Cows on Parade in Lima

Peruvians love their evaporated milk. In fact, when you ask for milk, that's what you get--a can of it! 

Gloria, a Peruvian milk company headquartered in Arequipa, produces evaporated as well as fresh milk (the kind most Americans dig). While we were in Lima, we came upon their big advertising campaign in Lima's parks--the cow parade! 

Pictures explain better than words, so I included the highlights: the bovine taken straight from the insane asylum and the one whose protected against swine flu. There were many more whose photos I didn't include.

Click on any of the pictures to check the cows out in detail.

Lima puts it's best face forward

Lima put it's best face forward for my mom's arrival on Saturday. 

Blue skies are a rarity in the panza de burro city, and we had a whole day of sun. 

Plus, my mom saw a different view of Lima than I had (see previous post).  We stayed in Miraflores, a swanky neighborhood 15 minutes from downtown--a sample of developed-world Lima located along la costa verde (the green coast) on the ocean.

In Miraflores, the vast inequality that defines Peru--and Latin America--was blatantly apparent. Five-star hotels and lavish condos along the beach, compared with the cardboard makeshift homes in Lima's outskirts, testify to a painstaking reality: the rewards of Peru's strong economic growth has only been reaped by a few. 

One example is this shopping center on the ocean--complete with a Chilis, North Face and other American stores--and the Marriott that towers over it.

This image of high rises, shiny Nissans and young professionals returning from a shopping spree captures the essence of Miraflores:

Hugging the squeaky-clean central park are European-style patio restaurants filled with Peruvians taking a long lunch:

In the nearby beach neighborhood of Barranco, this gorgeous church is the center of another strip of expensive restaurant selling ceviche:

While Miraflores may have been more comfortable physically, it was less than comfortable for my conscience.

Goodbye to Huaraz: Llanganuco Lakes

Our last day in Huaraz, we traveled to the frigid Llanganuco lakes positioned above Yungay on the north face of el Huascarán (the highest mountain in Peru).

Most tourists go on a guided tour, but we decided to take a different route. We grabbed a combi (van) to Yungay, then contracted a taxi driver, who, for about 13 bucks, took us the 1 1/2 hours up the steep mountain roads to the lakes. 

Beyond the enchanting scenery, the most interesting part of our trip was Dionicio, our taxi driver. 22 years old, Dionicio lives in the small village on the ridge just below the lakes. 

He showed us his home, and his dad outside--a small adobe place surrounded by animals. Electricity just recently arrived to their pueblo in 2002. Most of the community does subsistence farming and maybe a small business. 

After showing us the lakes, a sight to see, Sergio asked Dionicio if he knew of a good place to eat trucha (trout), and it turned out that his cousin Aire, recently opened up a roadside restaurant near the pueblo. 

Aire, shown below, immediately welcomed us into their small picnic table and kitchen. She chatted with us about life in her town. While they often went to Yungay (45 min down the mountain), Aire had never been to Huaraz (two hours away).

Quechua is her language, but through broken Spanish (on her part and mine), we shared in conversation. This was my first time being somewhere in Peru where Spanish was the (far) second language. 

Sergio ate what he claimed was the best trucha of his life. We thanked Aire and her family and headed back down the road. 

Before Dionicio left us, he asked Sergio for his number just in case he decided to take the job he offered him in the bakery as a driver. 

You see, on the days Dionicio does manage to get a customer, he takes home only $5 of his $13 fare after paying gas and the car's rental. At the bakery, Sergio said, Dionicio would have a room, board and $10/day to keep (double what he makes taxiing).  Even though Arequipa is 26 hours in bus from Yungay and he had no family there, it seemed Dionicio was going to give the offer some serious thought. 

Maybe we'll see him again someday, but if not, I was thankful he wanted to share a piece of his life with us on our last day in Huaraz.

Bad chicken?

(For your sake, I decided not to include pictures with this story.)

They say that the ruins at Chavín de Huántar are so powerful that they have an effect on some people. I guess that some people is me, because I woke up the next day with terrible nausea, and spent the next 12 hours puking my insides out. 

Maybe that was Chavín's way of getting me on my knees. If I was praying to the porcelain god, at least I was praying.

It was probably just a serving of bad chicken and old french fries I ate at the restaurant our tour guide took us to. The Brazilian woman we ate with refused to eat the cold plate, saying that was a sign it wasn't fresh. I should have listened to her, but I was too hungry to stop. 

Luckily, our cable TV in the hotel saved me with a Star Wars marathon dubbed in Spanish.

Before the Incas...

...there was the Chavín, one of the most influential cultures in the Andes. 

The 3,000 year old ruins of their central temple--Chavín de Huántar--was the highlight of our trip to Huaraz. 

After four hours of traversing the rugged Cordillera Blanca (13,500 at the road's highest), we arrived at the ruins' location within the Callejón de los Conchucos:

While when we think of Peru, we think of the Incas, their empire only dominated the Andes for a century before the Spanish arrival in 1526. The influential Chavín culture, on the other hand, touched Andean societies from Ecuador to southern Peru from 1200 to 300 BC--a whole 2,000 years before the Incas even appeared as a small tribe near Cuzco.

The ancient temple ruins tell the story of Chavín's encompassing reach. While various cultures existed before the Incas, few, if any, united them under one common spirituality like that represented at the temple. Between 460 and 390 BC, archaelogists believe Chavín de Huántar was a major center of pilgrimage. 

The most impressive piece was the Lanzón. We climbed down into one of the many tunnels that run through the temple to find a room with this white granite monolith with an anthropomorphic being--the "Smiling God"--carved into it.

 

The Lanzón was built into the floor and the ceiling, making many believe that the temple might have been built around it. Historical accounts says the monolith was an oracle. While I didn't get any special vibe, according to my guidebook, some people feel a special energy after seeing the stone. 

Shown below, the Raymondi Stone (named for it's "discoverer") depicts the second god at the temple--the Staff God. What I thought was interesting is the spiritual value of hallucinogens alluded to in the carving. Staff God is holding a San Pedro cactus which contains mescaline, a mind-altering drug which provokes multicolored visions. Andean shamans still use the drug. 

 

Who cares about really, really old stones with wild carvings? Archaeologist Brian Fagan explains the culture's artistic significance (found this in The Peru Reader). I'll leave you with this:

"Chavín ideology was born of both tropical forest and coastal beliefs, one so powerful that it spawned a lively, exotic art style that spread rapidly over a wide area of the highlands and arid coast. Chavín was the catalyst for many technological advances, among them the painting of textiles, many of which served as wall hangings with their ideological message writ large in vivid colors. These powerful images, in clay, wood, and gold, on textiles and in stone, drew together the institutions and achievements of increasingly sophisticated Andean societies. Such cosmic, shamanistic visions were Chavín's legacy to later Andean civilizations."