A colorful crush of traffic on the way into Iquitos.
I enjoyed every minute we spent in Peru, but our time in the Amazon was particularly special. Kate, Jill and I took the overnight bus from Trujillo back to Lima, then flew to Iquitos, which is where you take the boat into the jungle. (You pass through a market on your way to the dock, and our guide pointed out a stall selling weevil shishkebabs. Needless to say, I had no wish to linger.)
We were trying to decide between two tour operators the night before we left, one kinda slick and touristy but with whom we knew more what to expect, and in the end we went (and were really happy) with the alternative, Otorongo Expeditions. The jungle lodge is really quaint and peaceful and comfortable, the owners and staff are fantastic (especially Oscar, our guide), every meal was vegetarian-friendly and thoroughly delicious, and we saw amazing wildlife on every excursion. We can't recommend Otorongo highly enough.
Taking the (usually horse-powered) sugar cane press for a spin at the rum factory on our way to the lodge. Afterwards we got a taste test, and as you can see Kate didn't like it as much as I did:
Below: the walkway between the dining and guest rooms at the lodge; the resident macaws; dragon's blood, good for all sorts of skin ailments; breadfruit.
Swaying in the hammock room at the lodge listening to all those layers of sound coming from the forest around us—the calls of birds, insects, frogs, and monkeys—oh, it was one of the most tranquil experiences of my life!
We based ourselves in Trujillo for Chan Chan, Huaca de la Luna, and el Brujo; the first two sites are a short collectivo ride (i.e., local minibus service) outside the city, and el Brujo is about an hour distant. There isn't a heck of a lot going on in Trujillo itself, although there was quite a bit of interesting colonial architecture.
One of many ornate screened balconies where a lady might look out on the street without being seen from below.
One evening we wandered into the courtyard of a private club.
Most memorable, however, is the sketchy guesthouse in which we caught one of the desk clerks in our bathroom, claiming to be cleaning it at six o'clock in the evening (naturally, with no cleaning products to hand). Nothing was missing from the room, but I was still suspicious. 'He was sticking his nose in our underwear,' I said. 'It's the only logical explanation.'
Chan Chan, built by the Chimú in the ninth century, was a vast city constructed entirely of adobe. Plentiful pelican, fish, and otter motifs, and the diamond-shaped walls (fishing nets!), show how the Chimú appreciated what the sea provided.
(See the otters on the walls?)
The next day we did Huaca de la Luna (Moon Handbooks link here), the 'Temple of the Moon.' I think this was our favorite archaeological site (it was definitely mine)—fascinating polychrome wall reliefs (giant spiders, vanquished warriors in neck chains being led to sacrifice), excellent guide, totally adorable Peruvian schoolgirls. There are two huge adobe structures here, both constructed by the Moche people layer upon layer over successive generations during the first millennium A.D.—the Temple of the Moon was used for religious and ceremonial purposes, the nearby Temple of the Sun for the military and administrative stuff. The Temple of the Sun, looted by the conquistadores, is still undergoing excavation work and isn't yet open to the public. Children used to play soccer on the sand before these ruins were discovered underneath.
I know this shot must look kind of posed and phony, but honestly it isn't—our guide was about to snap a photo of the three of us, and these adorable little girls were shyly watching on, and we invited them to come over.
I also took a panorama at Huaca de la Luna—I don't know why it's playing so jerkily, but you get the idea:
By our last day in Trujillo we were a little bit ruined out, but el Brujo (another city constructed by the Moche between 1400 and 2000 years ago) was still very much worth the visit, particularly for the Señora de Cao, a young woman who was evidently a very powerful political leader. Her mummy was discovered in 2006 along with a fifteen-year-old handmaiden sacrificed presumably to tend to her needs in the afterlife; experts concluded the Señora had died in childbirth around the age of twenty.
What the walls probably would have looked like a millennium and a half ago. If I remember correctly, this is Ayapec, 'the great decapitator.' Eep!
The brand-new museum at el Brujo houses the mummy of the Señora de Cao, and you can still see the undulating tattoos on her arms. I was really fascinated to discover that when you look into the glass case you aren't actually looking at the Señora, but at a mirror image; the mummy is lying safely out of sight. I was trying to figure out why the sight of the mummy at Sechin bothered me so much when I was only in awe of the Señora—it must be because of who they were in life. The Señora was entombed in layers of precious cloth and gold baubles, while it seems cruel to display the body of the sacrificed girl when she'd already had to suffer that supreme indignity. Anywho.
One of the ruins at Caral, a city over four thousand years old.
There were three phases to our adventure in Peru: first Kate and Jill and I spent four or so days doing the archaeological sites along the coast north of Lima; then the three of us took an overnight bus back to Lima followed by a flight to Iquitos, where we made arrangements for a stay at a lodge on the Amazon. There were four marvelous days in the jungle. Then we flew back to Lima to meet up with Elliot and Spencer, and we did the more touristy parts—Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, the Sacred Valley, etc.
Anyway, we visited five pre-Incan archaeological sites on the first part of the trip: Caral, the oldest city in the Americas; Sechin, the home of a warlike culture dating between 1800 and 900BC; Chan Chan, the largest adobe city ever built; Huaca de la Luna, built by the Moche, who flourished during the first millennium A.D.; and el Brujo (also Moche), home of the tomb and mummy of the Señora de Cao—a powerful female ruler whose arm tattoos are still clearly visible. (More on her next time.)
At Caral we met Nathalie, a lovely Frenchwoman who lived in Spain for many years and was traveling on her own for a few weeks before meeting up with her boyfriend. We took a taxi back into town together and had dinner at a little restaurant by the sea (which was a lot less picturesque than it sounds, but it was still a nice time).
Charming.
A view over the ruins at Sechin from the walkway that goes up the hill behind it and around the site.
Sechin was a much smaller site, and we were able to walk around without a guide. There's a small museum, and in the basement we were appalled to find the preserved body of a teenaged sacrificial victim stuffed on the bottom shelf of a rickety glass case. Jill was saying something about mummies actually being comforting to her somehow, not creepy, but then she amended her statement: 'Well, I didn't find her comforting because she was buried alive...' Her mouth was wide open. Taken with the bloodthirsty nature of the stone carvings that Sechin is known for, this one was certainly the most disturbing of our archaeological visits.
If you'd been unlucky enough to be born here three thousand years ago, this is the guy who would have chopped off your head to feed the sun god. Or maybe just for kicks.
And now for something completely different. We saw these signs on every bus:
("Only for number one.")
I must say this perplexed me greatly. Like, what if I can't help it?
This was one of those situations where the sights blow you away but the towns you've got to sleep in aren't quite so amazing—although we did manage to find a friendly little spot in Barranca (our base for Caral) for jugo de piña and some breakfast cake.
Next post: Chan Chan, Huaca de la Luna, and el Brujo.
Welp, I'm back. It was such a fantastic trip that I felt none of the usual 'I've been gone long enough, I'll be glad to get home again.' I just feel melancholy.
Jill and Kate on the Amazon.
We saw and heard marvelous creatures in the jungle, oohed and ahhed at pink river dolphins making brief appearances above the surface of the Amazon, walked up and down temples where young girls were sacrificed to old gods, got all our bones jangled in tiny moto-taxis (I called them putt-putts), watched condors wheeling over Colca Canyon and climbed up Machu Picchu (the mountain the city is named after, that is). The food was far better than we were expecting (surprisingly veggie-friendly), and I've never laughed so hard in my life.
So here are some random highlights—I won't start blogging in earnest until next weekend, when I get to download Kate's pictures.
It vants to suck your blood.
Rum is YUM.
[Oh, and for the benefit of those few readers—if any, bwahahaha —who are not related to me, I should clarify that Kate and I went with Kate's boyfriend Elliot, his mother Jill, and his brother Spencer. It was Jill and Kate and I for the first half—when we did a bunch of pre-Incan archaeological sites like Chan Chan and Huaca de la Luna, then spent four days at a jungle lodge on the Amazon—and then we went back to Lima to meet up with Elliot and Spencer, and that's when we did Machu Picchu and all that.]
This is what happens when you fall asleep in the taxi.
At Machu Picchu. I don't know what is going on here.
Spencer, Jill, and Elliot, waiting for our flight to Cuzco. Elliot finished Petty Magic on the trip. I get four and a half stars.
Cool doorknocker in Trujillo, our base for exploring Huaca de la Luna and other archaeological sites. We disapprove of the Spaniards for all the disease and violence they wrought upon the natives, but must admit the colonial architecture is splendid.
I love this doorknocker in particular because of the ring. I wore my grandmother's ring on my finger for most of the trip because Lonely Planet says it's not a bad idea to invent a boyfriend or husband.
Kate: How's your marriage going? Me: Great! We never fight!
Kate enjoyed her freshly squeezed orange juice at a sidewalk café.
You know that stage in every trip when you realize you are 100% ready to be home again? Hopefully you don't reach that point any more than a day or two before your scheduled departure date; but in our case we'd been traveling for five weeks and Kate had been missing her right arm for nearly two [we'd said goodbye to Elliot in Sarajevo], so I think we reached it as soon as we got back to Budapest.
I started writing about some of the minorly unpleasant things that happened over those last couple of days, but I think I'll just show you some nice pictures and be done with it!
Exterior and interior shots of the Great Synagogue (Kate took the latter); a pretty fountain sculpture in a city park; a wonderfully atmospheric old shopping arcade; me at the same sidewalk café, having the most delicious coffee (with honey!) ever.
And that concludes my Eastern Europe retroblog. We're going to Peru for three weeks next month, so there'll be plenty more travel photos coming soon!
Saturday 23 June 2007 Had a wonderful tour of not one but two mosques, both of which are new buildings. The original ones were destroyed in the war; a sheikh, a very nice man, showed us around, with Mujke [MOY-kuh] translating. I enjoy hearing the call to prayer, and not just because it sounds exotic. It’s also simply a beautiful sound—even if it is often a recording. Counterpart to church bells, almost.
Coffee with Briony and Mujke afterwards, and then we finally got around to visiting the outdoor fruit and veggie market (also with B.) So glad we made it—dinner is going to be yummy tonight. Can’t remember ever seeing such fresh and robust heads of garlic.
Briony is from England, and was conducting part of her doctoral research in Brcko in the summer of '07. I was hoping to see her while I was in London, but unfortunately our schedules weren't going to jive. Next time!
16 June 2007 Our apartment here has a very lived-in feel, down to the eyeglasses and balled-up socks on the curio shelves, the rotten apple on the kitchen windowsill (Kate threw it out the window and busted out laughing—there’s a wild apple tree in the courtyard outside, she wouldn’t have gotten away with it otherwise. You can hear the occasional thump as an apple falls to the pavement), the cobwebs dangling from the eaves on the balcony (no view, but we hung up our laundry out there, and some coal-black cobwebs clung to our skivvies. Yuck), cologne bottles and half a dozen toothbrushes in the bathroom.
The owner later paid us an unexpected visit at 6:30 in the morning, for no apparent reason.
Toward the end of our Eastern European adventure Kate and I arranged to volunteer at a children's summer camp in a Bosnian town called Brčko (pronounced 'Birch-ko'— and if it's not then we were saying it wrong the whole time). There would be children of all religions and ethnicities here, and the idea is to foster friendship and cooperation between them. It was a very positive experience overall—thanks to our lovely volunteer coordinators Dina and Sanjin, other new friends Briony and Mujke, and a bunch of really sweet kids—but as with every other volunteer experience I've had, there were definitely aspects I found ineffective or at least inefficient.
Monday, 18th June 2007 Thoroughly frustrated…yesterday we passed three boys rooting through the dumpsters at the far end of our block, and of course one of them approached us and asked for money. THOSE are the kids who need help, but as Dina pointed out, the Roma don’t want or think they need any help. They don’t want a better life for their families, and that is totally incomprehensible to me.
We were there less than two weeks, but we quickly settled into a routine of workshops and coffee afterwards at Dina and Sanjin's favorite cafe, Jazzwa.
Wednesday, 20 June 2007 The workshop this morning was quieter but still a success—we did the ‘pass it on’ story exercise and illustrated a few of the stories afterwards, and of course most of the kids got plenty of laughs when they were read out. We started with 'Once upon a time a brother and sister left home with their pet goat in search of adventure,' and though the goat dropped out of pretty much all the stories (never featured in Dina’s quick translations, anyway), there were still a few gems. ‘The boy squeezed the bird and mayonnaise came out’; ‘they ate five kilograms of chocolate and had diarrhea.’ Lots of farting too, naturally. Our favorite illustration was a marsupial dragon—a ‘dragaroo.’ At three we were treated to a tour of the town library, which is housed in a crumbling but wonderful imperialist Hungarian building dating to 1892.
Two views of the library:
There's so much to say about Brčko that I should split it into two posts. Next time: fresh (and not so fresh) produce, other people's toothbrushes, and an unexpected early-morning visitor.
We arrived in Mostar pretty late—it's a pleasant town best known for its historic bridge (which crazy locals occasionally like to jump off of), but we were pretty much only there to break the journey to Sarajevo. We chose a restaurant in the old town where the waiter spoke Italian, and I managed to communicate that Kate and I wanted only vegetables on our plates.
The next day we took the train to Sarajevo. Way too many pigeons, strong Turkish coffee for breakfast and delicious spiral-shaped spinach pastries and juniper juice for dinner, shops full of beautiful shawls and metalwork.
(Below: the main drag of the old town, the Baščaršija, which dates to the 16th century; a fountain in the courtyard of a mosque.)
I don't know what this building is—or used to be—but it's a real shame to let such an amazing piece of architecture fall into disuse and disrepair.
Three goofballs at the Sarajevo Brewery. Elliot sampled the local dark lager, Kate got baklava and I had a campari and orange. This was before I became a (very occasional) beer drinker. I think this was Elliot's last night—he took a train back to Budapest to go home, and Kate and I went on to the volunteering part of the trip.
I haven't felt like writing lately, let alone blogging, but sometimes the way to feel like doing something again is just to do it. I got some good writing done today for the first time in a week and a half, and now—back to the retroblog!
One last post about Croatia. After Hvar, we spent another afternoon in Split before taking a train to Mostar in Bosnia.
A passionflower spotted in a public park.
This time we took a short bus trip out to Salona, the extensive ruins of a Roman city built on an earlier Greek settlement. It took us awhile to walk through the whole site, which has a bit of everything: streets, temples and early Christian churches, homes, public baths, aqueducts, a large amphitheater...
We met hardly any other tourists here—it was eerily quiet. The last picture reminds me a little of the ruined Emerald City in Return to Oz (kind of a bad film, I know, but a guilty-pleasure childhood throwback).
Novelist and travel writer, compulsive reader and knitter. My new novel, PETTY MAGIC, will be published by Shaye Areheart (Crown/ Random House) on October 5, 2010.
"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." —Charles Kingsley
A colorful crush of traffic on the way into Iquitos.
Taking the (usually horse-powered) sugar cane press for a spin at the rum factory on our way to the lodge. Afterwards we got a taste test, and as you can see Kate didn't like it as much as I did:
Below: the walkway between the dining and guest rooms at the lodge; the resident macaws; dragon's blood, good for all sorts of skin ailments; breadfruit.
Swaying in the hammock room at the lodge listening to all those layers of sound coming from the forest around us—the calls of birds, insects, frogs, and monkeys—oh, it was one of the most tranquil experiences of my life!
Reading The Time Machine in my favorite place.
