Keith's travelogue

Dear All,

The past week has been an intersting mix of busy tvel days and decidedly unbusy beach days, ending with some visits to the pre-Inca artefacts contained in the museums in Lima. What stunning treasures there are here.

After Cuenca we had a long days travel to the surfie hangout of Mancora, about 200km south of the Peru-Ecuador border. It was a needed toime out for a couple of days R&R. Then it was on to a small fishing viallage called Huanchaco, near the major town of Trujillo. This name just happens to be the same as the new Telstra boss. His name is Sol Trujillo, and funnily enough there is a Temple to the Sun at the Peruvian Trujillo, as well as the wreckage of two old civilisations, so let's hope that that is not an omen for what he intentds to do to Telstra (i.e. cut 12,000 jobs!).

At a place called Chan Chan are the ruins opf the largest adobe (mud brick) city in the world, It measures at least 28 square km, and there are nine papaces found so far, each comprising millions of adobe bricks. The Incas conquered the city in the early 1500s as they made their way north to Ecuador, but it took a seige lasting about 11 years.

Pre-dating that city are the two temples, sone to the Sun and one to the Moon. We were only able to visit the moon templae as the other one had been sealed up after some exploratory excavations. The temple of the moon consisted of five layers, each about 100 years apart. The people had basically covered over each successive templae with a totally new one, bigger and better than the last. At one spot they have peeled away the bricks and parts of the murals from three of the periods are able to be viewed. They all have different styles but the connections between them are clear.

The locals here practised human sacrifice, so we saw the altar where the blood of the poor unfortunate was offered up, and murals depicting the process from the strart of the fight through to the blood offering. Pretty scary stuff, but as they believed in re-incarnation they didn't really think they were dying, justing moving to a different level of existence.

We also visited site museum, and got a look at the Emerald temple named after the stones they found there. There were also some examples of the textiles and ceramics, but there are more on display in Lima museums as they have the money and equipment in Lima to store and maintain them under the right conditions to preserve them. The only bad thing about the visit is that there was no tome to linger to onserve the works of art on the murals in greater detail. As my camera is still not working, the postcards I sent to you will have to do.

After the ruins we moved on to Lima, arriving early in the morning after an overnght bus trip (one of the joys of travel I guess). Lima has some amazing seaside vistas from the very rich suburbs of Miraflores and Barranca. These suburbs are perched on the top of the cliffs that fall very steeply nto the sea at this point. The overnight trip meant I missed a lot of the scenery, but basically from the border down to Lima it has been very dry and arid as there is very little rain here. Surprisingly though, if irrigated the land is very fertile. This apparently was one of the secrets of those old civilisations and they dug channels from the rivers and the mountains to bring the water over tens of kilometers for crop irrigiation to the fertile coastal plains.

It rained very little back then so the "El Niño" effect only happened about once every 100 years (not every seven or so nowadays). When the "El Niño" happened it mant drought in Australia, but rain in Peru, so the mud adobe bricks basically washed away. This brought on a change of ruler (being a sign from the Gods) and hence the need to rebuild ther cities and palaces. So the "El Niño" effect is happening so much more frequently the mud bricks are dissolving into large piles of sand, However, thansk to overseas aid (especially the Germans) this has been able to be arrested on the most important exposed sites.

Anyway, back to Lima. Despite a lot of the old sites having been stripped by grave robbers and the Spanish looking for all the wonderful gold artefacts, a lot of ceramics and textiles have survived and been housed in the Museums of Lima. Today we went to the Museum of the Central Bank, as well as the Gold Museum. The latter was the best and it is the bequest of a private collector. It was absolutely amazing. It was mostly pre-Inca and at over 8000 pieces of ceramics, stoneage and bronze age artefacts, textiles, mummies, and many, many pices of gold and silver jewellery and funerla wear showing amazing workmanship and artisty in the pieces (refer to post cards now on the way).

After that it was a short busride down the road to Nazca, home to the Nazca lines. but more of that next week.

Regards,
Keith