MAPS

I realize that we forgot to post a few maps... so here´s one of South America and another of Peru. . .

Day Trip to Pachacamac

August 28, 2006 (Monday)

After some careful planning, where I (Leigh) cleverly bought flights to Cusco Peru in the wrong month (September 29 instead of tomorrow August 29), Andrew and I headed out to test our skills at finding a bus to take us to some ancient ruins that predate the Incan era. It took a full hour and two local community policemen, but we found our bus to Pachacamac. The trip was almost more interesting than our visit to the ruins - it took us through parts of Lima that we would not ordinarily walk through for a variety of health and safety reasons. In addition, it allowed us to meet commuters and other people of Lima.

Two hours and 15 miles later, we arrived at the ruins, grabbed lunch, and payed a guide a whole 5 bucks for a two hour tour of the ruins. Marcelo seemed to know a ton about Peruvian history abnd he spoke English quite well, the only thing he was lacking was arms. He was a sweetheart and taught us some history of the Native Peruvians.

Pachacamac was the largest city and ceremonial center on the coast. They worshipped the sun god, ironically because on the coast there is no sun for 5 months as the fog is too thick. Only a few hundred yards downhill is the Pacific Ocean. As I usually find, temple ruins are somewhat anticlimactic where the archeologist came to the site, picked it to pieces, found things, took them away, reconstructed however they saw fit, and left the site without educational merit. There are certainly exceptions to this rule (Tikal for instance), but many Belize and Guatemala ruins are ruined by archeologists who mined them and reconstructed in probably incorrect ways. Oh well.

We headed back to the road to catch our bus, and suprisingly the same bus driver picked us up. As we headed back to Lima, Andrew spoke with two men about the US versus Cuba versus Peru. And amazingly the sun peaked through the fog for a half hour - there is a god!

For dinner, we happened to walk into a mall where there was one of the most incredible supermarkets I´ve ever experience. We bought provisions and returned to the hostal for a feast.

Hasta Pronto.