Chavin (Archaeological Site)

I left the sunny warmth of Trujillo on an overnight bus and awoke in the town of Huaraz to a cold overcast early morning - I had to change into warmer clothes at the bus terminal before getting a taxi driver to take me to the office of a bus company that would take me on to Chavin. Like other Latin American countries, Peru has a huge number of different bus lines, all of whom do some routes but not others. Unlike other countries, the companies do not generally share terminals so first you have to find out which one goes your way and then you have to find where they are in town (and the ticket office may not be the same as the departure point of the buses).

The town of Chavin de Huantar

Anyway, the first place the taxi took me had a bus leaving shortly and we were soon heading up into the mountains, stopping on the way out of town for a man and his four live pigs to board (the pigs, which had been tied to a lamppost with ropes, were loaded into one of the under-bus luggage compartments).

Chavin – model of how site would have originally looked (ish)

I found somewhere to stay in the small town through my usual approach of asking where the town centre is and wandering around. It wasn’t the only place I saw, but it was the only one open for business. It being only lunchtime I had time to visit the archaeological site, but found it was closed it being a Monday. So after a walk around town I huddled in my arctic bedroom,the  building a Lego model and cuddling a drinking water bottle I’d filled with mercifully scalding hot water from the shower. I slept in a lot of clothes that night, along with the same improvised hot water bottle.

Chavin

Chavin was the religious and political centre of what is now referred to as the Chavin Culture, which flourished from either 1500BC (if you believe UNESCO) or 900BC (Wikipedia) until around 300BC. The site is in an Andean river valley at over 3000m altitude. To avoid flood damage in the rainy season, the builders incorporated stone lined underground drains and re-positioned a bend in the river.

Chavin – remains of main temple structure

The main structure on the site is what remains of a monolithic rectangular stone temple, with a tiny little portico entrance at the front which was built from white stone on one side and black on the other.

Chavin – circular plaza

The rest of the site comprises various plazas, platforms and structures, some still unexcavated.

Chavin – one of the galleries built within the temple structure

Under the main temple and an adjoining structure are networks of branching galleries which once contained carved stones and other artefacts, some of which are on display in the lovely modern museum at the other end of town.

Chavin – stone head from temple walls

The museum has many of the large stone heads that once adorned the upper part of the temple walls, along with carved stone stelae from the site. There is also some rather fabulous pottery, including this one of a man with a cut throat and his head facing backwards (sorry it’s not a great shot, the lighting was quite moody).

Chavin – pot in museum

For the Lego model I dithered for quite a while before settling for a rather basic model of the central temple structure.

Lego Chavin

Bonus archeaological site: Huacas de Moche

I had a spare day in Trujillo, since my onward bus left late in the evening, so went to see this site, which is not a World Heritage Site but is just as worthy of a visit as Chan Chan, if not more so. It comprises two large adobe pyramidal structures, the Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna (‘huaca’ means temple or shrine, I’m sure you can work out ‘sol’ and ‘luna’ by yourselves).

Huaca del Sol and remains of city

These structures, along with the city they were once part of, were the capital of the Moche culture, which flourished between 100AD and 800AD, just prior to the Chimu (builders of Chan Chan, do keep up). Huaca del Sol was the larger of the two and is thought to have been the administrative centre of the city whilst the Huaca de la Luna was the religious and ceremonial one.  It is the latter that is visitable and undergoing excavation and restoration.

Huaca de la Luna at the bottom of its small mountain

A big difference from Chan Chan is the decoration – here it is brightly painted.

Huaca de la Luna – detail of wall decoration

There is one huge external wall, only discovered a few years ago, that has a glorious set of horizontal friezes, each depicting a different repeating figure or creature.

Huaca de la Luna – wall frieze

Internally, a lot of wall paintings are in excellent condition as a result of the way in which the builders regularly enlarged the structure: filling the rooms and courtyards with stacks of mud bricks and then building exactly the same thing, only slightly bigger, on top. The excavations allow you to see two or three layers simultaneously in places.

Huaca de la Luna – two successive phases of the structure

There is a very well presented museum close to the site, which shows some fine pottery amongst other artefacts and has intelligent multi-lingual interpretation. Unfortunately photography was not allowed but you can see some good pot pictures on the Wikipedia page for the Moche culture.

Huaca de la Luna – wall painting

Huaca de la Luna is built at the bottom of a small pointy mountain and where they meet was the site of human sacrifices, a fact known both from the skeletons unearthed there and the depiction of the rituals in Moche art. It would seem that the bodies of victims (all adult males) were thrown from rocks and left out to rot.

Huaca de la Luna – illustration of human sacrifice

This is a site you are only allowed to visit with a guide, but they do have English language tours which makes that less irritating. On my tour there were just the guide, me and a French couple plus a friendly site dog following us around - an example of an odd looking local breed, the Peruvian hairless dog, known to have been around in pre-Inca times.

Huaca de la Luna – Peruvian hairless dog

As this is not a UNESCO listed site, there is no Lego model – please don’t complain.

Chan Chan Archaeological Zone

The city of Trujillo, close to the sea in the hot desert coastal strip of Peru, is not vastly interesting in itself, although it does have a few old buildings and some amusingly decorated casinos. Its appeal lies in two extensive archaeological sites a few kilometres from the centre of town. Only one of these is UNESCO listed but both are equally impressive.

Chan Chan – a model of the one visitable palace

The first of the two, and the one that is a world heritage site, is Chan Chan. The capital of the Chimu Kingdom and occupied from the ninth to the fifteenth century is was “the largest earthen architecture city in pre-Columbian America”.

Chan Chan – an unrestored section

Being built of adobe it is of course very vulnerable to the elements and those parts that have not been restored look a lot like rough piles of earth. It is on UNESCO’s list of sites in danger having suffered a great deal from recent El Niño rains. To protect the walls, most have roofs erected over them, which makes it hard to picture the original appearance of the city, although the presence of interpretive models in perspex domes dotted around the site does help.

Chan Chan

The city was once twenty square kilometres in area and occupied a once fertile plain between two rivers, which the inhabitants irrigated with an extensive network of canals. The main part of the site occupies around a third of that area and contains nine separate ‘palaces’ each contained within a high wall. The restored one is the one you get to visit.

Chan Chan

Inside the walls are decorated with wonderful relief designs, including geometric patterns and animal designs. Some of these have helpful little signs in front of them saying ‘replica’ although I wasn’t clear if any of them actually were original.

Chan Chan

The palace, also referred to as a citadel, has large ceremonial courtyards, religious sanctuaries, storerooms, tombs, residential areas and lots of long maze-like corridors. At the centre is a large sunken reservoir fed by groundwater and half full of reeds.

Chan Chan – sunken reservoir

Some distance from the main site and both now engulfed by the modern city are two small vaguely pyramidal ‘temples’ called Huaca Iris and Huaca Esmeralda. Although I’d taken a local bus out, I accepted the offer of one of the taxi drivers hanging around at the entrance to ferry me to the museum up the road and then these two subsidiary attractions, both of which turned out to be different from the main site and interestingly decorated.

Chan Chan – restored frieze at Huaca Iris

There is not a great deal you can do, Lego-wise, with this site so I settled for a model of the area with the reservoir, where I had spent a happy time sitting on a shaded seat watching the water birds and munching deep-fried broad bean snacks.

Lego Chan Chan

Taken aside by the Peruvian police

I took the train and bus back to Cuzco the day after visiting Machu Picchu, spent the night there and then flew to Lima early the next morning, having decided against a 23 hour bus journey. Just as I was about to consign my backpack to the airport check-in person, I policeman came forward, showed me his badge and asked me to go with him.

He took me and my luggage to a private room where he and another man went through my bags, looking for drugs, they told me. I was frantically trying to keep my eye on both of them on opposite sides of the room to stop them either removing or adding anything. I was very glad I had abandoned my big bag of coca leaves in the hotel room that morning, although I’m not actually sure of their legal status here.

They didn’t search me or my pockets though, which seemed odd, although they did ask me to turn out the small shoulder pouch I was wearing. I had kept a very small bag of the leaves and it was in here. I just waved it around and said “tea” (since it is served as such in hotels as loose leaves) and they didn’t seem interested.

When they were finished I had to sign a book, which could have been to agree that all my stuff was there (I hadn’t had time to check) or maybe it was just their visitors book. They did carry my luggage back to the check-in desk though, where with my belief in the middle-aged respectability of my appearance severely dented, I finally checked in.

After this excitement, the rest of the day was spent taking a bus north up the coast from Lima to Trujillo, passing between barren sand dunes and the sea, for a large part of the way. I travelled with the most expensive and poshest bus company, who serve meals (including vegetarian ones – oh joy!) and along with the usual film entertainment ran a bingo game during the trip.

The latter went on for what seemed like hours – the whole bingo card had to be filled in to win, not just one row and the bus stewardess read out each number four or five times. In comparison the films were only mildly annoying, affording me yet another opportunity to wonder what on earth anyone sees in Adam Sandler.

Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu

You’ve all heard of Machu Picchu, even my cats have probably heard of it. The fabled “Lost City of the Incas” had been sitting there on my travel itinerary throbbing with a celebrity value that rivals the pyramids (the Egyptian ones that is; the Mayan ones aren’t quite in the same league although some of them deserve to be).

Machu Picchu

The site is undeniably spectacular, set on a saddle-shaped ridge between mountain peaks, high above an Andean river valley at an altitude of 2430m. Although the Incas only abandoned the site around the time of the Spanish conquest, the invaders did not know of it (and so could never deface or christianise it) and it was only ‘discovered’ by Europeans in the early 20th century.

Machu Picchu

The UNESCO website describes Machu Picchu as “probably the most amazing urban creation of the Inca Empire at its height”. Built in the fifteenth century it covers 32,500 hectares and includes large areas of land terraced to provide space for growing crops.

Machu Picchu – terraces

The site opens at 6am and I arrived around 6.45am, just as the sun was coming over the surrounding mountains. The aim of getting there early is two-fold. To see the site at dawn and to miss the press of coach parties who arrive later in the day. In the event, I spent nine hours there, leaving shortly before it closed at 4pm, the big groups having long since departed. I spent a fair bit of that time sitting (and indeed dozing) on a high grassy terrace overlooking the site, enjoying the view and the sunshine.

Machu Picchu

Many buildings on site have been restored and a few have been given new thatched roofs to give an idea of how they might have looked. Although the exact purpose of the site is not known archaeologists have identified religious, residential and work areas within it. The main buildings are in the wonderfully precise dry-stone wall constructed of very closely fitting blocks that the Incas are known for.

Machu Picchu – Inca masonry

I got fascinated by the architectural details. The window and door apertures are not rectangular, but lean in slightly towards the top (a strengthening measure for earthquakes according to Wikipedia). and the gable ends often have a protruding stones which on the buildings with restored roofs are used to tie down the wood roof frame.

Machu Picchu – building details

There are two Inca-era access routes to the site, the one taken by all the Inca trail groups and another, no longer passable. This later one includes the Inca Bridge, a gap in the narrow ledge traversing a high cliff face, that is bridged by tree trunks, rather like a drawbridge. The route to see this part of the site is not easily found and to go beyond a certain point you have to sign in with a man at a little hut. I’m not entirely sure if this is so they know at the end of the day (you have to sign back out again) if anyone has fallen off the high narrowish path or because they are restricting numbers.

Machu Picchu – the Inca bridge

This is actually a mixed world heritage site, listed not just for the Inca remains, but for its natural weath as well. On the wildlife front I didn’t see any of the rare species but I did encounter a chinchilla, sitting on a pile of stones in a little visited room in one of the many buildings.

Machu Picchu – chinchilla

When the time came to build a Lego model for Machu Picchu I was struck by builders block. First I made a frankly rubbish model of the agricultural terracing. Later I made one of the Inca bridge and finally, after another week had gone by, I built the model below:

Lego Machu Picchu

No, I’m not stuck in Machu Picchu

I must apologise for the lack of posts lately, I’ve come down with a severe attack of laziness. I’ve just returned to mainland Chile after a trip to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and am flying home to the UK tomorrow, where an infusion of British tea and good cheese should perk up my blogging speed.

Travelling to Machu Picchu

The standard adventurous traveller way to get to Machu Picchu is to do a four-day mountainous hike along the Inca Trail. You can’t move in Cuzco for people offering these accompanied treks and shops selling and renting appropriate equipment. But I know my limits and had discounted this option a long time before I got here. I was going the lazy way by public transport.

Ollantaytambo - Inca site

I was under the mistaken impression that I could catch a train from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes (the ugly tourist town that serves the ruins) but it turns out that the train only runs all the way from Cuzco in the dry season. This being the wet season, I had to catch a collectivo (a minibus that leaves when all the seats are taken) to the village of Ollantaytambo and catch the train there. There are a variety of classes of train at different prices. They all do the short 40km journey in about an hour and a half but vary in comfort and quality of catering (which is included in the price). I’d bought my tickets in Cuzco already – the mid-range price service out and the cheap one back. The main difference between these was that the slightly more expensive one had all the seats facing forwards and was made up of fewer carriages. My carriage also included three generations of a loud and self-satisfied US family, but that may not have been part of the standard package. 

view from train to Machu Picchu

The train line follows a steep-sided river valley downstream, passing some villages and a few small Inca sites. Indeed the whole area is littered with them. I could have visited one at Ollantaytambo while I was waiting for my train, but I didn’t want to spoil my appetite for the archaeological feast the next day.

 

Aguas Calientes

 

A year or two ago, the Peruvian government sensibly introduced a limit on the number of entrance tickets available per day for Machu Picchu. I’d been assured in Cuzco that at this time of year they never came anywhere near to selling out all 2500, but I still felt nervous until I’d scampered round to the ticket office in Aguas Calientes and bought my ticket for next day. I also bought my bus ticket for the ride up to the site, but that was mostly to avoid queuing in the morning.