Where are Ron and Ellen?
Latin America, 10 November 2008 - 3 March 2009
Ron and Ellen (and llama) at Machu Picchu, Peru, December 2008
Peru: Lima, Chincha, Ica, Nazca, November 2008
To see photos from Lima, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos from La Calera, the hacienda in Chincha, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Lunch at the hacienda, flight over Nazca
To see photos from Huacachina, Cahuaca and Nazca, click on the thumbnail at the left.
16 November 2008
Nazca, PeruDear Family and Friends,
After an uneventful flight we arrived in Lima last Monday, 10 November, and were met by the driver from our hotel. Ron needs extra pages added to his passport, and had planned to get them added at the American Embassy in Lima on Tuesday, but we realized after our arrival that Tuesday was Veterans' Day, a national holiday in the US, and the Embassy would be closed. We decided to stay another day in Lima and get the pages done on Wednesday. So Tuesday we did some walking around the center of Lima, visited the cathedral, watched the changing of the guard in front of the President's residence, and watched for a while as an American crew filmed a sequence for a film. It will be something with El Dorado in the title, an Indiana Jones type of movie. They were filming a sequence where the hero and heroine escape from the bad guys by sliding down the festival banners on the side of a building, from a third story window. We saw the stunt people stepping off the balcony (backs carefully to the camera so you wouldnīt see it wasnīt the star) and sliding down. Lots of milling around and talking for mere moments of filming time, but it was interesting to watch.
Ron also hoped to track down the family he had met and spent significant time with in 1971. Since the family had been one of the wealthiest in Peru, he figured someone would know of them, so he went to the tourist bureau, where, after they did some phoning around, they told him that someone with that family name worked in the municipal government of Miraflores, the upscale district of Lima. So we took a bus to Miraflores, went the the municipal office building, and asked. Turns out the man, a cousin of Ron's friend, is the mayor of Miraflores! Ron was talking to people in the public relations office, who all knew Ron's friend, since he often came to visit his cousin. Ron called and left a message, then called again later and talked to Tayo. Our timing was not good, since Tayo, who is very involved with international polo, was hosting an international polo competition this weekend, and would be having 100 house guests (yes, 100!). He and his sons and one grandson all play polo, and would all be playing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. He was planning to leave for Lima on Thursday afternoon, the day we planned to arrive in Chincha where he lives. He invited us to come for lunch so we could at least have a little time together, so that is what we did.
Before leaving for Chincha on Thursday, we went to the American Embassy (took us almost 3 hours because it was in a part of the city diagonally opposite our hotel, and we made several false steps in the bus route), but when we got there we discovered that they only do citizen services until 11:30 and we arrived at about 12:15. We did not want to stay another day because we would miss Tayo, so Ron now plans to get the pages added in La Paz. He needs the pages before he can get his visas for Paraguay and Brazil. We did go to the Museo de la Nacion and saw the exhibits on Peruvian pre-colonial cultures, as well as a fascinating photography exhibit on the period on internal warfare in Peru, 1980s into the 1990s (Shining Path).
Thursday morning we left Lima at 7:45 on a bus south along the Pan-American highway for the 3 hour ride to Chincha (buses run about every 30 minutes). Tayo had told us to take a taxi when we arrived in Chincha, giving us the name of his farm. We showed the name to the taxi driver, who immediately knew who it was and where we were going. We went through two farm security checkpoints before arriving at the main gate, where the taxi driver dropped us after the guard called Tayo, who arrived a few moments later to pick us up. And then we had the grand tour -- and we do mean grand! The farm is 700-800 hectares, which is maybe 1800 acres. They grow citrus, mainly tangerines, but also some grapefruit, avocados, and raise chickens for eggs. Four million chickens! It is the largest chicken operation in a single area in the world. Tayo says there are some larger operations, 10-12 million chickens, in the US, but they are scattered around in smaller installations. On the farm they are now using the chicken manure to make methane gas for their own power. They will be almost self-sufficient once they finish the third tank now under construction, and when they finish the fourth one they will be selling power and selling carbon emission credits. They bring all their water (this area of Peru is completely desert, with the towns in the river valleys) from underground sources in the mountains several kms away. They have their own hatchery (80,000 chicks at a time to replace the laying hens), and their own factory for making the egg cartons from recycled newspapers. They provide about one third of the eggs in Peru. They use liquid from the manure from some point in the methane process, to add to the water that goes via drip irrigation to the things they are growing. They grind some huge number of tons of grain for chicken feed, buying several shiploads of corn from the US per month. They feed 1100 workers every day, and the population is larger when you count families. They have a school for the smallest children, and the older ones are bused to Chincha each day. They have 10 soccer teams! We were boggled. We had lunch with Tayo and one of his sons, who runs the fruit export part of the business. Unfortunately Tayo's wife was already in Lima to plan for incoming guests, so we didnīt see her. After lunch, Estuardo, the son (who was with Tayo and Beatrice when they visited us in the US in the late 1970s) took us and showed us the citrus sorting and shipping warehouse (quiet now becasue it is not citrus season here), then took us back to Chincha to get the bus south to Ica.
Tayo and Estuardo recommended a nice hotel for us in Ica, and suggested that we go to Huacachina, a place near Ica where there are huge sand dunes surrounding an oasis, a small lake with palm trees. So we took a taxi the 4 km there, and climbed on the dunes -- they are huge and go as far as you can see. You can ride dune buggies up the high dunes and sand board (like snow boarding) down, but we opted not to do that! We kept expecting to see Lawrence of Arabia appear over one of the dunes.
Then we took the bus on down the coast through the continuing desert landscape to Nazca. The desert here makes the desert areas of the US southwest look lush. It simply doesnīt rain here. Our first evening we visited the planetarium to watch a show about the Nazca lines and Maria Reiche, who spent 50 years here researching them. Then yesterday we took the 30 minute flight to see them from the air. It is quite amazing: lots and lots of geometrical lines, some intersecting, some not. Some lines converge into single points, others criss-cross, others are wide at one end and taper to a point. Many are multiple kilometers long. Then there are lines that form huge animal figures: a monkey, a spider, a dog, a hummingbird, a condor, and some human-like figures. The lines were made between approximately 200-500 AD, and were only discovered in the 1930s when commercial air flights began over the area. They were made by removing the top layer of rock, leaving the packed sand as a white line. No one is quite sure what the lines all mean -- some are clearly astronomical, lining up with sun risings and settings at the equinoxes, or with the risings of some bright stars over the mountains. Animal figures might be zodiac or constellation symbols, or symbols of dieties. No one really knows, but impressive they certainly are!
Today, again at the suggestion of Estuardo and Tayo, we took a trip with a guide to Cahuaca, a set of ruins out in the desert that is currently under excavation by an Italian archaeology team. There is a huge pyramid-shaped structure partly uncovered and partly restored, and other structures just beginning to be visible from under the sand that has covered them. Archaeologists believe the settlement, which had been quite a large farming community, had been abandoned after a combination of major earthquake and a "super-niņo" that flooded the narrow valley and brought water up extra-ordinarily high (Nelson County folks, think about a super Hurricane Camille). Our guide today, who has lived in Nazca for 20 years, says it has never rained while he has lived here, so a flood is not something people would have been prepared for!
Tonight we take an overnight bus (with fully reclining seats!) for Arequipa, rising out of the very hot and very dry desert into a cooler climate in the highlands.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
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Last updated: 1 January 2009
