Trip to Chavin de Huantar, Huascaran Mountain, Yungay, and Caral

This will be excerpts from Rich's journal entries for our trip.

We took a trip to the North of Peru. We left Lima at 4:30 am. A very early morning.

We left for Chavin with two other senior couples,the Eccles and Millers. Our drivers were Eduardo, and Armando, both members of the church. We drove to Katak in Ankash (blue in Quechua). We had lunch there. We were already up to the elevation of Cusco.

On our way, we made a pitstop in a little side “convenience“ store. It had a treacherous path to an outhouse that we wouldn’t have made under less desperate circumstances. However, while we were standing and conversing, this little dog came over and laid his head on my foot. That just cracked me up!

I had the caldo de cabeza (sheep's head soup) for lunch and they were all surprised. I quite liked it but I was feeling the altitude. I had the forethought to purchase some Diamox and I really needed that. I have never been a fan of Diamox. It makes me feel like I have the flu. But for this extreme elevation change I was pretty glad I had it.

At Katak we picked up our guide named Ricardo, a man from Huaraz. He was a very nice and knowledgeable guy.

Chavin de Huantar

This little guy came over and plopped his head on Rich's foot when we got out at a pit stop

Crossing a sketchy foot bridge to get to our hotel

Cabeza Clava (Nailed Head) de Chavin

Anti-seismic angles and intercalated thicker with thinner stones have allowed these ruins to withstand multiple massive earthquakes. These walls have not been re-stacked...

Chavin has an intricate drainage system that still functions perfectly, modern plumbers should have a look...

Obelisque of Chavin

From there we traveled on to Chavin de Huantar. It is utterly fascinating. It is a single large temple structure, cut from stone not very far away. It has 26 chambers inside the temple. It’s noted by the stone cabeza clavas (nailed heads) that adorned the outside of the building. They have left one original in place. However, the others are in museums and private collections.

The cabezas clavas, have fangs and snouts, and are somewhat anthropomorphic. They are thought to be artistic representations of the descriptions of visions derived from the influence of a peyote-like cactus juice that the High Priest drank, and then had these visions. 

They know about the hallucinogenic properties of the drink because people still come there to drink it and have their ayahuasca-like visions. Our guide said he’s done it multiple times and had these sorts of wild hallucinations.

He told of one where he experienced lightning, passing through his head and down through his body, and turning into a snake… Thrilling! I think I’ll pass.

Some of the most fascinating features are around the structure’s engineering. To withstand earthquakes, it was built with sloped sides and a system of thicker blocks inter-layered with thinner blocks that serve as shock absorbers.

We were surprised to learn that we were staying in Chavin. It’s not a very big village. Julie was somewhat panicked about that. However, it wound up being quite a nice little hotel. We were very comfortable and the people were very sweet.

Sleeping and water helped to alleviate our soroche symptoms that morning. We had an early start to drive into Huaraz. It was downhill from Chavin, but I had a perpetual headache and experienced a lot of chest discomfort too.

We had empanadas for breakfast, in a little place in Huaraz. They weren’t wonderful but they were OK.

Cathedral Doors in Chavin

Huascaran

Canyon at 3500 Meters where we saw orchids and bromeliads!

Chinaqocha

Yungay, the town covered by an avalanche in 1970

Queroqocha

Christ of the Andes statue just below the 4800 meters tunnel

Then we drove through spectacular country called the Huaylas Valley to see the sites along the way to Yungay. Yungay is significant historically. It is a place where an 5.8 earthquake tore loose a chunk of Huascaran, the highest mountain in Peru. The chunk came down the mountain, tearing up villages on the way, but then flopping on top of the town of Yungay and buryring it to several meters in depth killing nearly everyone in the town,  there were few survivors. 

These were apparently attending a circus in the stadium. Among the survivors were 300 children who became the orphans of Yungay. They must have seen the other half of the stadium wiped out... they witnessed the burial of the city. They were all adopted. What trauma!

There are only three palm trees left that stick up from the rubble now. This happened in 1970. The numbers are disputed but range from 15,000 to 50,000 dead.

From there, we climbed up to a pass on the North side of Huascaran, the highest peak in Peru,(6,757metres(22,205feet). This was amazing. The walls are sheer granite scooped out by the glacier. Because it is so steep and so protected, jungle plants abound above 3500m! We saw orchids and bromeliads all the way up the sides of the canyon. To say the vistas are breathtaking from there, is simple understatement.

From there we climbed up to 3800m to see Chinaqocha. This means "female lake" in Quechua. It is remarkable and very beautiful. It’s color is absolutely turquoise, the color in the photos is very close to reality. It is surrounded by q’euña trees. 

These trees are native vegetation in the Andes. In much of the Andes, the Spanish imported eucalyptus. Eucalyptus trees grow fast and provide a ready source of wood. The native trees don’t do that. The downside of the eucalyptus is that they use a ton of water and they have damaged a lot of ecosystems because of that.

On our way down from the lake, the transmission did not transmit. The car was running, but would not engage. We were stuck. 

Our drivers flagged down a tourist bus and got them to take us down to a little restaurant up the road from Yungay. We had to stand in the aisles, but it was only about a 10 minute ride. Two male passengers, and a co-driver gave up their seats to Julie and the other sisters.

We had some lunch/dinner while Ricardo found us rides down to Yungay where he found a Combi to take us on to Huaraz and our hotel. While we ate, he ran back up the road with one of the taxis to get our suitcases.

We were too tired to go to dinner and had plenty at the lunch stop.

One of our sisters got sick and I became concerned that we didn’t have any anti-diarrheal medicine. I ran out last night to get that. Julie was also sick so I had to get some medicine for her. I made two trips to the pharmacy. 

This is the craziest thing. I had used all my Diamox . I gave some out but mostly I had taken it. The good lesson is that I need to buy a bunch for when our son Glenn and his family are here. It is much better safe than sorry in my book.

We had to go back up to the 4800 m tunnel. Even though I was feeling better I felt exceedingly lightheaded on that part of the trip even with the Diamox. I have done poorly with the altitude. The roads were incredibly potholed. These are paved roads but felt like the dirt tracks from Espinar to Challwawacho. We were very relieved when we got down to Caral, at sea level.

Caral, Rich acting as translator for our guide Roxana

Cool standing stone that works as a sundial 

6 Pyramids

We got to the Caral ruins at 3:50pm on Friday only to learn that they close the entry at 4:00. We had minutes to use the bathroom and get on the tour. The tour only lasted about an hour. It was every bit as fascinating as Chavin.

This is the oldest civilization found to date in the Americas. The C14 dates are around 5000 years ago. There are six major pyramids and a bunch of minor structures. The place is an active archaeological site. Our guide, Roxana says they work 7 to 3 every day. They figure there were 6000 to 7000 people who lived there, but have not yet found a cemetery.

This was an agrarian site, and they have evidence that their sacrifices were neither human nor animal. They cultivated multicolored cotton! 

Their temples are solid rock structures. They had no ceramic history. They have a fascinating engineering. They made these parallel stone walls. In between the walls they made gabions of cotton fiber that they filled with rocks, hence gabions. These served as shock absorbers for earthquakes! The buildings have no subterranean structures, and are built straight on top of the surface material. This also serves as a shock absorber for the overall structure. The truly amazing thing is that the gabions are still intact after 5000 years!

Access to the site is a fairly long walk or a trip on Mototaxis rigged up as a little mini buses. We came out with a family group, easily ten of us all in, but we all got in. One of the ladies in the group had her birthday, and we sang her happy birthday at the end.

After that we headed home and the driver, Eduardo realized he had left or dropped his phone somewhere. He figured it had to be in the taxi. Collaboratively, they figured out that they knew the name of or had the contact of one of the workers at the site. They called her because we had made the connection that our guide, Roxana was the mother of our driver on the mototaxi.

They called her and her son had the phone! However, it did not fall out in the mototaxi, rather, in their little field and her younger son found the phone!

Since we were in the town, Eduardo was still worried about the transmission and tracked down a mechanic who then came and checked it out. This sounds like a delay of minutes. It was actually about an hour and a half that we stood around in the streets of Caral while drunken revelers ,celebrating the Immaculate Conception, wandered the streets. It was entertaining, but I've spent a lot of time around drunks in Peru, and I’m a little tired of that and we were ready to get home. Finally, the mechanic pronounced the transmission OK. It still had its fluid and we could motor on without a problem.

I didn’t really understand. Apparently these new transmissions don’t have a simple way of measuring the transmission fluid with a simple dipstick… A lot of the vehicles here now are from China. I  guess it is a Chinese thing.

Long story short, we got home and into our apartment at midnight.

It was an amazing, incredible trip!