Around the world with two suitcases
Now that I have a hot glue gun and access to sea shells, I had to finish up my projects. (I’ve never had a glue gun before–only burned myself once.)
My other couple: Mr. and Mrs. Rumpole
Ahem, you look like.. ‘she who must be obeyed.’ “Silly man! Of course I am.”
The fossil at the museum was even larger than Mrs. Rumpole.
(We have to have some silliness.)
What a whirl! Not only more trips to Caral, but more events associated with the Fiesta de la Virgen de Lourdes than I would have imagined.
There were two body board tournaments, sand soccer, kids activities, beach volleyball, the serenade, a procession, food booths, caballos de paso, and dancers! That was after bingo and before a baby shower. We haven’t had such an action packed weekend that I can remember, particularly since we were away from Barranca last year at this time.
The horses and dancers were impressive (so was the heat). I had never seen the Norteño dance between a woman and a rider on horseback.
We offered the Marinera dancers the shade of our front porch to gather and warm up.
The dancers were very good.
Our friend and neighbor Maria Luisa Lauzzeri is a competitive Marinera dancer.
There were dancers whose ancestors came from Puno based on the dance, usually done in that region. Their regalia looked better suited to a cold day at high altitude than a hot day on the beach, but they danced with passion.
The close of the dance was strange. The music turned to rap and the women waved V-signs by their eyes. Your guess is as good as mine. Probably a youthful update in symbolism.
We ate chancho al palo for lunch, along with some duck with rice, except that it was chicken, and some other things. By then it was way too hot, so Jonathan napped and I took a swim. By the time we sat on the porch to watch the sunset, the breeze cooled us and the sight of the red-orange sun subsiding into the ocean was as mesmerizing as ever.
Our daily stroll down the beach and back keeps us up to date with what’s going on, new construction, decoration for impending festivals, posters for loud weekend night club shows (night club may be dignifying these places beyond what they deserve). We say hello to friends and neighbors and beach comb our way back to the house along the shore.
Yesterday was different. Just after starting out, we saw two truckloads of police and security people on the front terrace of a restaurant just down the street. It was a tax raid, slapping a big “Closed for non-payment of restaurant tax,” on the door. This usually means that an undercover agent ate at the restaurant and was not given a boleta, a receipt that is recorded and is the basis for tax payments. Two women with clipboards stood talking to people from the restaurant, while a circle of bullet-proof vest wearing armed men encircled them. Scary. We moved along.
Further down, at the public water tap, where there are usually women washing clothes and men washing moto-taxis, four men were butchering a cow. Yes, an entire cow, right on the steps down to the water. Talk about a mess! We moved on.
Just then, the two trucks of police zoomed by us and alighted to surround another beach restaurant. It’s a bit disturbing to see automatic weapons on the street. Not the usual thing at all.
Fast forward to the next day. We set out this morning and found both restaurants open, no stickers or other signs of police presence at either place, despite the twenty or more operatives who visited each one yesterday. Were the raids worth it? At the water tap, all had been cleaned up, there was no sign of butchery and its aftermath, just water running out of the two pipes as usual. I think this is where magical realism comes from. You see things and then you wonder. Could this really have happened?
After reporting on Caral at 2 in the afternoon when it was about 95° out, I said I would never go there again in the summer.
I went again. And again.
I was asked by a good friend to accompany three visitors, black belt karate experts, one from Peru, and two from Uruguay to see Caral. How could I say no? A huge archaeology fan, Edgardo visited Caral on a previous trip to Peru. He’s visited the Parthenon, the Coliseum, and ranks Caral with them, and he couldn’t wait to visit with his son. We left the house at 8:30 am, arrived by 9:15 am, while the day was still cool. We took the entire tour and didn’t leave the site until about 12:30 pm. Yes, it was hot by then, but the first two hours were fine. It helped that we hitched a ride back and didn’t walk, since the distance from the start and end of the tour is about a mile from the footbridge and parking area.
We are crossing the Supe River, looking back at Caral.
Barely a week later, I returned to Caral AGAIN, with friends Alaka Wali and Rick Hubbard. I had promised to go out with them quite a while ago, even though I decried visiting in summer. We left early and decided to take a ride both ways to the site. Unlike the open top truck, which wasn’t around, the ride in an ancient, underpowered, overloaded mototaxi on an unpaved, cobble-strewn road was a loud, lengthy, bone-rattling experience.
We have a friend who says, “What fresh hell is this?”
I was wondering, myself.
I was so impressed by our ride out to the visitor center, that I went to call Carlos, our driver, and ask him to go see if he could cross the river and get closer so that we didn’t have to repeat this process.
Naturally, there was no cell service.
It turns out that there actually is phone service, but only out on the site, so we set off with our guide, Agustin, and another group.
I managed to contact Carlos, then became ill and retreated to the restrooms. Alaka and Rick were able to see some of the site, Carlos was able to cross the river and we did not have to repeat our journey from hell across the cobbled nightmare called the road. I will never go to Caral again without checking the river crossing. I will also pray the river is always low. Sorry farmers.
Without making any blanket statements, I believe that it is highly unlikely that I will go to Caral again this month. Or this year.
A couple of years ago I attended a fundraising bingo put on by neighbors who knitted clothing for people in the highlands who need warm items. Mittens, caps, scarves, even sweaters. I had a lot of fun at the fund raiser and met several local women I enjoyed verymuch. Later, I found no more bingos were planned because so many of the women in the knitting group couldn’t knit anymore, so there was no reason to raise money to purchase yarn. I was happy to find that a bingo is part of this year’s festival of Our Lady of Lourdes. She has a strong following on the beach.
Each person brings a small gift for the prize table. Re-gifting is highly acceptable, and prizes ranged from a bottle of shampoo to a 4 place settings of stoneware. The prizes are part of the fun, but any prize is a good one. Turnout was excellent. Each person donates 6 soles to the cause per bingo card. People played 1-3 cards.
A big table of the under-21 set played, too. They may have won the lion’s share of prizes. Some of the rest of us may have a tiny bit of cognitive decline, but we concentrated on our bingo cards. If more than one person had bingo at the same time, there was a drawing of bingo numbers between the winners, with the highest number taking the prize. Fortunately, there were lots of prizes and we played for over two hours before all the prizes were won. The “apagon” is the last, biggest prize, and to win you have to fill an entire card, not just a row. It means “blackout”, ending the evening with a splash.
By the time bingo broke up at around 10 pm, everyone had chatted with their friends and relatives, had a snack, played bingo, caught up on what all their friends and neighbors and their families were doing, where their children and grandchildren were spending the summer vacation, when they will be in Barranca, and otherwise had a great, sociable evening.
We are delighted to have had a visit from our colleagues who recently joined the ranks of the happily retired. Despite their global travels Sue and Z had not visited South America and started off their Peru trip with a few days in Barranca.
After visiting the market, our dinner was sauteed fillet of corvina filleted by Jonathan from the whole fish, peas and a festival of Peruvian potatoes. We baked Amarillo, Huayro, Peruanitas, Negros, and a couple of others. All delicious with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. We even drank Peruvian wine. Some of it is good now.
We had to visit a site so that they could see the wonderful 5,000 year old places we’ve worked. We could have taken them to several very large, very dry, very rocky sites, but we settled on Porvenir, where we worked in 2003.
There has been a lot of looting at Porvenir. The circular plaza, used as a burial ground by later people living in the area, is almost completely destroyed. Human bone, scraps of cloth and broken pottery lie abandoned where looters left them.
From Porvenir, we detoured past the home of the honey lady, who has the best honey I’ve ever tasted. She wasn’t home, alas, but we saw some of her wildlife.
With our feet sinking in the dust up to our ankles at the site, we needed showers when we got back.
The next day we visited the fishermen at the end of the beach. Sue has carried out research with artisanal (small-scale) fishermen, and was interested to see them and ask a few questions. We found a man repairing a boat while he waited for the rough seas to abate–probably by the end of the weekend.
What fascinated me was his repair. New planks were tornillo, resistant to rot, he says. He was filling the substantial cracks between planks with oakum. He used a hank of fiber, this material dates back to Dickens’ day when it was produced in poor houses and debtors prisons by people forced to unravel scraps of rope (picking oakum). No silicone caulk for this guy!
But why?
We decided to visit Caral, so that Sue and Z could see the reconstructed version of what they had seen at Porvenir. We arrived at the site in mid-afternoon. Ironically, the Supe River is quite high and we could not drive through the river to reach the site, so we had to continue down the road another mile, turn right in the hamlet of Supe, and find the parking area for Caral by the substantial footbridge that has been built across the river. We passed up a ride in a horse cart part of the way to the ticket office. The sign said 300m, and how far could it be, anyway? Big mistake.
After an interminable walk through 90° heat, we reached a point from which much of the site was visible. Excavated areas are wrapped/covered with white material, and roofs have been erected over some areas. There are flags on several structures to try and wave off birds. The effect is a bit incomplete, but gives a sense of the structures. Later, our guide pointed out that the goal is not restoration, but only to rebuild what is excavated, hence the partial walls and stairways. You can compare today’s photos with the previous ones from Porvenir where all you see is rock, the unreconstructed versions. There was no longer a sign toward the ticket office, but a sign for restrooms pointing off toward a distant area. Sue and Z headed for the nearest structure while I went to the ticket office. It is positioned in a low spot (by the rest rooms) so that it doesn’t detract from the site, but I would have given a lot for a ride in a golf cart at that point. The temperature was approximately that of the center of the sun, and I hustled our mandatory guide off to the main pyramid before we collapsed from heat stroke. He tried manfully to interest us in visiting more of the site, and managed to get us to an overlook point built on a big mound of back dirt from the excavations (good use of back dirt).
We look pretty good for being burned to a crisp.
We took our pictures, looked at the circular plaza by the main mound, and walked around the corner of the next large mound, ready to leave.
We weren’t able to take the most direct path (the archaeologists don’t like you to use the direct route) and the “authorized” path goes a circuitous route–I finally told our guide that we were not taking ONE MORE STEP the wrong way. We turned back toward the car and, mercifully, air conditioning. I will not mention the guide’s name. It’s not his fault that it was outrageously hot and his canned training was uninteresting. A former laborer on the excavations, he and several of his fellow workers have been trained as guides and now give tours.
NEVER GO TO CARAL BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND EASTER. That is what we learned. It may be the only restored site from the Late Archaic time period, but the center of the sun is not a happy place. We stopped for cold water and cool sodas in the village, the air conditioning blasted, and life gradually returned to our charred and blistered corpses. We went home and took more showers. Then it was time to sit on the front porch with cocktails and watch the sun set while a freighter headed north. That was a great end to the day.
It’s been swimming weather, hot enough every day to go in, and the ocean not as frigid as most years. Today that’s impossible, as the waves are crashing into a big froth and the undertow is fierce. Backwards waves hit the ones coming in and make a huge splash.
There’s always writing, but sometimes I need a break. I discovered there’s a glue gun here, so I made seashell people. I’m still working on them.
I discovered there’s a glue gun here, so I made seashell people. I’m still working on them.
I also made a fig tart with figs from the garden.
The festival of Our Lady of Lourdes is this week. We’ve already purchased raffle tickets, chicken dinners, and are awaiting the actual events.
As far as I can tell, this includes several evenings of saying the rosary, and sports competitions. There is both a serenata and a procession next week, so we’ll see what those are. In the spirit of something for everyone, on this coming Sunday there is a mass and a Miss Bikini contest. I love festivals.
The sun dropped below the clouds long enough to display a brilliant red orb that slid into the ocean. You may not always be able to swim in the ocean but there’s always something to look at.
The weather has been hot and humid. Sorry, all of you freezing in the north, but it has finally gotten uncomfortably hot so that going in the ocean almost every day becomes important, as does the fan. We all suffer as we must (smirk). We went on an expedition to the beach at Medio Mundo, my favorite for beach combing. I don’t know why there are so few visitors and so many dead things, but it results in great beach combing and I love that. We took Rufo for his first trip outside, stopping to buy him a leash. He ran around like mad and then jumped back in the truck.
He then jumped out and ran around like crazy until he was so tired that he drank water and sat under the truck in the shade. We couldn’t get him onto the beach because the sand was too hot on his paws.
Maybe that was just as well. We watched flocks of birds, several kinds of gulls, cormorants, Inca terns, skimmers, pelicans. There were thousands of them fishing and sitting on the beach.
There were four vultures sitting on top of a dead dolphin.
There were baby oystercatchers crouched in the pitiful shade of a broken bucket. Apparently, this is how they are raised. The last time we were at Medio Mundo we saw a slightly larger oystercatcher sitting on a chunk of plastic. Their nests are just a flat spot in the sand so the parents seem to put the babies near objects as a sort of camouflage. The babies play dead when anything comes by. It makes them easy to photograph.
Last but not least was my great find. I found a whale bone!
Jonathan’s birthday was much more low key than the others we’ve helped celebrate.
Jonathan and Alex had a beer next door. The day was beautiful, but the ocean was too rough to swim.
We had great food, but a quiet day. Dalmira gave us two guinea pigs that she raised herself. They were young and tender (she said). Jonathan roasted them and they were excellent. Dona Berta gave us an apple pie. It was also delicious. I love my neighbors. Another friend brought by a copy of a book by her son, who we’ve met. He is a professor of the history of photography at a Peruvian university.
The sunsets continue to be lovely–sometimes even when the sun is only visible dropping between two layers of clouds.
We were invited to a birthday party. Come to lunch! It sounds so simple, but you have to understand what it means (it’s a lot more fun if you know what you are agreeing to). Our friends Alex and Leila live in a beautiful setting, with a lovely house, patio, and yard that benefit from Leila’s love of painting, both large and small scale (note the blue walls of the patio). Alex works for his uncle, managing a large farm/ranch operation. We went to lunch to celebrate Leila’s birthday.
People are invited for 1 pm, and start trickling in then. We were not the first to arrive (we’re learning). The first two or three hours are for socializing, drinks, snacks and conversation. (If you think you have plans for later, you can ask that your drink be ‘suavecito’. You’ll probably abandon those plans, however.) We all wandered around the beautiful patio and the yard. Some people still had to shower and change, pick up young people and return. At one point, I think Alex went for a swim. All very casual (I was overdressed, as usual. I seem to go over or under, and haven’t quite absorbed the dress code yet.) We went through a stage of taking photos–of everyone with everyone.
We admired the lamb roasting in the style of “Chancho al palo.” It was slowly grilled over an open fire held up by stakes of rebar (the palos, or sticks).
There were lots of animals. Jonathan and I both like the tiny yorkie, Tommasa, though there’s also a cat, several dogs that go with the property wander in and out. One had new puppies and we put our names in for one when they are old enough–they were only a week old. The new puppy will be company for Rufo, our mostly blue tick hound. He’s still young enough to want a friend. There was also Alexa’s horse. Alex put him through his paces for us.
Lunch was served around 4:30 pm. It was delicious.
I even helped a little bit. It was totally farm to table. The lamb, potatoes and beans were all from the farm. Everything was delicious. After lunch–it’s about 5:30 pm and everyone has been drinking beer and Chilcano’s since early afternoon (Chilcano: Pisco, ginger ale, a slice of lime). Now there’s dancing.
However, we all know that there is a very large torta (birthday cake) made by Dona Berta, one of the guests, so there is no leaving the party until the cake comes out. The birthday girl says something about going until midnight. There is not a loud chorus of support. Skinny-dipping in the pool meets with similar lack of enthusiasm. Conversation continues. Women argue over who is allowed to clear dishes. Men sip their drinks without comment. The big moment arrives and the torta comes out. We sing Happy Birthday, first in English and then in Spanish with much pounding of the table. It’s fun. The cake is delicious.
After cake, we all wound down. It’s been a great event, and we’re all caught up on the goings on of all our friends and neighbors. Everyone kisses everyone on the cheek and we leave for home.
And that….. is a birthday party.
There was no need for dinner. Jonathan gave up and went to bed at 8:30.
Llywindatravels 2025 