uncontacted people seen in brazil, peru

An amazing story has emerged from South America. One of the world's few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes has been photographed on the border between Brazil and Peru. Survival International, an international movement to support tribal peoples, says that more than half the world's remaining uncontacted tribes live in Brazil or Peru.

The group's director, Stephen Corry, says such tribes will soon be wiped out if their land is not protected. The people revealed in these photos are at risk from illegal logging. Corry described the threats to such tribes and their land as "a monumental crime against the natural world" and "further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the 'civilised' ones, treat the world".

The photos were first revealed by BBC News, but I thought the Globe and Mail did a better job with it today.

Brazil's government agreed to release stunning photos of Amazon Indians firing arrows at an airplane so that the world can better understand the threats facing one of the few tribes still living in near-total isolation from civilization, officials said yesterday.

Anthropologists have known about the group for about 20 years but released the images now to call attention to fast-encroaching development near the Indians' home in the dense jungles near Peru.

"We put the photos out because if things continue the way they are going, these people are going to disappear," said Jose Carlos Meirelles, who co-ordinates government efforts to protect four "uncontacted" tribes for Brazil's National Indian Foundation.

Shot in late April and early May, the foundation's photos show about a dozen Indians, mostly naked, wielding bows and arrows outside six grass-thatched huts. Mr. Meirelles said in a phone interview that anthropologists know next to nothing about the group, but suspect it is related to the Tano and Aruak tribes.

The foundation believes there may be as many as 68 uncontacted groups around Brazil, although only 24 have been officially confirmed.

Anthropologists say almost all of these tribes know about Western civilization and have sporadic contact with prospectors, rubber tappers and loggers, but choose to turn their backs on civilization, usually because they have been attacked.

The four tribes monitored by Mr. Meirelles include perhaps 500 people who roam an area of about 630,000 hectares. He said that over the 20 years he has been working in the area, the number of malocas, or grass-roofed huts, has doubled, suggesting that the policy of isolation is working and that populations are growing.

Remaining isolated, however, gets more complicated by the day. Loggers are closing in on the Indians' homeland. Brazil's environmental protection agency said yesterday that it had shut down 28 illegal sawmills in Acre state, where the tribes are located. And logging on the Peruvian border has sent many Indians fleeing into Brazil, Mr. Meirelles said.

A new road being paved from Acre into Peru will likely bring in hordes of poor settlers. Other Amazon roads have led to 50 kilometres of rain forest being cut down on each side, scientists say.

While uncontacted Indians often respond violently to contact - Mr. Meirelles caught an arrow in the face from some of the same Indians in 2004 - the greater threat is to the Indians.

"First contact is often completely catastrophic for uncontacted tribes. It's not unusual for 50 per cent of the tribe to die in months after first contact," said Miriam Ross, a campaigner with the Indian rights group Survival International.

More here, with some information about the people themselves.

It's almost overwhelming to think of uncontacted people surviving into the 21st Century - and possibly no further.

Illegal logging is not a simple issue. The loggers themselves are usually poor Andean people. They work for criminally low pay, under extremely dangerous conditions, reporting to a chain of middle-men that ends with a multinational corporation. But they themselves are offered few alternatives (if any) for their own survival. Because I met Andean people in Peru, I think about how stricter logging enforcement would effect them. It should be done, of course, but what will the Brazilian or Peruvian governments do for its victims?

For more information on tribal people - including these recently recently aerial photos - see Survival International. Survival's blog is here.

mates burilados from huancayo, peru

When we were in Peru in 2006 - actually on the last day of the trip - we met a young man from Huancayo named Cristian Alfaro Nùñez. He was selling the most amazing craft work we had seen in our three weeks in his country.

The Nùñez family makes mates burilados, which translates literally as "engraved gourds". Here's what I wrote the day after we met him.

In an alcove to the side of one of the exhibits, a young man sat in a room full of a kind of handicraft we have not seen anywhere else. He gave us a beautiful description (in Spanish, dumbed down for me, I believe) of how they are made and what they mean.

They are gourds, meticulously engraved in the most painstaking detail, then rubbed with the black ash of a certain plant, then cleaned with another solution (all from plants found in the rainforest), so the inky colour stays only in the engravings. The drawings are playful and light, depicting festivals, music, work, family life, and other aspects of rural life in Peru.

I cannot begin to describe the intricacy of the drawings. We were positively flabbergasted. Some of the engravings were huge, on giant horn-shaped gourds. Others were small, about the size of a pear, or even smaller, the size of a small egg. The workshop of artists who make them are entirely the young man´s family.

Off to the ATM we went! We simply could not resist buying these unique figures from the artist themselves. After much decision-making - they were all so beautiful - we bought one medium pear-sized gourd, and a very small egg-shaped one. (They were priced according to how long they took to make.) When I asked the boy for his photo in front of his work, he gave me his email address and asked if I would send him the photo. Great!

I don't know if there's anything about this work online. He called it Mates Burilados. (I asked him to write it down with his email address.) Mates are the gourds; the etching instruments are burillas.

. . .

Allan took several close-ups of the amazing mates burilados, but, engrossed as I was in trying to communicate with the artist, I forgot to tell Allan about the close-up setting on the digital camera. So unfortunately, most of those are too blurry to post, and I'm still kicking myself over it. However, you can see the artist himself, Cristian Alfaro, and a few of his family's creations.

Here is Cristian holding one of the huge gourds, with a selection of them behind him. Please click to enlarge.

But to appreciate this work, you must see it up close. The intricacy and detail is mind-boggling. Here is one that we own; I placed it next to an apple to give you size perspective.

And here is some detail.

Cristian and I have stayed in touch since then. Sometimes I stop writing to him, not because of lack of interest, but because my written Spanish is so bad. It takes me forever to compose a simple email, and it's such a painful process, that I become frustrated and quit. Sometimes I use an online translator, but those are suspect. When I run Cristian's email through the translator, it sounds ridiculous, so my email must sound the same to him.

* * * *

When we were in Windsor last week, we went with Gito to a Ten Thousand Villages store to find a gift he needed. I have been to a Ten Thousand Villages in Toronto, but I didn't realize that it's a chain.

From the Ten Thousand Villages website:

Men and women around the world have a simple dream – to earn an honest living, provide a home, food and education for their children, and to be gainfully employed in a job that brings dignity and joy. Ten Thousand Villages partners with thousands of talented artisans in a healthy business relationship.

Often referred to as 'fair trade,' our philosophy of helping to build a sustainable future is based on the principle that trade should have a conscience. Through 'fair trade,' artisans receive respect, dignity and hope from working hard and earning fair value for their work.

Ten Thousand Villages is a not-for-profit, self-supporting Fair Trade Organization (FTO). FTOs are non-governmental organizations designed to benefit artisans, not to maximize profits. They market products from handicraft and agricultural organizations based in low-income countries, providing consumers with products that have been fairly purchased from sustainable sources.

Ten Thousand Villages is a member of the International Fair Trade Association (IFAT), a global network of Fair Trade Organizations. IFAT's mission is to improve the livelihoods and well-being of disadvantaged producers by linking and promoting fair trade organizations and speaking out for greater justice in world trade. Over 270 FTOs in 60 countries form the basis of this network.

There are TTV stores all over Canada and many in the US as well.

One of the many great things about this organization is that the artists are paid up front for their work, not on consignment. If the work doesn't sell, TTV takes the loss, not the craftspeople. TTV teaches business practices so the craft community can set up a sustainable collective and work with other buyers.

* * * *

In the store in Windsor, I suddenly remembered Cristian and the gourds. I asked the owner if TTV carries engraved gourds from Peru, and he looked it up: they don't. I got some information on how to suggest a work to the head office, and I tucked it away to deal with later this summer. I thought I would take some photos of the gourds we have, and also send some links to photos online, although there isn't much.

Then yesterday - great coincidence! - I got email from Cristian. Someone has created a website for his family's work! It's not finished yet, but it is really well done.

Mates Burilados y Bordados: La familia Alfaro Nuñez de Cochas Grande, Huancayo, Perú

Now I have great incentive to speak to Ten Thousand Villages, and a way to showcase the work.

Please check out the Alfaro family's website. I'm going to put them on my sidebar, and I'll keep you posted if I make any progress with Ten Thousand Villages.

follow-up: treasures of machu picchu still not in peru

In September, I blogged about a historic agreement, in which Yale University would return thousands of Inca relics excavated at Machu Picchu from 1911-1915 by Yale history professor Hiram Bingham. These include mummies, ceramics and bones. Some are museum-quality pieces, others are mainly of archaeological interest. But all belong to Peru. Peruvians - and Peruphiles, like me - were excited about the news.

But so far, the agreement is just a piece of paper. Eliane Karp-Toledo, whose husband, Alejandro Toledo, is a former president of Peru, wrote this in the New York Times. Emphasis mine.

Sure, it seemed like a great idea when, last September, President Alan García of Peru reached a preliminary agreement with Yale about the disposition of more than 350 artifacts taken from Machu Picchu. Everyone hoped the settlement might be a break for cultural understanding in the cloudy skies of international cooperation. News reports suggested that Yale would return more than 350 museum-quality artifacts, plus several thousand fragments thought to be of interest mainly to researchers — all of which were taken from the mountaintop Inca archaeological complex nearly a century ago — and that legal title to all the artifacts, even those to be left at Yale for research, would be held by Peru.

But having finally obtained a copy of the agreement, I can see that Yale continues to deny Peru the right to its cultural patrimony, something Peru has demanded since 1920.

When, in 1912 and 1914-15, the explorer Hiram Bingham III excavated the treasures from Machu Picchu — ceramic vessels, silver statues, jewelry and human bones — and took them from Peru, it was supposed to be a loan for 12 months (a period that was later extended a half-year). The National Geographic Society, which co-sponsored Bingham's explorations, has acknowledged that the artifacts were taken on loan and is committed to seeing them returned to Peru.

From 2001 to 2006, when my husband, Alejandro Toledo, was president of Peru, I participated in negotiations with Yale over the artifacts. Peru requested the return of everything Bingham had removed from Machu Picchu, and President Toledo, with the support of both the National Geographic Society and Senator Christopher Dodd, of Connecticut, discussed the request directly with the president of Yale, Richard C. Levin. Those talks broke down, however, when Yale refused to accept our first condition: recognition that Peru is the sole owner of the artifacts. The university also would not allow us to conduct an inventory of the pieces, under the pretext that the archaeologist we had selected was not qualified.

The Peruvian ambassador in Washington tried to revive the conversation with Yale, but by early 2006, it was clear that the university was stalling for time. President Toledo left office in July 2006, and a little over a year later, the latest agreement was announced. Fortunately, a final agreement has been delayed.

Under the "memorandum of understanding" between Yale and President García, Peru would promise to build a museum and research center in Cuzco, the city closest to Machu Picchu, where some of the collection would be displayed. Yale would act as adviser for the center, and would also be allowed to select which pieces would be released to the museum. Peru's sovereign right to the entire collection is not acknowledged, and it is clear that Yale would keep a significant proportion of the materials. Peru would still not be allowed to conduct its own inventory. Only when a museum has been built to Yale's specifications would even a portion of the materials return, allowing Peruvians to enjoy artifacts they have never seen.

I fail to understand the rationale for Yale to have any historical claim to the artifacts. Bingham had no authority to transfer ownership to begin with. The agreement reflects a colonial way of thinking not expected from a modern academic institution. In fact, Yale has gone a step further than it did in its negotiations with President Toledo; the university is now brazenly asking to keep a significant part of the collection for research for an additional 99 years.

I wonder if it is pure coincidence that Yale delayed negotiations with Mr. Toledo, Peru's first elected indigenous president, until Peru had a new leader who is frankly hostile to indigenous matters.

Why is it so hard for Yale to let go of these collections after almost a century of loan default? It is time for Peruvian scholars and citizens — especially the indigenous descendants of those who led Bingham to the ancient complex — to have access to the collection. The present agreement should be discarded and new talks should begin, based on the recognition of Peru's sovereign right to all that was taken from Machu Picchu. Yale must finally return the artifacts that symbolize Peru's great heritage.

Here is an earlier wmtc post on the Machu Picchu treasures, and colonial cultural theft.

Several wmtc readers sent me this BBC story about a recent archaeological discovery in Peru. I thought it was amusing that the headline says the temple "could predate the Inca empire," as if that alone is a Big Thing. Pre-Inca sites are all over Peru; we saw them almost daily. Way to do your homework.

Many thanks to AW1L for always thinking of his Peru-loving friend.

yale unversity to return treasures of machu picchu to peru

From BBC News, via AW1L:

Yale University has agreed to return to Peru thousands of Inca relics that were excavated at Machu Picchu from 1911-15 by a history professor, Hiram Bingham.

Peru demanded the artefacts back last year, saying it agreed to their removal on condition they would be returned.

More than 4,000 pieces, including mummies, ceramics and bones were taken to the US university.

Under the agreement Yale and Peru will co-sponsor the first travelling expedition of the collection.

Yale will also act as an adviser for a new museum in the Andean city of Cuzco, close to Machu Picchu, where the exhibition will be installed after its tour.

The museum's opening is planned to coincide with the centennial celebration of Bingham's rediscovery of Machu Picchu in 1911.

During three trips to Machu Picchu, Bingham dug up thousands of objects, including silver statues, jewellery, musical instruments and human bones.

The agreement between Peru and the Connecticut-based university came after months of negotiations.

Initial talks broke down last year under the administration of former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and Peru threatened to take its case before a US court.

Yale had offered to divide the items up but it now acknowledges Peru's title to all the excavated objects.

This is excellent news! The BBC story has good photos of some Incan treasures and a timeline of Yale University's involvement in Machu Picchu.

Our own photos of Macchu Pichu - a small sample of the hundreds we took when we visited the site in 2006 - are here.

i (finally) visit the rom

When my mom was here in early July, we were supposed to see "Ancient Peru Unearthed" at the ROM, but she had (and still has) an injured ankle, and we couldn't go. I went by myself yesterday, which is actually my favourite way to take in a museum.

As you know, I loved the design of the new addition to the ROM, and felt Torontonian attitudes towards it were closed-minded and provincial - although less so than I thought. It wasn't that people didn't like it. It's that they seemed unwilling to consider it on its own terms. All I was hearing was a kind of "ewwww... it's different," a rejection of anything unusual, only because it's unusual. At that time, I hadn't yet seen the completed work in person, only in photographs. So here's my take.

I love the way new building explodes out of the old one. I love the way the old and new are completely different, and don't appear to "go together," which is apparently a source of discomfort for many people. I love the way the new structure enlivens the mostly drab, poured-concrete of Bloor Street, the way it bursts out between the original ROM building and the Royal Conservatory of Music next door. I love the crystal shape, the way it appears to be growing.

I dislike the paneled metal skin. Many people have already said this, and I agree. The cut-outs of transparent glass show what the whole building, or at least most of it, could have looked like. The effect would have been dazzling. Instead, it looks like the crystal is clad in aluminum siding.

That's a real disappointment. It greatly detracts from what could have been a spectacular building.

* * * *

The ROM itself is a wonderful museum, light and airy, and beautifully curated. "Ancient Peru Unearthed" was small, but good. It brought back a flood of memories of our trip last spring.

The exhibit is about the North Coast culture of Sican. We didn't go to Sican, but we spent a remarkable day exploring a very similar, nearby culture called Sipan. The exhibit also referred to the other North Coast cultures we explored, precursors of Sican and Sipan, the Moche, the Chimu. But even without this connection I feel, the gold work and what it reveals are fascinating.

I wandered through some Egyptian and Greek galleries which seemed very good. I love hieroglyphics and there were plenty to look at. Also on the writing theme, I saw a small exhibit on early typewriters. I love old machines, especially the ornate Victorian kind. I've been writing on a keyboard since I'm 12, and have been earning my living through a keyboard most of my adult life, so that was a natural for me.

The ROM has a wonderful market cafe. Taking in a museum by myself, and having lunch there, is one of my favourite little pleasures. I see there's also a more upscale restaurant, designed for the interior of the crystal. I think we'll have to go there one day, as I can't resist such an elegant setting.

* * * *

Here are two terrific photos of the ROM crystal, showing it to great effect, courtesy of Daily Dose of Imagery.

stealing = stealing

Here's another find from my friend AW1L, who keeps me posted on so many things of great interest to me that I would otherwise miss.

The stones at Machu Picchu seem almost alive. They may be alive, if you credit the religious beliefs of the ruler Pachacuti Yupanqui, whose subjects in the early 15th century constructed the granite Inca complex, high above a curling river and nestled among jagged green peaks. To honor the spirits that take form as mountains, the Inca stoneworkers carved rock outcrops to replicate their shapes. Doorways and windows of sublimely precise masonry frame exquisite views.

. . . .

Imposingly tall and strong-minded, [Hiram] Bingham was the grandson of a famous missionary who took Christianity to the Hawaiian islanders. In his efforts to locate lost places of legend, the younger Bingham proved to be as resourceful. Bolstered by the fortune of his wife, who was a Tiffany heiress, and a faculty position at Yale University, where he taught South American history, Bingham traveled to Peru in 1911 in hopes of finding Vilcabamba, the redoubt in the Andean highlands where the last Inca resistance forces retreated from the Spanish conquerors. Instead he stumbled upon Machu Picchu. With the joint support of Yale and the National Geographic Society, Bingham returned twice to conduct archeological digs in Peru. In 1912, he and his team excavated Machu Picchu and shipped nearly 5,000 artifacts back to Yale. Two years later, he staged a final expedition to explore sites near Machu Picchu in the Sacred Valley.

If you have visited Machu Picchu, you will probably find Bingham's excavated artifacts at the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven to be a bit of a letdown. Mostly, the pieces are bones, in varying stages of decomposition, or pots, many of them in fragments. Unsurpassed as stonemasons, engineers and architects, the Incas thought more prosaically when it came to ceramics. Leaving aside unfair comparisons to the jaw-dropping Machu Picchu site itself, the pottery of the Inca, even when intact, lacks the drama and artistry of the ceramics of earlier civilizations of Peru like the Moche and Nazca. Everyone agrees that the Machu Picchu artifacts at Yale are modest in appearance. That has not prevented, however, a bare-knuckled disagreement from developing over their rightful ownership. Peru says the Bingham objects were sent to Yale on loan and their return is long overdue. Yale demurs.

Call it scientific inquiry or manifest destiny, it's all just political words* to mask the cultural theft that was once accepted practice. Strong nation marches into weaker nation, plunders its cultural heritage (and usually its natural resources and its people, too), marches off with everything it deems valuable (funny how those savages managed to create all that loot!), then uses it to attract tourists and the profits that follow. Later, when stronger nation no longer controls half the world, and weaker nation has a leg to stand on, formerly stronger nation says, sorry, we can't give it back, we're still studying it, and those people would only wreck it anyway, and we have to store it here for safekeeping, where the world can enjoy it.

Bullshit!

I have not made it to Greece or Egypt yet - both very high on our must-visit list - but I have seen the treasures of the Parthenon and the Rosetta Stone. And as much as I love the British Museum (and I do!), there was something sickening and wrong about seeing the cultural heritage of those ancient civilizations divorced from their context, sitting in a room half a world away, in the capital of a country that once ruled the world, but does no longer. (Do you know the Parthenon Marbles were always known as the Elgin Marbles, after Thomas Bruce, "Lord Elgin", who discovered stole them?)

There's no excuse anymore. There should be no argument. Would Americans allow the treasures of the Smithsonian to be shipped to, say, China? Would the British relinquish the Shakespeare quartos, Magna Carta, Caxton's Chaucer, and the rest of their awe-inspiring literary heritage, housed in The British Library?

The treasures of Machu Picchu clearly belong in Peru. Perhaps we'll live to see it in our lifetime.

_______________

* "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." - George Orwell

the first victim

Archaeologists have uncovered the human skeleton of what appears to be the earliest known gunshot victim in the New World. The skeleton was found in an Inca cemetery outside Lima, Peru.

Digging in an Inca cemetery in the suburbs of Lima, they came on well-preserved remains of an individual with holes less than an inch in diameter in the back and front of the skull. Forensic scientists in Connecticut said the position of the round holes and some minuscule iron particles showed that the person most likely was shot and killed by a Spanish musket ball.

Ceramics and other artifacts in the 72 examined graves established the approximate time of the burials, archaeologists said, and this indicated that these were casualties of combat between Inca warriors and Spanish invaders, who seized the Andean empire in 1532. Spanish chronicles describe a pitched battle, a last stand of the Incas that was fought in the vicinity in 1536.

Conquistadors were equipped with some of the first effective firearms, which had been developed recently in Europe, military historians say.

The National Geographic Society announced yesterday the discovery of the gunshot victim by the independent Peruvian archaeologists Guillermo Cock and Elena Goycochea, who have conducted research at the Puruchuco cemetery for years. A Nova-National Geographic television program on the research is scheduled for next Tuesday.

The fact that Incan remains were found in a European-style cemetery is in itself evidence of subjugation. The Incas left their dead in a crouching position, facing northeast, in a rock niche or similar opening, so the soul could be carried to the next life by a condor-shaped god. Catholic missionaries ordered those types of burial sites destroyed, and forced the Incas to bury their dead underground, in prone position. In the Incan belief system, this destroyed a person's chance for passage into the next life. Nothing spells subjugation like an eternity without peace.

More from the New York Times story:

Dr. Cock said that at least 35 of the excavated skeletons bore evidence of violent injuries: cheekbones crushed by heavy blows, broken hands and limbs, a smashed chest. Some had presumably fallen in hand-to-hand combat or been trampled by Spanish horses, another instrument of warfare new to the Americas.

No similar evidence of a death by gunshot this early has been found elsewhere in the Americas, Dr. Cock said. The musket shot appeared to have entered the back of the man's skull, punching a piece of bone from outside to inside, and emerged through the face.

"The individual may have been escaping from the Europeans," the archaeologist said.

These particular graves attracted the attention of the excavators because they were shallow and the bodies appeared to have been interred hastily. They were not ritually wrapped in shrouds and placed in a crouched position facing northeast, as was customary in Inca burials.

Forensic experts at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut, confirmed the violent nature of the deaths. Albert B. Harper, executive director of the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science at the university, said, "We tried to rule out all kinds of causes of the hole — a rock from a slingshot, spear, sledgehammer."

An examination of the skull with a scanning electron microscope detected the otherwise invisible iron traces, Dr. Harper said, sealing the verdict of death by a musket ball fired from a range of perhaps 100 feet.

I think forensic archaeology is fascinating. The same experts have been called upon to determine cause of death in modern exterminations on the same continent.

The remains of this earliest gunshot victim was found outside Lima, the capital of modern Peru. The Incan capital was Cuzco. In Cuzco, you can see the original Inca stone foundations of the city, which have survived in near-perfect condition through centuries of earthquakes and attempted human destruction. You may recall how these stones blew me away last spring. They were among the most astounding human creations I have ever seen.

Slightly over 100 kilometres away in Machu Picchu, you can see the remains of a glorious Incan city that the Spanish never found, an absolute wonder of human ingenuity, engineering, industry, heartbreak and loss.

ancient peru at the rom

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto will be exhibiting treasures from ancient Peru. I'm very excited about this! Our trip to this region of Peru was among the highlights of our trip, and that is really saying something.

I'm wondering, however, why the ROM refers to the origin of these treasures as "Sican". In Peru, it is "Sipan". We were there, and it is most definitely Sipan. Why this word Sican, I wonder? I will try to find out.

Meanwhile, the exhibit begins March 10. It will be my first time at the ROM.

* * * *

Update. Apparently there's Sipan and Sican. Although they have similar descriptions - both north coast, both Moche, both skilled in metallurgy - they were separate empires. Funny that in my Peru research I never came across Sican. I'll discover them in Toronto!

quieter

The government of Peru recently granted licenses for helicopter tours over Machu Picchu - then almost immediately rescinded them.

The Peruvian government has reversed a decision to allow flights over the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu after an outcry from environmental groups.

Peru's Transport and Communications ministry has declared the area around the site a no-fly zone.

Environmentalists said a number of rare animals and plants would have been severely affected by the low-flying helicopter tours.

Machu Picchu, a world heritage site, is Peru's biggest tourist attraction.

Little more than a week after a licence was granted for helicopter tours over South America's most famous ruin, it was taken away again.

The Transport and Communications Ministry was forced to reverse its decision after complaints from environmentalists and archaeologists.

After a short meeting with Peru's departments of Culture and Natural Resources, the ministry declared a flight restriction in the whole area surrounding Machu Picchu.

Several leading environmentalists said the flights would have caused irreparable damage to the ruins and rare wildlife, such as spectacled bears and vicunas, would have been scared away.

Such flights had been allowed during the 1990s but were banned shortly afterwards.

World wonder

Peru's Institute of Natural Resources said those flights led to the disappearance of a rare species of orchid and the Andean Condor from the area.

Machu Picchu is one of the best-preserved pre-Columbian ruins on the continent.

But experts say the Unesco World Heritage Site is being slowly damaged by the hordes of tourists which visit it every year.

Meanwhile, the Peruvian government says its investing in a campaign to make Machu Picchu one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

I'm very relieved about this, even for purely selfish, touristy reasons. I can't imagine visiting the quiet splendor of Machu Picchu with the sounds of rotor blades overhead. And of course, there are more important issues at stake, as well.

When UNESCO placed Machu Picchu on its list of World Heritage Sites, it estimated that the Incan ruins could support about 500 visitors per day without irreparable damage. In the height of the tourist season, more than 2500 visitors currently tramp through Machu Picchu.

UNESCO's Machu Picchu info here, and a small sample of our photos of it here. A friend of wmtc just booked his trip to Peru, perhaps partially inspired by our journey. (And when I went to his site to get the link, what do I see? Machu Picchu!)

Thanks to Alan With One L for the story.

finally

Finally! I've got photos of Peru to share.

After coming home from Peru, I was very busy with writing deadlines, the wmtc party, a visit from my mother, blah blah blah. Then our scanner and printer both died - a murder-suicide pact, I believe - and then the weather was just too nice to bother.

Last week we tackled the somewhat daunting task of choosing a representative sample from the approximately 1200 photos we shot in Peru (19 rolls of film and about 700 digital pictures). Once that was done, it was smooth sailing.

Yesterday I spent the day scanning, uploading, and organizing on Flickr. And now I have a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

You can go here to see the photos.

If you have more time and want more context, I've gone back to the Peru posts and added links to the corresponding photo sets. They begin April 24 and end May 17: here are the April archives and the May archives.

Enjoy!

coming soon: peru

Allan just solved two of our problems in one swoop, by bringing home a combination printer and scanner. Our scanner hasn't worked properly since we moved, and our printer died a few months ago. Now we're fully equipped again.

This Epson model also makes photocopies. We always do our photocopying at work, but for the occasional one-off need, this is very handy.

I can't believe how inexpensive all this hardware is now. I imagine the reasons for those low costs couldn't be very good, either for workers or the environment. But sheesh, it does make your life easier. I guess that's why we all look the other way.

So now that we are up and running, we'll be able to post photos from our Peru trip. I have one more deadline to get past, and Peru photos will be our next project after that. I opened a Flickr account, in case Blogger's photo capability proves too frustrating. It took way too long to get the party pictures up, so links to Flickr might be the way to go.

solstice

Today, our summer solstice, I'm thinking about Peru, the Peruano friends we made, the ancient cultures we met. As in much of the world, it's winter solstice there, although so close to the equator, the hours of daylight and darkness don't vary very much. Even so, many Incan and pre-Incan tombs and monuments are oriented towards June 21.

I see that Solstice-watchers are allowed onto the Stonehenge site today. Stonehenge is an amazing place, but if you should ever go to Ireland, do visit Newgrange, a passage tomb complex older than Stonehenge, and older than the Egyptian pyramids. After creeping through a narrow, sunken passageway, we stood in the burial chamber, under a corbelled stone ceiling, and learned that on June 21, the sunrise would light up that dark passage and flood the interior space.

Ireland's Boyne Valley, a short drive north of Dublin, is full of neolithic tomb sites in various stages of excavation. But beware: like us, you may become fascinated with spirals.

Today is also National Aboriginal Day in Canada, a good excuse to appreciate the people who were really "here first". Another cool place to be today is Alaska, where you can play or watch midnight baseball, a tradition more than 100 years old.

I'm extremely happy and content to enjoy solstice in Port Credit. No ceremonies needed, just a glass of cold wine, a plastic lawn chair, and our green backyard.

photos, panic

Last night we looked at all our photos from Peru. I have to say, they're pretty great. They're also a lot: 19 rolls of film and about 700 digital pics.

We were especially impressed with the quality of our digital pictures. Our digital camera is an inexpensive little model, very basic; I bought it only for blogging and emailing. But much to our pleasant surprise, the lighting, colour quality and definition of the photos were excellent.

I'm glad we're also using our conventional camera - a nice Olympus with a Vivitar wide angle/telephoto lens - especially since the little digital wasn't up to the task when it came to the Nazca lines. I can see eventually getting a higher quality digital camera, and going all digital the way most travelers have. Maybe for our next vacation.

So when are you going to see a selection of these pictures, you ask? (Yes, people have been asking.) I have June 15 writing deadlines, and the party on June 17, and my mother will be here next week. All good things, but they add up to a time crunch. Sometime this summer, we'll choose a couple of photos for each wmtc-goes-to-Peru post and update the blog. But it will have to wait.

I'm trying not to panic about the party preparations plus deadline convergence. It's not easy for me.

many thoughts

I just received email from my blog-friend Dr. Marco, a Peruvian doctor who's been in the US for several years, doing his specialist residency. (I believe that's what it's called.) A month from now, he graduates as a nephrologist, after an unbelievably long road of study.

Marco helped us figure out our route in Peru (we love the internet!), and apparently followed our travels through wmtc. My only Peruvian reader that I know of, he gave me a tremendous compliment: "Reading about your trip was like going back to my country for a little while and experiencing it, something I do not do for almost 2 years."

When Marco says he loves downtown Lima, I feel a real kinship with him, in my love for big cities. The guidebooks tell you downtown Lima is unsafe, overcrowded, chaotic, and dirty. It may be all those things, but it is also vibrant and alive, filled with unexpected treasures and flashes of beauty. When we went to Mexico, people told us not to bother with Mexico City, but we loved it there, wouldn't have missed it. People say New York is all of those things, too. Ditto Toronto.

Marco, a fellow atheist like me, has some interesting things to say in his blog, Multae Sententiae, about religion and sex, mass extinction, and the Peruvian election.

nonsense

Killing time while Allan was sick in Arequipa, I made a list of the countries and US states I've been in. (If I recall correctly, David Cho once did this on his blog. He had a map you could click on to colour in the states...?)

I haven't been in many countries, although I've been in a few more than once: 11. No, 12. I forgot Bermuda.

The states was a tough one, because my family did a lot of US travel (mostly by car) when I was a kid, and I had to remember all the trips and all the routes. Total: 35.

Then I could only remember 47 states! That may sound funny, but try to list all 50 off the top of your head, without looking at a map. It's not so easy! Finally there were 49 on the list... I could see the shape of that last one in my head, but just couldn't remember what it was. Poor Oklahoma. And I grew up hearing Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals, too!

* * * *

Using the link David supplied, here are my visited US states and visited countries.

more mummies

Alan With One L emailed me this story about a mummy recently found in Peru. (My mom also cut out a hard copy. She reads this blog, but still hasn't gotten that emailing-an-article thing down.)

A mummy of mystery has come to light in Peru.

She was a woman who died some 1,600 years ago in the heyday of the Moche culture, well before the rise of the Incas. Her imposing tomb suggests someone of high status. Her desiccated remains are covered with red pigment and bear tattoos of patterns and mythological figures.

But the most striking aspect of the discovery, archaeologists said yesterday, is not the offerings of gold and semiprecious stones, or the elaborate wrapping of her body in fine textiles, but the other grave goods.

She was surrounded by weaving materials and needles, befitting a woman, and 2 ceremonial war clubs and 28 spear throwers - sticks that propel spears with far greater force - items never found before in the burial of a woman of the Moche (pronounced MOH-chay).

Was she a warrior princess, or perhaps a ruler? Possibly.

"She is elite, but somewhat of an enigma," said John Verano, a physical anthropologist at Tulane University, who worked with the Peruvian archaeologists who made the discovery last year.

Christopher B. Donnan of the University of California, Los Angeles, was not a member of the research team but inspected the mummy and the tomb soon after the find.

"It's among the richest female Moche burials ever found," said Dr. Donnan, an archaeologist of Peruvian culture. "The tomb combines things usually found either exclusively in male or female burials - a real mystery."

The National Geographic Society announced the discovery and is publishing details in its magazine's June issue. The excavations, more than 400 miles northwest of Lima, were supported by the Augusto N. Wiese Foundation of Peru.

But where?? Where were the excavations? "400 miles northwest of Lima" is not a location.

Two more Peru notes.

Several people have asked me about things we didn't do in Peru. Trujillo, for example, is a centre of certain traditional (Spanish-derived) dancing, as well as famous pacing horses. There are colonial mansions in Lima and Arequipa, and many private art collections. On the less sedentary side of life, Peru is a magnet for trekking, surfing, sandboarding, and whitewater rafting.

You'd need a lot more time to do and see everything in Peru, as you would in any country. But even if we had been traveling for more than three weeks, we wouldn't have done these things. We would have covered more ground - maybe gone to Bolivia, or explored islands on Lake Titicaca. Our trip was formed around our own interests. My travel journal is a reflection of that, not a definitive guidebook.

Also, in your internet travels, if you come across stories on the upcoming election in Peru, or about the current political situation in South America in general, I'd be very interested. Feel free to links them by email or to post them in comments.

home

Ahhh, how wonderful to come home to Canada. I love it every time.

The trip home was fine, just exhausting, especially for me, since I was up all night on the flight from Lima. Apparently everyone but me can sleep sitting up. I don't know how they do it (except for those lucky ducks lying down in business class), but everyone was snoring away except me.

Clearing immigration and customs in JFK, we missed our flight to Buffalo, but JetBlue got us on the next one, only 90 minutes later. That gave us time for breakfast and some badly-needed freshening up.

When the US immigration official at JFK welcomed us back to the US, Allan and I smiled knowingly at each other, since we were planning to be there only for a few hours, and we weren't quite home yet.

Port Credit looks so beautiful. Everything is green and blooming, the birds are singing in full throat, and our backyard is full of wildflowers. Some people call them weeds, but weeds, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder, and I declare these flowers beautiful.

The seeding and fertilizing that was done while we were gone made a big improvement on the lawn. It's not a lush, green carpet, but it's not a dirt patch anymore, either. Right now it's raining, so large puddles have formed, as usual. I haven't seen rain in 3 weeks and I can't say I missed it.

Ellen the Incredible Dogsitter had cleaned the house and put some food in the fridge. She and Cody had a great three weeks. Cody was very happy to see us, but not insane with joy, as we expected. She's lucky she goes through life on such an even keel.

I'm about to overwhelmed: several stories for Kids On Wheels and New Mobility, my new work hours (beginning a week from tomorrow), plans for a wedding we're attending in early June, and plans for our own party. I'll be making lists and trying not to freak out.

How are you all? What's new, personally and in Canada? Anything new on the emigration front with the moving-to-Canada crew? Feel free to direct me to any and all relevant websites.

I have some Canada-vs-US-related thoughts to come. I'm planning to get back to the usual mix of personal and political, and end the "what I did today" portion of this blog.

last post from peru

We´re back in the hotel for one hour before leaving for the airport. I´ll try to bang out a post about our last day.

We spent the morning in El Museo de la Nacion, a natural history museum that gives an overview of the ancient Peruvian cultures, from the first civilizations through the Incas. There´s an emphasis on ceramics (since much of our knowledge of these peoples comes through their pottery), along with some good reproductions of their buildings and temples. There was a school group there, eager 4th graders, and their teacher´s talk was just about on my level of comprehension.

It was a nice place, well designed and thought out, but the real treat was unrelated to the museum, and unexpected. In an alcove to the side of one of the exhibits, a young man sat in a room full of a kind of handicraft we have not seen anywhere else. He gave us a beautiful description (in Spanish, dumbed down for me, I believe) of how they are made and what they mean.

They are gourds, meticulously engraved in the most painstaking detail, then rubbed with the black ash of a certain plant, then cleaned with another solution (all from plants found in the rainforest), so the inky colour stays only in the engravings. The drawings are playful and light, depicting festivals, music, work, family life, and other aspects of rural life in Peru.

I cannot begin to describe the intricacy of the drawings. We were positively flabbergasted. Some of the engravings were huge, on giant horn-shaped gourds. Others were small, about the size of a pear, or even smaller, the size of a small egg. The workshop of artists who make them are entirely the young man´s family.

Off to the ATM we went! We simply could not resist buying these unique figures from the artist themselves. After much decision-making - they were all so beautiful - we bought one medium pear-sized gourd, and a very small egg-shaped one. (They were priced according to how long they took to make.) When I asked the boy for his photo in front of his work, he gave me his email address and asked if I would send him the photo. Great!

I don´t know if there´s anything about this work online. He called it Mates Burilados. (I asked him to write it down with his email address.) Mates are the gourds; the etching instruments are burillas.

After the museum, we went to Barranco, the supposedly funky suburb just south of Miraflores. Either we didn´t see the funky part, or this neighbourhood went upscale long ago. It was beautiful, and very ritzy, full of huge colonial homes and gardens.

We were very hungry, and on a guidebook recommendation, Allan found us a terrific place for what turned out to be our last meal in Peru. It was a neighbourhood joint, a big open place with 25-foot ceilings, from which hung all manner of soccer memorabilia. It´s only open for lunch and the big tables kept filling up with all manners of groups. (Except tourists!)

We each had a ceviche appetizer that alone would have been a meal. Mine was the deluxe mixed edition, full of squid, octopus, shrimp, langostinos, mussels, clams, a few kinds of fish, and a shellfish I had never seen before, which I found out was concha negra - black conch. After this the waiter brought me a small cast-iron crock of chufe, thick, creamy chowder filled with shrimp and langostinos. (For my own record, Allan had calamari ceviche and chiccharrones mixto, mixed fried seafood.) We were both full for the rest of the day.

We walked around Barranco, finding little pedestrian-only lanes among the colonial houses and sea views everywhere. Tired and too full, we sat in the town park, then found a little place for a cup of tea. The owner was a local man who spoke excellent English, who said he thinks his English is "like Tarzan", pronouncing Tarzan with the accent on the second syllable. I must use that line about my Spanish! He had a beautiful, tiny cafe, which he said he designed himself, and, being unemployed and broke at the time, constructed entirely out of materials recycled from trash. (I´m going to come back to this post to add the name of his cafe.) [Name and address of cafe: Paz Soldan, Av. Grau 508, Barranco. Proprietor: Jose Antonio Paz Soldan Vargas.]

After this, we hopped yet another cab to Larcomar, the trendy outdoor mall, to have one last drink overlooking the Pacific. It was dark by now, but the mist that hangs over the coast obscures all stars. All you can see in the darkness are the whitecaps of the waves rolling in, and the roar of the surf echoes on the cliffs.

Peru has been like a dream, like an odyssey - so different, often wonderful, sometimes difficult, but always fascinating. I feel sad to leave and so incredibly fortunate to have been here.

Thanks for coming along on our journey! Tomorrow we resume normal we move to canada programming. I can´t remember what that was, but Allan assures me I´ll come up with something.

A few photos from our last day in Peru.

Allan took several close-ups of the amazing mates burilados, but, engrossed as I was in trying to communicate with the artist, I forgot to tell him about the close-up setting on the digital camera. So unfortunately, most of those are too blurry to post, and I'm still kicking myself over it. However, you can see the artist himself, Cristian Alfaro, and a few of his family's creations.

lima

Here´s something I forgot to note about Arturo, our Sipan guide. He repeatedly referred to the Moche people as his ancestors, and to his pride in their accomplishments. I thought this was really cool. I remember a guide at Newgrange, a Neolithic passage tomb site in Ireland, speaking with obvious pride that her ancestors had built it. That´s a little more of a stretch, for various reasons, but I still love the idea.

Arturo told us some people have criticized him for not speaking Quechua, since he is Mestizo, and Quecha acknowledges and honours Indian heritage. But, he says, my people are from the north, they didn´t speak Quechua. The Incans spoke Quechua, but the Moche, older than the Incas, did not.

* * * *

We were both tired last night, and after discovering that our room had cable TV, we set off in search of a bottle of wine and snacks. Down the street, for the first time on this trip, we found a North American- style supermarket. The only food stores we´ve seen are little tiendas - basically a person in a tiny compartment, open to the street, and you ask for what you want - or market stalls. There must be supermarkets in middle-class neighbourhoods of Arequipa, for example, but we didn´t see them. This one, in Chiclayo, was big and modern, with refrigerated meat and fish (!) and even a pet food section.

We found wine, a cheap corkscrew - ours having been confiscated at the Lima airport en route to Cuzco, chips, cookies and yogurt shakes. We watched Los Simpsons with dubbed Spanish and Twins vs White Sox, the ESPN Sunday Night game, broadcast live in Spanish throughout Latin America.

It may not surprise you to learn that Allan is following the Red Sox online, and has been blogging from Peru. A couple of rainouts made him happy, because that means he misses fewer games.

* * * *

This morning we flew back to Lima, very easily and uneventfully, and are staying at the same hotel as our first go-round in Lima. We took a taxi into Miraflores, which I thought was a Lima neighbourhood but is actually a suburb. It´s ocean-side, and the centre of hotels, restaurants and nightlife for tourists and Limeños alike.

We went to a famously trendy mall (of all places) called Larcomar, built on the edge of high cliffs overlooking the Pacific. Most of it is outdoors or at least open-air, and the setting is so beautiful, it feels much nicer than a typical mall. We had lunch and drinks with a beautiful view, then wandered around the shops.

This was the only place in Peru that we´ve seen chains like Radio Shack and Athlete´s Foot, and the only Starbucks. There were a lot of souvenirs that we´ve seen sold in situ, marked up at least 500%.

We took a long walk through Miraflores, by far the most upscale or middle-class area we´ve seen in the entire country. Accordingly, it looks most like home. Even in the nice residential area of our hotel, the sidewalks are very narrow, there are tiny tiendas, and a very Sudamericano market. Miraflores looks to me like an upscale or middle-class neighbourhood anywhere. After not seeing a supermarket for three weeks, we saw one that I´d drool over in Port Credit.

More walking, and then dinner, and a glimpse of the famed nightlife of the area. We were winding down, but it was clearly just revving up (typical of us these days!). In a beautiful plaza park, vendors were set up with desk lamps, obviously expecting a busy nighttime trade.

Back at our hotel, there is cable TV in our room, and I suggested we check out ESPN. Guess what? The Red Sox were in the process of clobbering the Orioles, 11-1, bottom of the 9th. We saw the last half-inning.

Tomorrow we´re taking in a museum in the morning, then checking out the artsy suburb of Barranco. We´ll probably hang out here at the hotel in the evening before going to the airport, since our flight doesn´t leave until nearly midnight.

I´m beginning to get a little anxious about all that awaits me when we get home, but that´s typical for me. So far it´s under control.

chiclayo, day two

Oops, almost forgot!

temperature: 23 C / 73 F
elevation: 34 m / 112 ft

Also, my apologies to Chiclayanos for yesterday´s misinformation. Chiclayo is not a colonial city, it is a Republican city, meaning it was founded when Peru was already an independent country. Peru´s independence from Spain dates to 1821; Chiclayo's Plaza de Armas was built in 1916.

* * * *

Lucky us, at the very end of the trip and still seeing fascinating things.

Today we took a tour of El Museo Tumbas Reales Sipan, the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipan. The royal Moche burial sites of Sipan were discovered only in 1987, after previously unknown pre-Columbian artefacts started turning up on the underground market. There´s a modern-day wild-west story that follows huaqeros (grave robbers) from Peru to Miami to Philadelphia, involving the FBI, some unusually honest Peruvian police, at least one murder, and tales of intrigue that landed on two National Geographic magazine covers.

Fortunately for us, huaqeros are greedier than they are smart, and they never recognized what was in front of their eyes. A confession led archeologist Dr Walter Alva to the site, where the thieves had destroyed and looted one grave, but left 13 others intact, including the Señor of Sipan, or the Lord of Sipan. They were only a few metres away from the Señor's grave, but when they found a huge mess of pottery, they gave up. The quantity and placement of the pottery told the archeologists that a very important person was buried very nearby.

Intact graves bear incredibly rich fruit, laden with information about the civilization that built them. These graves were rich in every sense: they were full of gold, silver, and copper ornaments, and perfectly intact pottery and jewelry. And because their discovery was so recent, the restoration could be done right - Peruanos were involved in every process, and the treasures stayed where they were found. In fact, Peruvian students went to Spain and Germany for training in metal restoration, and now northern Peru is an internationally reknowned centre for that science.

The museum itself is the best in Peru, and said to be one of the top archeological museums of the world. The presentation is state-of-the-art. Even the building itself is designed to evoke a Moche pyramid.

It´s located in Lambayeque, outside of Chiclayo. Although Chiclayo is not on the standard tour circuit (luckily for us, but unhappily for the people of this region), I highly recommend a visit if you go to Peru. All the signage is in Spanish, but even if you read Spanish, a guide or a detailed book is very helpful, to put the whole presentation into context.

In the museum, we saw Moche pottery that illustrates all the animals and symbols of their culture, incredibly expressive and distinctive designs that were mass produced from molds. (Google Moche pottery to see these designs. They are easily recognizable by their distinctive spouted handles.)

There´s an incredible wealth of jewelry and ornamentation, all perfectly cleaned and restored to their original state, with no added reproductions. There were mountains of gold, but gold wasn´t particularly valuable, as it was plentiful in the Amazon River. Copper was more valuable, as it had to be mined, and most valuable of all were certain kinds of sea shells, since the Moche venerated the ocean. All the work was amazingly detailed and intricate, with certain repeating motifs that tell stories about the culture.

The Lord of Sipan was buried with his wife, two concubines, his young son, two soldiers, two llamas (no longer found in this area), a dog, and a soldier to guard them all, along with an unbelievable amount of riches. The artefacts in the tomb, their placement, the manner of burial, and all such details yielded so much information about the Moche.

The museum houses everything contained in three graves - that of the Señor, the Priest, and El Viejo Señor, the old Lord, which DNA testing has shown to be the Señor's great-grandfather - including the skeletons themselves. Cool factoid: the Señor had bone disease and his feet atrophied because he never walked - he was carried all his life. His teeth were strong from his high-calcium fish diet, but his feet and leg bones had deteriorated from lack of use.

Museo Tumbas Reales also shows how the graves were excavated (imagine digging 3 metres deep with tweezers!), and large colour photos of the sites in various stages of excavation.

Truly remarkable. We bought a beautiful book by Dr Alva about the site and the museum.

After a few hours at the Museum, we drove down rough roads, through ramshackle towns and tiny, poor pueblos, to the Sipan archeological site. The grave sites are there, with reproductions of what was found inside, so you can see the placement. (I also recommend visiting in this order, museum before site, as it provides wonderful context.)

The graves are beside what appears to be a mountain, but is really the remains of an adobe pyramid. We climbed up a short ways, and our guide pointed out the remains of many other pyramids in the area. They all look like small mountains or large hills. People are living on some of them. Unlike the Incas and the Mayans, who built with stone, the Moche built with adobe, and adobe could not withstand the forces of periodic El Niño phenomena.

Our guide, Arturo, was really a delight. His accent was a little difficult, but he slipped political comments into his narrative, including some wonderful digs at the US. How lucky to say we're from Canada, as I doubt he´d be so bold with Norteamericanos. (That´s what folks from the US are known as, by the way, Norteamericanos, which apparently does not include Canadians or Mexicans.)

After the tour, we asked the driver to leave us near a popular restaurant where Chiclayanos were chowing down for Mother´s Day. (Will this Mother´s Day never end? It´s a three-day celebration here!) We had delicious polla a la brasa (rotisserie chicken) and potatoes, then joined a crowd waiting for ice cream. The people in Chiclayo look comparatively well-off, decidedly middle class. Not so on the outskirts and certainly not in the little adobe pueblos, but there is obviously education and comfort within the northern cities themselves.

Tomorrow morning (Monday) we fly to Lima, and our flight to NYC is not until late Tuesday night. When we planned the trip, I didn´t realize that you don´t really need that much time in Lima. We considered moving our return up a day, which would still give us a full 12 hours more in Lima, and also would give Allan an extra recuperation day before returning to work, but it was prohibitively expensive. So we'll spend time in the seaside neighbourhoods of Miraflores and Barranco, and not go into the downtown area at all. Miraflores is where all the restaurants, upscale shopping and nightlife is; Barranco is supposed to be a relaxed, funky, artist's and writer's enclave.

A few pictures from Sipan here. Unfortunately, the best part is in el museo and not photographable. But you can see the outside of the Museum, and a bit of the actual grave sites.