Christmas Weekend - Travel

Three days in succession to go without being in the Temple where we serve is unusual.  However, Christmas is always a time for families, good food at home and fun.  Because we don't have any family close by again we traveled from Saturday through Monday, three days and two nights.  Our first stop was Ica, about five hours south of Lima.  Cruz del Sur bus lines is an excellent way to put away the miles in comfort.  Our initial stop in Ica was at Paracas, a fishing village on the Pacific.  With the advent of summer, flowers were everywhere.  Tropical yet arid is unusual but that's what you see along most of the coast of Peru.  Oasis areas host the tired and hungry and are accented with flowers and flowering trees. 

Acacia trees were in full bloom beside the mesquites and bougainvilleas.    Palms are not indigenous to Peru but were brought here by the Spanish centuries ago.  Many continue to flourish and spread while remnants are visible in poorly maintained areas.  Peru is a poor country filled with hope but signs of disappointment exist where speculation failed.  

Old style mail drops decorate the entrance to this hotel area adding color and charm to the adobe walls now plastered and painted.  A short drive down the road brought us to a true Oasis of palms and man-made pools nestled beneath as the sand dunes  rise high above inviting dune buggy running.  Tourism is vital to this economy.  Currencies readily accepted are the Euro, Dollar and local Sole.  Conversion rates are competitive in most areas.  Currently the Sole is trading S/.2.70 to $1 and staying steady.  Our cash card from Wells Fargo works like a charm at ScotiaBank ATM's everywhere. 

The Oasis included a walking path surrounding the water with shops, sidewalk vendors and locals enjoying the afternoon.  This Peruvian woman slept peacefully as we walked by, snapping this photo and then visiting with the street vendors selling jewelry.  Claudia has a new necklace they had made, costing S/.10 or about $4. 

Families relaxed under the shade but the air temperature was very comfortable.  It is wise to take a hat for protection from the direct sun.  All the locals wear them.  Below a family of a granddad, daughter and her two children chatted with us while I took their picture.  The youngsters loved to see themselves.  People are friendly, open and conversant no matter my limited language capacity.  I've been told they will help me out and they did.  We used everything from my poor Spanish to hand signals and humor to converse. 

This traveler appears to be thinking of food, again.  If you love chicken, vegetables, fish, vegetables, rice and vegetables, you will never go without.  Restaurants are all good, unique and love the tourists because we keep them alive, literally.  Locals don't have the resources to trade there too often. 

 Having absolutely no knowledge of grapes, I decided to try my hand at raising them at home.  They do grow very well so under the blanket of snow lies the one year old roots of my vineyard, all 60 feet of it.  One day it will bear the four varieties in planted and I'll harvest about 50 kilos of grapes.  Some for grape juice and some for table use and raisins.   By the way, the raisins in Peru are the size of my thumb.  I thought they were prunes at first. 



The sign below advertises Piscos y Vinos.  Knowing nothing I learned Piscos to be a second process of distilling the Vino into a 50 proof drink.  Vinos are the ordinary wine made of whatever grape they grow.  Piscos contain more than one grape variety. 

This little winery is self contained on the vineyard site.  Within the property boundarys the grapes grow to maturity, are harvested and made into both products.  The harvest season for these grapes is February.  The vines were laden with growing grapes still green but slowly they will mature and turn dark.  The actual variety is  probably on their website. 

Wine is stored in ceramic kegs shown here.  All the work is done by hand.  It's a fascinating process and manned by hard working farmers.  Their success depends on their labors by hand.  No sight of mechanized equipment.  Gravity distributes the water nourishing the trees in flooded style.  Water is plentiful despite the arid climate.  Underground aquifers supply the wells that flow to the fields.  

The following day we traveled to Nasca where the famous NASCA Lines are located.  Outside the airport this native was chatting with his friends in the shade.  His look was ominous but friendly.  Such character in all these faces.  I could take pictures all day and never run out of materials to photograph.  No requests for autographs yet. 

Peruvian culture is generally depicted in art, just as it is in most places.  The Native American heritage of Peru is one of the richest in South America. Although Spain gave Peru its language, religion, and rulers, the civilization of the Inca has left its traces throughout Peruvian culture. Archaeological excavations have uncovered monumental remains of Native American societies. Architecture of the Spanish colonial period, a fusion of Spanish and Native American forms, is called Creole.  The descendants of the Quechua and Aymará peoples populate the Andean highlands. Many do not speak Spanish and have preserved the customs and folklore of their ancestors. Along the coast and in the highland cities, the whites, mestizos, and blacks live in a modern Western style. In contrast to these settlements are the jungles of eastern Peru, where more isolated groups of Native Americans retain lifestyles similar to those of their ancestors.

Next we hired a plane to fly us over the Nasca

The Nazca Lines are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The high, arid plateau stretches more than 80 kilometres (50 mi) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana about 400 km south of Lima. Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 AD.^[1] The hundreds of individual figures range in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, orcas, llamas, and lizards.

The lines are shallow designs made in the ground by removing the ubiquitous reddish pebbles and uncovering the whitish ground beneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes; more than seventy are zoomorphic designs of animals such as birds, fish, llamas, jaguar, monkey, or human figures. Other designs include phytomorphic shapes such as trees and flowers. The largest figures are over 200 metres (660 ft) across. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general they ascribe religious significance to them.

The geometric ones could indicate the flow of water or be connected to rituals to summon water. The spiders, birds, and plants could be fertility symbols. Other possible explanations include: irrigation schemes or giant astronomical calendars.^[2]

Due to the dry, windless, and stable climate of the plateau and its isolation, for the most part the lines have been preserved. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs.

After people travelled over the area by plane in the 1930s and saw the Nazca Lines from the air, anthropologists started studying them, with focus on trying to understand how they were created.

Scholars have theorized the Nazca people could have used simple tools and surveying equipment to construct the lines. Studies have found wooden stakes in the ground at the end of some lines, which support this theory. One such stake was carbon-dated and the basis for establishing the age of the design complex. Researcher Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky has reproduced the figures by using tools and technology available to the Nazca people. The National Geographic called his work "remarkable in its exactness" when compared to the actual lines.^[3] With careful planning and simple technologies, a small team of people could recreate even the largest figures within days, without any aerial assistance.^[4]

On the ground, most of the lines are formed by a shallow trench with a depth of between 10 cm (3.9 in) and 15 cm (5.9 in). Such trenches were made by removing the reddish-brown iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca desert. When this gravel is removed the light-colored earth which is exposed in the bottom of the trench produces lines which contrast sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface. This sublayer contains high amounts of lime which with the morning mist hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion.

The Nazca "drew" several hundred simple but huge curvilinear animal and human figures by this technique. In total, the earthwork project is huge and complex: the area encompassing the lines is nearly 500 square kilometres (190 sq mi), and the largest figures can span nearly 270 metres (890 ft). The extremely dry, windless, and constant climate of the Nazca region has preserved the lines well. The Nazca desert is one of the driest on Earth and maintains a temperature around 25 °C (77 °F) all year round. The lack of wind has helped keep the lines uncovered and visible to the present day.

 Purpose:

Archeologists, ethnologists, and anthropologists have studied the ancient Nazca culture and the complex to try to determine the purpose of the lines and figures. One hypothesis is that the Nazca people created them to be seen by their gods in the sky. Kosok and Reiche advanced a purpose related to astronomy and cosmology: the lines were intended to act as a kind of observatory, to point to the places on the distant horizon where the sun and other celestial bodies rose or set. Many prehistoric indigenous cultures in the Americas and elsewhere constructed earthworks that combined such astronomical sighting with their religious cosmology, as did the later Mississippian culture at Cahokia in present-day United States. Another example is Stonehenge in England. But, Gerald Hawkins and Anthony Aveni, experts in archaeoastronomy, concluded in 1990 that there was insufficient evidence to support such an astronomical explanation.^[5]

In 1985, the archaeologist Johan Reinhard published archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data demonstrating that worship of mountains and other water sources predominated in Nazca religion and economy from ancient to recent times. He theorized that the lines and figures were part of religious practices involving the worship of deities associated with the availability of water, which directly related to the success and productivity of crops. He interpreted the lines as sacred paths leading to places where these deities could be worshiped. The figures were symbols representing animals and objects meant to invoke the gods' aid in supplying water. But, the precise meanings of many of the individual geoglyphs remain unsolved as of 2011.

Henri Stierlin, a Swiss art historian specializing in Egypt and the Middle East, published a book in 1983 linking the Nazca Lines to the production of ancient textiles that archeologists have found wrapping mummies of the Paracas culture.^[6] He contended that the people may have used the lines and trapezes as giant, primitive looms to fabricate the extremely long strings and wide pieces of textile that are typical of the area. By his theory, the figurative patterns (smaller and less common) were meant only for ritualistic purposes.

Our visit to Paracas was enlightening. 

The Paracas culture was an important Andean society between approximately 800 BCE and 100 BCE, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management. It developed in the Paracas Peninsula, located in what today is the Paracas District of the Pisco Province in the Ica Region. Most of our information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside Paracas site, first investigated by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in the 1920s.

The Paracas Cavernas are shaft tombs set into the top of Cerro Colorado, each containing multiple burials. There is evidence that these tombs were reused over centuries. In some cases the heads of the deceased were taken out, apparently for rituals, and later reburied. The associated ceramics include incised polychrome, "negative" resist decoration and other wares of the Paracas tradition. The associated textiles include many complex weave structures as well as elaborate plaiting and knotting techniques.

The necropolis of Wari Kayan consisted of two clusters of hundreds of burials set closely together inside and around abandoned buildings on the steep north slope of Cerro Colorado. The associated ceramics are very fine plain wares, some with white and red slips and other with pattern-burnished decoration, and other wares of the Topara tradition. Each burial consisted of a conical textile-wrapped bundle, most containing a seated individual facing north across the bay of Paracas, next to offerings such as ceramics, foodstuffs, baskets and weapons. Each body was bound with cord to hold it in a seated position, before being wrapped in many layers of intricate, ornate, and finely woven textiles. The Paracas Necropolis embroideries are now known as some of the finest ever produced by Pre-Columbian Andean societies, and are the primary works of art by which Paracas is known. Burials at the necropolis of Wari Kayan continue until about 250 CE, and many of the mortuary bundles include textiles like those of early Nazca.

The Paracas Candelabra, also called the Candelabra of the Andes, is a well-known prehistoric geoglyph found on the northern face of the Paracas Peninsula at Pisco Bay in Peru. Pottery found nearby has been radio carbon dated to 200 BCE, the time of the Paracas culture. The design is cut two feet into the soil, with stones possibly from a later date placed around it. The figure is 595 feet tall, large enough to be seen 12 miles at sea.^[1]

It is approximately 595 feet long, and is visible for several miles out to sea. The geoglyph consists of 2-foot-deep (0.61 m) trenches carved into the hillside and stones used to mark its edges. Other lines are also carved into the hillside near it.

Local tradition holds that it represents the lightning rod or staff of the god Viracocha, who was worshipped throughout South America.^[1] A variety of popular myths have arisen: one attributes it to José de San Martín; another suggests it is a Masonic symbol (see Freemasonry); and yet another that sailors created it as a sign which they could view at sea for landfall.

Visitors to the Candelabra should view the site under the supervision of a responsible and accredited guide.

While the Paracas culture developed in this region between about 1200 BCE and 100 BCE, the Topará culture is thought to have invaded from the north at approximately 150 BCE. The two cultures then coexisted for one or more generations, both at this site and in the nearby Ica Valley, and their interaction played a key role in the development of the Nazca culture and ceramic and textile traditions. Though the elaborate textiles have only been preserved in the coastal desert sites, there is growing evidence that people associated with these cultures lived and traveled between the Pacific lowlands and the Andean highland valleys and mountain pastures to the east.

 Although the exact age of the Candelabra geoglpyh is unknown, archaeologists have found pottery around the site dating back to around 200 B.C. This pottery likely belonged to the Paracas people, although whether they were involved in the creation of the geoglyph is not known. The reason for the Candelabra's creation is also unknown, although it is most likely a representation of the trident, a lightning rod of the god Viracocha, who was seen in mythology throughout South America. It has been suggested that the Candelabra was built as a sign to sailors, or even as a symbolic representation of a hallucinogenic plant called Jimson weed.

Paracas bay, with its southern end lying within the Paracas National Reservation is well-known for its abundant wildlife. The unique ecosystem, insulated from thrashing ocean waves and current by Paracas Peninsula, and its shallow warmer waters, stimulates a remarkable growth of seaweed for which much of the wildlife, particularly the birds of Paracas, thrive upon directly or indirectly.

The bay appears as the gateway to Paracas National Reserve, its warmer shallow waters foster wildlife and many nautical sports, and its calm shoreline protects the municipality of Paracas and the various cottages and hotels that have sprung up in the last few years. As of recent years, the bay has hosted many sailors on catamarans and kitesurfers seeking the flat water and strong wind found in the bay.

Back on land, the villages beckoned us to see them up close.  Such color and diversity of economic development from street vendor to prosperous business coexist in sight and reach of one another. 

Our final visit was to the Chauchilla Cemetery discovered on the high desert south of the city.  Then it was back on the bus for three movies and 9 hours before we are back in our apartment.  But, it was a good weekend filled with sights, smells, and of course the sounds of Peru,  where there is always action except when its quiet, and that's usually between 2:00am and 4:00am.  

The cemetery was discovered in the 1920s,^[3] but had not been used since the 9th century AD. The cemetery includes many important burials over a period of 600 to 700 years. The start of the interments was in about 200 AD. It is important as a source of archaeology to Nazca culture.^[4] The cemetery has been extensively plundered by huaqueros who have left human bones and pottery scattered around the area.^[4] Similar local cemeteries have been damaged to a greater extent.^[2] The site has been protected by Peruvian law since 1997 and tourists pay around seven U.S. dollars to take the two hour tour of this ancient necropolis.^[2] The site is by the Poroma riverbed and can be accessed off a dirt track from the Panamerican Highway.^[4] In 1997, the majority of the scattered bones and plundered pottery were restored to the tombs.^[1]

The tombs were built for family groups

 

Preservation of the bodies
The bodies are so remarkably preserved due mainly to the dry climate in the Peruvian Desert but the funeral rites were also a contributing factor. The bodies were clothed in embroidered cotton and then painted with a resin and kept in purposely built tombs made from mud bricks. The resin is thought to have kept out insects and slowed bacteria trying to feed on the bodies.^[1]
The nearby site of Estaquería may provide clues to the remarkable preservation of the numerous bodies in these cemeteries. At that site, Archeologists found wooden pillars initially thought to have been used for astronomical sightings.^[5] However, it is now believed that the posts were used to dry bodies in a mummification process.^[2] This may account for the high degree of preservation seen in thousand-year-old bodies which still have hair and the remains of soft tissue, such as skin.

 Finally, to preserve our own bodies, we had lunch in Nasca at a local favorite restaurant with two of the Elders assigned to Nasca, Elder Brown (from Arizona) and Elder Hoyos (from Colombia)  We tried to fill them up but you know young men and their appetites for good food.  We had a great visit with them.  They serve there along with 8 other young men and one adult couple hoping to create a stake in Nasca within the next few years.  People are growing stronger in their Spirituality every week, attending and serving faithfully.  All good signs of strong development. 

 

As we said goodbye to the missionaries there, they took us to the corner store owned by the local branch leader.  We met his family as well.  He had a rich selection of junk food that rivals anything I had seen anywhere, even as a young boy, and I was a local favorite as a customer.  I specialized in penny candy taking my time selecting just the right assortment of sen sen, pop in wax, red was lips and candy cigarettes,,such a nice peppermint flavor if you're that old.  This traveler appears to be stocking up on liquids for the ride home.