipa, Peru's most volcanic region. They were given just enough corn to keep them walking, given coca to minimize the effects of elevation, then given chicha at the summit to induce an intoxicated stupor, after which they were bludgeoned by the priest, in the culmination of the ceremony to placate a mountain god. They were buried in a fetal position, in their best clothes, surrounded by items that could be useful to them in the afterlife.
Below is a picture of Juanita I copied off the web (it was too dark in the room when I visited and photography is prohibited -- she is actually removed from display from January to April to better preserve her). She is encapsulated in a cube maintained at -20 deg C, the temp at which she spent the last 500 years on top of Ampato. The skin on her face was damaged by the 2 weeks of sun exposure.
Below is a picture of Juanita I copied off the web (it was too dark in the room when I visited and photography is prohibited -- she is actually removed from display from January to April to better preserve her). She is encapsulated in a cube maintained at -20 deg C, the temp at which she spent the last 500 years on top of Ampato. The skin on her face was damaged by the 2 weeks of sun exposure.
Juanita is the only sacrifice found thus far on Ampato, but it is believed that there are more there because it is the tallest mountain in southern Peru. Indeed, 6 sacrifices have been found on Misti, a volcano 1000 ft shorter but closer to Arequipa.
The climb of 20,000 ft Mt. Chachani. With the goal of climbing above 20,000 ft for the first time (Rainier had been my previous highest), I hired a mountaineering guide with 2 British tourists (Rob and Scott) to climb Mt. Chachani, just north of Arequipa. Lonely Planet and the sign at the peak's base both proclaimed it to be 6,075 m, which I calculated to be 20,047 ft (based on 3.3 ft per meter).
We drove around Chachani to its north (and easier) side. There were "Crossing Camelid" warning signs along the road there. Right is a pic of a guanaco, the largest variety of New World camelid, identified by its black muzzle, with Volcan Misti in the background. Guanacos are aggressive and humans have not been able to domesticate them.
Left is a herd of vicunas. They are the smallest of the camelids, and produce the finest and most expensive wool in the world. They are difficult to maintain in domestication. Traditionally, the Incas herded wild vicunas into corrals to shear them once every 4 years. (Their hair grows particularly slowly.)
L to R: Me, Rob, & Scott at the Chachani trailhead.
Base camp, only 500 ft higher than (and a mile beyond) the trailhead. Though this pic only shows about half of the horizon, the 3 of us and our guide Jose all agreed that it seemed we could see the curvature of the earth along the horizon from this elevation (16,000 ft) -- it seemed that the left and right sides of the horizon dipped compared to the middle.
We went to bed at 6 pm. As soon as the sun set, it got cold fast. But when we got up at 2 am, it was f***ing cold! No moon at first. Lights of Arequipa below, stars brilliant, I saw 5 meteors. Then at 4 am a sliver of moon rose in the east. We crossed numerous ice fields with 1-2 ft tall stalagmites of ice created by the strange freeze and thaw cycle at this high but tropical elevation. (In contrast with the massive glaciers at this elevation in the Cordillera Huayhuash, this area doesn't receive enough rainfall for glacier formation.) Below is my favorite pic from the climb, just as the sun was creeping over the horizon to illuminate the summit, while we were still immersed in the darkness beneath.
Base camp, only 500 ft higher than (and a mile beyond) the trailhead. Though this pic only shows about half of the horizon, the 3 of us and our guide Jose all agreed that it seemed we could see the curvature of the earth along the horizon from this elevation (16,000 ft) -- it seemed that the left and right sides of the horizon dipped compared to the middle.
We went to bed at 6 pm. As soon as the sun set, it got cold fast. But when we got up at 2 am, it was f***ing cold! No moon at first. Lights of Arequipa below, stars brilliant, I saw 5 meteors. Then at 4 am a sliver of moon rose in the east. We crossed numerous ice fields with 1-2 ft tall stalagmites of ice created by the strange freeze and thaw cycle at this high but tropical elevation. (In contrast with the massive glaciers at this elevation in the Cordillera Huayhuash, this area doesn't receive enough rainfall for glacier formation.) Below is my favorite pic from the climb, just as the sun was creeping over the horizon to illuminate the summit, while we were still immersed in the darkness beneath.
From the summit at 9am. We climbed thru the pass visible on the left side of the photo, between the true summit and a lesser summit of Chachani. The mountain just beyond is Misti. Arequipa is at the base of these mountains, to the right of the pic.
The sky on the summit was the bluest I've seen. Probably because it's the thinnest atmosphere I've been in. But the only symptom I experienced from the elevation was a mild headache that resolved with 400 mg of ibuprofen. I drank LOTS of fluid (clear urine the whole time) which is why I think I tolerated this so much better than Rainier.
Right: Jose and I on the summit. (A thumb's up seems to be the customary Peruvian guide pose for photography.) The snow-covered peak behind my left arm is Ampato, where Juanita was found. Incidentally, no sacrificial remains have been found on Chachani, though it is believed they must be there due to its proximity to Arequipa and its higher elevation than Misti.
In conducting my research for this blog, I learned that Chachani actually has an elevation of 6,057 m, rather than 6,075 m. Furthermore, there are only 3.28 ft per meter. So between my sloppy math and a dyslexic Peruvian government employee (and Lonely Planet writer), my 20,047 ft accomplishment shrank to one of 19,867 ft. Well, surpassing 6,000 m means about the same to the rest of the world as surpassing 20,000 ft does in the United States. That'll have to be my consolation . . . for now.
**** And in actuality, I did this section of the trip much later, after confirming I had enough time to do it as well as other higher priority trips for which I had reservations dependent upon availability of certain dates. I was able to do those trips -- all in the Cuzco area -- and then swung south and westward to do this trip in the reverse order of how it is described here in the blog. I placed this out of order and described it in the order of Nazca to Chachani because that would have been the most efficient and economical way to have actually traveled, and would have also been more aesthetically pleasing and less haphazard, proceeding from Chachani to the lower elevation cloud forests around Macchu Piccu and Manu and then to the Amazon's headwaters on the Apurimac River -- an incremental descent from the high Andes to the Amazon jungle. ****
The sky on the summit was the bluest I've seen. Probably because it's the thinnest atmosphere I've been in. But the only symptom I experienced from the elevation was a mild headache that resolved with 400 mg of ibuprofen. I drank LOTS of fluid (clear urine the whole time) which is why I think I tolerated this so much better than Rainier.
Right: Jose and I on the summit. (A thumb's up seems to be the customary Peruvian guide pose for photography.) The snow-covered peak behind my left arm is Ampato, where Juanita was found. Incidentally, no sacrificial remains have been found on Chachani, though it is believed they must be there due to its proximity to Arequipa and its higher elevation than Misti.
In conducting my research for this blog, I learned that Chachani actually has an elevation of 6,057 m, rather than 6,075 m. Furthermore, there are only 3.28 ft per meter. So between my sloppy math and a dyslexic Peruvian government employee (and Lonely Planet writer), my 20,047 ft accomplishment shrank to one of 19,867 ft. Well, surpassing 6,000 m means about the same to the rest of the world as surpassing 20,000 ft does in the United States. That'll have to be my consolation . . . for now.
**** And in actuality, I did this section of the trip much later, after confirming I had enough time to do it as well as other higher priority trips for which I had reservations dependent upon availability of certain dates. I was able to do those trips -- all in the Cuzco area -- and then swung south and westward to do this trip in the reverse order of how it is described here in the blog. I placed this out of order and described it in the order of Nazca to Chachani because that would have been the most efficient and economical way to have actually traveled, and would have also been more aesthetically pleasing and less haphazard, proceeding from Chachani to the lower elevation cloud forests around Macchu Piccu and Manu and then to the Amazon's headwaters on the Apurimac River -- an incremental descent from the high Andes to the Amazon jungle. ****
