How to get things done in Cuzco…
My day started out slowly, moving from store to store around the Plaza de Armas, trying to find a good price on a duffel bag to bring things back to New York in.
Plaza de Armas, Cuzco, Peru
The boleto toristico that one has to buy to enter into virtually any of the site in the Cuzco area, also includes various museums in Cuzco. I spent much of the morning in the Contemporary Art Museum, the Regional History Museum (where I learned a lot about both Tupac Amaru and Garciloso de la Vega- very interesting!) and the Museum of the Incas, where it suddenly occured to me that I should be able to buy blueprint/ survey drawings of both Machu Picchu and Choquequirao somewhere to bring back to school. This simple seeming task led me on an adventure to not one, but EIGHT different offices through out the city! (Eight does not count the three different offices that I had to return to at least two times more after completing a step in the process). Wow!
Steps to obtaining blueprints/ survey drawings of archeological sites in Cuzco:
1. Find the correct office. This entails going to three different places based on information given at each subsequent place and returning to the 2nd one because it was correct, even though the person at the reception desk swore it was not.
2. Find the correct person in the correct office.
3. Explain why on earth a foreigner would want blueprints of the sites and not only to visit the sites themselves and take pictures to the correct person at the correct office.
4. Go to the internet cafe to write a formal letter of your request. Ask a 12 year old who is running the cafe to proofread my Spanish.
5. Return to the correct person in the correct office to have them put a special stamp on the letter. Be told that I will need to call him on August 9th to get the blueprints and really, to find out where he is because the location of his office might be moving…
6. Go to another office down small twisty roads with no name and hope that you are in the correct place.
7. Go to the information window at the payment office to make sure that you are in the correct place because the place you are in has a million tourists waiting in line to buy tickets to Machu Picchu (Did I explain myself correctly in Spanish that I wanted to buy plans for Machu Picchu and not buy ticket?)
8. After confirming you are in the correct place, jump the reservations line and go directly to the payment line.
9. Completely confuse the man behind the desk that you indeed want to pay for blueprints NOT a ticket to Machu Picchu and watch him crash the receipts computer as you confuse him beyond belief.
10. Pay for the blueprints and get a receipt.
11. Walk for 6 blocks before finding a copy machine to copy the receipt, which feels strange because everywhere else in the country it feels like you have passed a copy place every other step.
12. Realize that you have not actually given the solitation letter nor receipt for blueprints to anyone so the order is not actually going to be processed.
13. Go back to the payment office to figure out who and where exactly I need to deliver the letter and receipt to be processed. Arrive at 4:01 pm and beg to be let in to the nice guard.
14. Speak to a nice older gentleman who conceeds to help me after hours and then asks me for a copy of my passport.
15. Realize that my copy of my passport is fairly crumpled. Solicate the elderly mans help to copy my copy of my passport and escort me to the correct window back in the payment office.
16. Go to the final window in the payment office and deliver the letter, copy of the receipt and copy of my passport.
17. Hope that when I call on the 9th of August after my trek to Choquiquerao, the copies of the blueprints are waiting for me.
🙂 I actually find the entire situation incredibly humorous. The truth is, we have just as messy and complicated systems in the US to get certain things done and obtain certain documents. I know though, that I would not have been nearly as patient if I had not already done similar things in Tanzania when I was in the Peace Corps. And despite the multiple steps involved, everyone was so incredibly understanding and helpful. They really were happy that someone wanted to bring something home to use in teaching somewhere else. 🙂
Oh yes… and yesterday I went to most of the other Incan ruins just outside of Cuzco. Lots of interest there!
Tambomachay: Incan Baths
Trapezoid niches.... but how many different sided polygons can you find in the Incan stonework?
I simply cannot get enough of these trapezoid shaped doors. The question for you: Why trapezoids?
The Incan ruin "sexy woman" from afar. Only a fraction of it is open to tourists. Some of these blocks weigh up to 100 tons!
I am still amazed at how closely the stones fit together. I found out today that the made a clay copy of EACH AND EVERY one before actually carving it out of the quarry.
This is part of an Incan temple that the Spanish built a church on top of. In 1950 there was an earthquake. Some of the Spanish church fell down, none of the Incan temple did.
Super interesting to me... there was a protest on the Plaza de Armas about genetic engineering of food and seeds. Apparently the new president of Peru has just entered into a contract with Bio-genetics giant Monsanto.... uh oh....
Tomorrow I take off for 5 days for my trek to Choquiquerao…. more to come after then!
Ms. Bruck
Cuzco: The Sacred Vally (Pisac, Ollantaytambo, Chinchero)
I arrived in Cuzco on Saturday, taking a bus from Puno that stopped at various historical sites along the way. One in particular, Raqchi (and the temple of Wiracocha), was interesting to me as it was the first well-defined Incan site I had spent any time at.
Wiracocha was the 8th Incan King. Just as interesting to me as the history of the ruins was the the construction. Take a look at the pictures below…. what pops out to you?
Just how did the Incas manage to make the stones fit so closely???
What is that shape that keep appearing over and over again? Any ideas as to why?
So now I am in Cuzco. Cuzco is the base from which I am going to explore Incan ruins in the Sacred Valley, do my 5 day trek to a lesser known lost Incan city of Choquiquerao and then finally, go to Machu Picchu.
I will be based out of Cuzco for almost 2 weeks! It feels nice to be in one place for awhile though.
After checking into my hotel on Saturday, I went to the tour company through which I had arranged my trek out to the Incan ruins of Choquiquerao to confirm my trip on the 4th. The trek will be for 5 days and I am really looking forward to it, as I will have the chance to see two major Incan ruins and not just Machu Pichu as most people do. I also arranged train tickets and entrance to Machu Pichu on the 10th-11th. Apparently, a lot has changed in Peru in the last three weeks with the new President and you cannot just show up at the archeological site and buy tickets anymore.
With that settled, I took up the opportunity to do a tour of the Sacred Valley on Sunday. We went to three major Incan ruins. Something to know about the Incas is that they were only really a dominating civilization for 90 years or so. They became powerful quickly and extended their reign from Ecuador into Chile by absorbing existing communities and also, improving upon technology that already existed.
The first major stop on our Sacred Valley tour was Pisac. The archaeological complex is a fantastic example of Incan terracing. Most of which were still in use until major flooding happened in the Sacred Valley in 2010.
The terraces are made up of four layers. On the bottom is rock, for drainage, then gravel, then sand and finally the top layer is humus, rich earth in which crops grow. What is fascinating to me is that underneath all of this, the Incas first built water irrigation channels, so there are actually little streams of water running underneath the terraces.
OLLANTAYTAMBO:
Our next stop was Ollantaytambo, a huge agricultural and economic center for the Incas in the Sacred Valley. What was interesting was that it was also an unfinished temple, on which the sun shone directly upon on the Summer solstice. These Pre-Colombian civilizations really are fascinating when you think of their ability to build things in just exactly the right place so it is hit by the light on one particular day of the year!
This was the first site that I really got to see just how HUGE the blocks of granite are that the Incas used to build their temples and cities. I don´t have the information with me just now, but some of the blocks for the temple (above middle) weigh something like 45 tons and came from a quarry over 5 kilometers away over a mountain! A few years ago, the townspeople of Ollantaytambo actually moved a block, though much smaller by placing logs underneath the block just to prove that it was actually possible to move them using non-machine generated power. It is estimated to take something like 15 people to move a 1 ton block. Just think about how many people were involved in moving them! Needless to say, I left the site impressed!
CHINCHERO
The last stop on our tour of the Sacred Valley was to Chinchero, another town with terraces, but better known for its textiles and natural dying of wool from the plants and insects in the surrounding environment. You can bet Ms. Bruck was excited about this stop!
The colorwork and detail in their weaving is pretty incredible! How much counting do you think is involved in that? I spoke with one of the ladies, and she confirmed for me that it was all about patterns, different number combinations gave different shapes, slopes of the shapes as you went from row to row, etc. 🙂
I bought some fabric from the lady to my left and in response they decided to dress me up in their traditional dress and have my picture taken. I look pretty silly, but it was a good laugh!
Today my plan is to do a “city tour” of some Incan ruins outside the city on my own. There is so much information that you get with a guide, but I often find myself rushed through and not getting to spend as much time exploring as I would like!
Cheers!
Ms. Bruck
More pictures: Nazca lines, Nazca pottery and food .
Finally found an internet cafe with a bit faster connection speeds.. and I have figured out how to enter a slide show. It is all a learning experience!
Here are some of the other pictures I was going to put into the other post. Mostly examples of geometric designs being used in the Nazca pottery. I am not quite sure what I will do with them yet, but I personally find them interesting.
Also, there are pictures of food! As you can see, I have been eating really well! Lots and lots of fish though…
Currently, I am in Arequipa, doing some private classes in Spanish and staying with a homestay family. Even though, it has only been one day, it has been really nice to stay and live with people who actually live here, instead of a hostel.
More to come!
Ms. Bruck
Nazca Lines- Mystery, Archaeology and Geometry
Warning: I took many pictures, but few are uploading due to slow internet speeds. I will do my best to upload, but am trying to link to other people’s websites (and pictures and videos) in order to give you a better idea of what I am talking about until I get my own loaded.
- Pictures taken from a scale model of the Nasca Lines in the Nasca Lines Hotel, Nazca, Peru
I really like the little town of Nazca, in desert plateau on the Southern Coast of Peru. I was first interested in coming here when I came across this website five years ago when I was looking for other things to link math to. No one knows exactly why the Nazca lines were made, though there are many theories. There seems to be three main theories: they marked how to find water; they marked some type of calendar, with lines pointing in the direction of the sunset on the Winter and Summer soltices; and the animorphic shapes represent constellations in the sky.
Take a glimpse here for a quick peek at what I’m talking about.
When most people find out about the lines, they notice the animorphic shapes. Actually, the geometric shapes are MUCH larger than the animorphic shapes. Here are just a few of the things that I learned last night at a small presentation at the Maria Reiche planetarium in the Nazca Lines Hotel:
- The lines were formed by the Nazca people 100-600 A.D by removing the rocks from the desert basin, leaving just the fine dirt below exposed.
- With the exception of the Monkey, all shapes are made from one single line that never crosses itself.
- 30% of the the large geometric shapes (triangles, trapezoids, and rectangles) are known to point to the source of water, an extremely valuable resource in the desert.
- The lines that point to the sources of water are actually perpendicular to the Rio Grande.
- Other sets of lines are perfectly parallel sources that come down from the mountains.
- The lines reach up to 480 meters long in some cases.
- It is believed that at times Nazca gather on the lines for ceremonies and at other times, they would walk and follow the lines until it lead them to sources of water.
I took at flight over the lines this morning and it was pretty spectacular! Unfortunately, my video did not turn out amazing, but I tried to share what I have with you in the posts above. I hope it works!
Ms. Bruck
Quipus, walkabouts and food…
My hostel is an old mansion in the old part of Lima, right across from a big church. I woke up to rain, and when I stepped outside my room door, peacocks and turtles! That´s right. I guess I forgot to mention that most of the rooms on the highest floor of the hostel open up onto a rooftop deck that´s really quite beautiful. It´s full of plants and the morning critters I mentioned above.
I spent most of today at the History and Archeology Musem gaining some background knowledge about Peru, the Nazcas and Incas before I would eventually continue on to places around the country that these cultures are known for.
- Children in Parade in Lima
This was really cool to see. What was even more exciting was being able to go to the library there at the museum, explain that I wanted to learn more about Quipus (How were they used? Could I learn how to read one?) and be allowed to check out book there at the library to learn more about them and take notes.
The images below (from one of the books- you are allowed to take photographs, but with the flash) helps to explain how to “read” a single cord:
- Each level is a different place value, starting with the bottoms, with ones, tens, hundreds, etc.
It was so neat to be able to go into the archeological library in another country to be able to look something up that I was interested in and be able to understand it better!
I looked at three books while in the library. The first two were the newest books, published as recently as 2005. Both were in Spanish. It was a pretty awesome feeling to know that my Spanish is already good enough to be able to follow technical text (which I somehow think to be a bit easier than conversational text as there are many many cognates to help one along). The third book was written in English and publish in 1927, nearer to when the Quipus were first discovered. It was interesting as many of the conclusions drawn in the earlier book, written by an American were in direct contradiction to current thinking, written by Peruvians. I think that Ill take the more current text. The earlier book stated that there were no mathematical function to the Quipus and that the different colored cords had no special meaning. Current thinking is that in addition to record keeping, the Quipus could be used to perform calculations, much like an abacus. There were also examples of different colored cords having meaning for things such as soldiers (red), gold (yellow), silver (white), and corn.
Food: Being as this first post is already incredibly long and pictures are taking quite some time to upload, the only thing that I am going to say is that I am not starving as many who worried about the fact that I do not eat meat thought I might do. 🙂 I even came across a purely vegetarian restaurant near my hotel this evening.
Cheers!
Ms. Bruck
validusinperu 