Hello from Ecuador
We (Larry and Will) just arrived in Loja this afternoon after driving up and
then down and then up and then down again through the green, green mountains
of southern Ecuador.
What a change from the past few weeks traveling through the arid N
of Peru. All the coast there is desert except where the rivers meet
the sea where irrigation turns the desert green. Yesterday we visited
the Brunig Museum in Lambayeque, Peru where the Se�or de Sipan is displayed.
What a wonderful museum! The priest of Sipan was buried 1,700 years
ago with his servants, two llamas, a dog and his wives who were all
sacrificed at his death. He had a "tomb guard" buried with him to, it
is assumed to guard the grave since the guards' feet were amputated
-- perhaps so he couldn't get away.
Over and under the preists' body were layer after layer of gold and
copper ornaments, breast plates, nose pieces, ear rings and necklaces
made of thousands of tiny spondylus shell beeds.
Hundreds of clay statues were buried at the same time as were clay
jars of foot and nuts. Almost the entire museum is devoted to this one
burial.
The day before we saw the Huacas del Sol y la Luna near Trujillo,
Peru, which are pyramids where in 1992 they discovered burial chambers
and meters long walls of deep relief painted sculpted clay that were
done on the outsides of the pyramid. When the priest passed away, he
was buried on one of the 6 levels of the pyramid and that level was
walled in with mud bricks covering both his tomb and the current outer
wall of the pyramid with the most wonderful polychrome paintings done
of mythical feline heads around whose outer edge were geometric designs
of fish and birds.
On the other side of the city of Trujillo is Chan Chan, the largest
adobe city in the world which at one time covered 28 square miles. One
of the palaces has been restored which has only one entrance/exit gate.
Inside there are store rooms, huge ceremonial plazas bordered with wonderful
geometric designs of ducks and fish. There are burial chambers both
for the nobility and for guards at the back of the complex. There is
an enormous reservoir for water now nearly dry upon which you could
row a boat.
Even with all this desert splendor, we were eager to leave Peru. Yesterday
when we got to the last town before the border at La Tina/Macara which
was called Suyo, we decided to drive in on one of the two streets to
see if we could find a place to eat and a place to stay the night. We
rounded the tiny square and there we were blocked in by a white pickup
truck parked in the middle of the narrow street. Kai and Valeria were
behind me so I couldn't back up. On our right was a building under construction
and inside there was a party going on.
Immediately, a short, round, moustacioed man with a big grin came
out and motioned me to get out of the van. When I did, he took me by
the arm and said that this, in addition to being May Day or Labor Day
here in South America, was the birthday of the civil engineer who was
in charge of constructing this building which was to be the small branch
office of the Banco de la Nacion del Peru there in Suyo.
Then the man whose birthday they were celebrating came out and took
my other arm and then it was insisted that we ALL join the festivities.
This wonderful gesture is partucularly Latin and expressly Peruvian
in that we have been well received by nearly 100 percent of the people
with whom we have come in contact. It does not matter where in Peru
or what the class of the people.
In the Santa River valley (2,000 feet deep with a road through the
bottom of the canyon on an old railroad right of way which is ONE lane
wide and complete with 40 tunnels), we came to a place where there was
an adobe brick restaurant with no electricity--only kerosene lamps.
We asked if we could park there for the night and of course they said
yes.
Then one of the family went off to get us limes, a wild bean-like
fruit which comes in a pod 2 inches wide and more than a foot long which
you open and then suck the white starchy outside of the seeds off sp�tting
the seeds out. After sharing the fruit, one of the family said he had
to go up on the mountain to get his cow who was going to have her first
calf that night. Now, I thought that this guy was either very close
to his cow to know this or he was clairvoyant but off he went.
About an hour later just at dark he came back with a very large black
cow very pregnant. We asked how you could tell she was going to calve
tonight and he said it was because she had her tail in the air. We scoffed
at that when she let go with a huge dump which made a splat on the ground.
We talked into the night as a scimitar shaped moon hung over the deep
and remote valley. I went to bed late after a busload of drunk Peruvians
stopped by the restaurant and caused a commotion outside the vans.
Sure enough, when we awoke in the morning, we looked out and there
on the ground beside the black cow was her brown bull calf not even
dry yet--the mother standing placidly munching away at the placenta
which lay on the ground.
Just another amazing week in our journey. Tomorrow we head north toward
Cuenca.
Oh, in Ecuador gas is $1 a gallon and the US dollar is the legal currency.
Unfortunately, this makes the poor here even poorer but Ecuador, at
least here in Loja, is certainly a better maintained and cleaner city
than almost any we passed through in Peru.
from Larry and Will and Kai and Valeria - Les and them decided to
ship home from Lima after they had a final jungle adventure from Cuzco
to the Amazon basin.
