South America, 2014: Pisco, Peru

24 March 2014

When I woke up this morning and looked out our stateroom window, I thought we had sailed into the Sahara Desert! We were moored in a place with absolutely no vegetation and no signs of a town, just a few port buildings in the middle of nowhere. Turns out the town of Pisco is actually across the bay and the docking area is situated in a National Park.

Our tour today took us to Incan ruins known as Tambo Colorado. As the bus made its way out to the Panamerican highway, we passed some hotels, including a Doubletree. The area is recovering from a terrible earthquake five years ago that destroyed almost everything. The bay the ship is in is developing into a resort area and some of the rich of Peru have built large homes along the shore. But the recovery has been slow and the local people have suffered tremendously.

We passed through some small towns and villages and all were very poor. We saw lots of little taxis, like the type I associate with India. Most of the locals are too poor to own a car, so they travel to their appointments using these taxis. Many of the taxi operators take great pride in their vehicles – they were decorated up the kazoo.

As we left the Panamerican highway and started inland, we found land similar to what we saw in Coquimbo, Chili. Very dry, but when irrigated, quite fertile. This area is known as the original home of the Pisco grape and the tour guide was quite clear that, while Chili considers Pisco sours and their Pisco grapes to be the best in the world, Peru in fact has the best Pisco brandy.

Tambo Colorado was an Incan fortress that was built in the 1400s when the Incas took over the area from the local indigents. Several of these fortresses were built in Peru, each one at a key spot for traffic traveling from the mountains to the coastal areas. This particular fortress is actually situated on an ancient road and there are still remnants of the road visible in the area. The fortress was abandoned not long after the Incans were overtaken by the Spanish, about 1550. It sat abandoned for centuries, until anthropologists found it and researched it in the 1940s. Tourists have been visiting since then, offering a source of income for this very poor part of Peru.

Back in the day, about 600 people lived in the fortress, but when the Incan emperor and his entourage visited, the size would grow to about 1000. There were several large plazas for trade and keeping animals and holding their ritual ceremonies, including human sacrifices, and then there were lots of individual rooms all kind of connected together that had various purposes. For this entire complex, there was a total of, count them, two baths! They didn’t have potties there, the rooms were strictly for bathing, but even so, I doubt that bathing was a daily habit. And no one asked about the potty situation, maybe the anthropologists don’t know how that all worked.

We spent about an hour touring the ruins and visiting the tiny museum. There were several pre-Incan potteries on display, but they were all recreations of what had been found at the site.

On our way back to the ship, we stopped for a short break at a textile workshop. Here, young people are being trained to weave fabrics using the local cottons and traditional methods. They turn these into products, like purses and pillowcases which they sell in their little gift shop. I really liked how this company is finding a way to help the locals retain their traditions and make a living in the modern world.

Then it was back through the desert to the ship. I don’t really know why Peru decided to make this into a National Reserve since it doesn’t look like land that is very desirable to develop and it looks much too harsh to want to explore. I suspect it is due more to the coastline and the offshore islands, which have lots of birds and marine life. The weather is steadily getting warmer; today it was in the high 80s. And the sea has smoothed out considerably. When we left Valparaiso four days ago, we had a few hours of big rollers, but then the ship turned direction and since then it has been all smooth. Nice to have the Pacific Ocean behaving according to its name.

An interesting decoration at the port. Looks like a tiny little train.

We traveled on this empty road through the Paracas National Reserve for 10 miles or so to reach the roads connecting us to Tambo Colorado.

The Parasco National Reserve.

Some of the homes being built along the coastline. These are vacation homes for the rich folks who live in Lima.

I don’t know if these are used as homes for everyday use or if people come out to them on weekends so they can be closer to the beach. All they consisted of was four thatched walls and a roof. I saw inside a couple. All they had was what looked like scattered clothes and a mattress. I didn’t see any electricity, but one of the “buildings” actually had a satellite dish mounted on it.

Traveling on the Panamerican highway. So we have traveled on this highway in Alaska, Canada, Costa Rica, Panama, Argentina, Chili and Peru!

This is typical of the villages that we passed by on our way to the Incan ruins.

Many intersections in the villages had little shopping stalls. We didn’t see any large shopping centers.

Lots of the homes had thatched walls and many had no roofs. They explained that roofs are not needed because it doesn’t rain. But I thought it would be nice to have some shade and protection from birds.