But getting here was quite an adventure. From our previous town of Huamacucho, up in the Andes, it´s supposed to take about 5 1/2 hours to get here. But apparently we chose the wrong bus company and certainly they chose the wrong bus. It was a rickity old thing and every time it would go over a bump the whole bus would shake. I´m sure the shocks haven´t been changed in 20 years. Unfortunately for us, there were to be a lot of bumps along the road. From Huamachuco, which is about 10,000 feet up, we headed out of town and up, up, up the mountains until we reached 12,400 feet. Here it was beautiful, like the alti plano in southern Peru. Just a lot ichu grass and finally we saw some camelids, some alpacas and some vicunas. Haven´t seen a camelid since we´ve been in Peru. There mostly down south around Cusco and on down to Lake Titicaca. At the top of the big pass the bus stopped and all of a sudden the bus was filled with the rather unpleasant odor of an over heated engine. We quickly got off the bus thinking this thing could explode any minute. We were next to a restaurant and the drivers were able to get some water and pour it into the engine. Well, I figured at 12,400 feet the rest of the way would be downhill and we would probably be allright.
So after about one hour of fidgiting around with the engine (after we had been delayed for another hour awhile before because of some roadwork) we were on our way. No more bad smell of overheated engines. But after an hour or so of going very slowly down the mountain, the driver stopped again. There was no bad smell, but he needed to get more water. During all of this he was calling back to the home office (great cell reception way up in the Andes...just try to call someone from the Sierra Nevada) and they were telling him he should take a picture of the engine and text it to them and maybe they could figure out the problem. Sheesh.
But we got going again. The scenery was fantastic and pretty soon it was dark and I saw the most amazing stars out the window. The Milky Way was brilliant all across the sky. At one point, when it was totally dark, the driver stopped the bus right in the middle of the road, going downhill. This on a major road with no lights. Giant trucks were whizzing by us very fast, blowing the horns, and I could just imagine one of these plowing into our rear end. Not a happy way to spend an evening.
Again we got going and when we finally reached the plain near Trujillo, the bus was going at a normal speed (after spending the prior 3 hours going about 10 miles an hour using his engine as the brake). We arrived in Trujillo 3 hours late and a little tired and worn out. But we made it.
So this morning we spent on a little tour out to the Huaca de Luna, a Moche pyramid (about 300 AD) made out of about 140,000,000 mud bricks. The great thing here are the murals and wall carvings. Archeologists didn´t even know these existed until 20 years ago, when during an El Nino the rains washed away a wall and exposed these amazing carvings. Here are some examples...
Pretty cool stuff. The pyramid itself has been somewhat washed away by 1700 years of the occasional El Nino, but you can get an idea what it looked like.
After the tour it was time for lunch. When you´re on the coast of Peru you have to have Ceviche at least once a day, if not twice. This is where ceviche comes from and today we had a really good one at a restaurant called Puerto Mora. It was ceviche mixta and had fish, octopus, crab, some kind a couple of large shelled things. It was just the simple kind of ceviche, with a lime marinade and onions. The place was filled with locals (the first sign of a good restaurant) and next to us was a young family with an 8 year old daughter who was totally fascinated with us. Not many gringos make it to this place apparently.
Now about the museum in the basement of a car repair shop. It´s the Museo Cassinelli and it was created 40 years ago or so by an Italian immigrant, named, you guessed it, Sr. Cassinelli. He was a real collector of ceramics of northern Peru and over the years built a collection of 6,000 fantastic ceramics of all the civilization, from the Chavin, about 3000 years ago, to the Inca. But his best pieces are from the Moche period. These are fantastic ceramics...very unusual in their design. What some of these artists came up with was amazing....
And even this piece of homo erotica, where the top figure has a little cantelever thingy that makes him move up and down (close your eyes, children)...
One of the weirdest things was a very old mummy like thing of a fetus that gave me the heeby geebies...
The coolest thing were these musical instruments, including several ceramic conch shells and this horn that was 1700 or so years old. The man who was showing us around actually let me blow in the shells and the horn. Luckily, I learned in Hawaii years ago how to blow into a conch shell. Here´s a picture of the horn...
So tonight we are planning on a nice dinner with hopefully more ceviche. Tomorrow we´ll see some Caballos de Paso and more ruins. Friday it´s a 9 hour bus ride to Lima. I figure that will total about 40 hours on buses this trip. But most have been fantastic.
No comments:
Post a Comment