My “I’m Pregnant” book says that at 4 or 5 months I am gonna want to go on a trip…
From Blog not dead in the water in Huaraz, Peru on Dec 21 '08
My “I’m Pregnant” book says that at 4 or 5 months I am gonna want to go on a trip…get away….be free. Turns out my book and I are one with each other. I never thought I would be a pregnancy book kinda girl…me being the one who scoffs at the pile of life instructionals which bend almost to breaking the shelves of my mother. My mother, strangely enough being a woman who knows how to live life…and generally if the truth be let out, never actually reads the books she buys, perhaps its an osmosis thing.
So yes, myself and my book agreed. Although agreement by coincidence, as months ago, before the happening of egg meets sperm I knew I would have to get away once the vacation bells came a ringing. Now with belly in toe, myself and my partner realized that in our short life together were looking at the one chance to vacation without child…we madly started buying tickets and booking hotels.
So for those who don’t know me, and are for some reason reading my blogs for joy or interest, I am 5 months pregnant. Though it was joked about many times before leaving my grand rock that Stephanie would come home with a little brown baby, it wasn’t actually the plan. But I guess life has a way of knowing whether we do or not. As previously mentioned I have met a beautiful man, and now we seem to be making a nice and politically correct multicultural family….but before that happens we need beach and mountain time.
Upon finishing up my work, and getting his time off we boarded Gil’s first plane…a vacation of firsts….it is a wonderful thing. We landed in Lima long enough to go and change our bus tickets, spend 3 hours in the post office waiting for the package my loving father had mistakenly sent to Lima (I still do not get this…as to mail it he had to write down Lima, myself living NOT in Lima…I guess the brain and the hand break up sometimes). So yes, thank you Dad, but brain meet hand. After our adventure in the 7 lines and millions of forms one must go through to receive an envelope in Perú, we had just enough time to introduce Gil to the sadness that is Pizza Hut pizza before meeting my CUSO supervisor at the office to pass a lovely and stress free evening with a real Stephy-style salad! Brief but lovely, we had to leave to catch our first of many buses at 10 p.m. which would bring us to our first stop, Huaraz.
8 hours, 3400 metres and many falling rocks later we arrived in the capital of Ancash; an area of antiquity, earthquakes and cold. I jumped off the bus and ran to the bathroom….forgetting about cold toilet seats. Good morning I giggled to myself…how soon we forget…how soon we remember. Gil discovering freezing cold bathroom floors in the middle of the night was pretty funny too! We found a B&B and headed out for a day tour up the mountain to Chavín; a city from a culture before the Incans, which they seem to have no proof or relics of sparing a great temple and talk of old.
For 3 hours our bus climbed up through the Andes, zigzagging back and forth until we hit 4000 metres and my poor dear and his lungs almost hit their limit. Heading back down the other side and through a tunnel we started to see civilization once again in the form of 4 sided homes. Along the hillside journey we mostly only spotted tiny round stone dwellings with thatched roofs, just enough room for a man to sleep…these were the homes of the shepherds…the guardians of the flock. This was living life without leaving a footprint.
Another incredible, and not so awesome in the same way, were the coal holes. All along the hillside we saw person-sized holes with great trails of black bleeding from them. As well as the holes were gashes and painful black scars marking the trail. Every scrap of reachable coal scraped from the rock. It shouldn’t have taken me so long to figure it out, but a girl from law-riddled, health and safety shrouded Canada does not think in this manner until it gives her a good face slap. As I was racking my brain about these holes and how they got the coal out we passed a ledge up above, and there sitting calmly and pleasantly eating their lunch were 3 coal-faced miners….said hole just behind them. I just barely made them out for their eyes, and the fact that one waved at my dumbstruck face and smiled. How many times have I wanted to cry while travelling…? Add one more to the tally. We complain and we fuss…I laughed out loud about the rules given us in the theatre back home to “protect” us to the point that we cannot do our jobs anymore. And here I am smiling back at a gentleman who when he finishes his now black sandwich, will turn around and crawl back down the self-dug hole to smash and haul out raw coal from the earth. Health and safety here consisted of the hankerchief for his face.
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Here in Iquitos they merely burn down portions of the forest daily to make coal for cooking….ah coal.
Getting over my stupor I bucked up and joined the land of tourists and my Loretano who was once again regaining the lovely cinnamon colour her generally enjoys. Reaching an altitude more conducive to breathing we stopped and ate lunch in a gorgeous garden (Mom you were there). During lunch we met and ate with a guy who has one of those jobs they write into movies…chemical engineer working in technology for IBM, who is 30 and gets flown around the world so much it bugs him. Blah. I introduced him to what a non-governmental organization was and tried to explain how we get funded through our own mean-to-do projects, with the understanding that we will not remain with or gain any money throughout the process. I loved his bewildered look. Perhaps multi-million dollar companies should start sending their employees around the world to help NGOs in the projects and report back…that would be a nice way to spread the word.
Soooo after a lovely plate of trout we gathered back onto the bus for the last stretch to Chavín. Besides the town that still exists to the side, the archeological site contains the temple of the Chavín people…..cult, built about 1000 BC. Seems the Chavín religion relied heavily on hallucinations, well proved by looking at their carvings left in the surrounding granite blocks and pillars. The most famous carving being that of the Key Stone….a round head, or previously a series of round heads, with a feline look to them including 3 inch long fangs and a disturbing look, which fit into the wall containing the underground labyrinth to no where (sure sign of drug use...) and the individual galleries. The neatest (sorry for using that word) thing about the temple is the fact that some believe that half of the main structure was built using only white toned stones, while the other half a grayish tone. As a result one has a sort of ying and yang temple. It is unknown why this was done, though some theorize that besides the obvious show of balance in the world, a way to observe what was actually happening; good day, enter and leave through the white side, bad day…dark ominous side.
The Chavín seemed a lucid bunch; the last step leading up to the main temple has a snake pointing in one direction…left, as if to direct traffic so there were no unfortunate collisions….as our guide proudly pointed out, the rock even had a greenish tone to it…go, but left. Their last grand spectacle was the plinth of rose granite. Me being all hoity-toity from NL thinks to myself, rose granite…and…? Hmph say I now. Inside one of the underground galleries we got to see the 2 metre high rose plinth. Ahhhh to the pink gods, I bow to the incredible things one finds if they scurry down enough dark and old passageways.
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Phew I have to write less or this trip is going to be a book.
So that was Chavín. By 9:30 that night we finally made it back to Hauraz to die a pleasant death in a cold but comfy bed. The next day was up into the hills to our outback no electricity lodge for xmas.
Please see next blog….it will be written…any day now.
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