Well what have I been upto and thinking about? We took a little trip up into the Andes, to a mid sized town called Cajamarka. The trip was unexpected but welcome. Cajamarka is notable as the place where Pizzaro and his 160 fellow conquisidors captured the Inca (the inca emperor) and slaughtered about 7000 to 8000 inca warroirs and others who were unlucky enough to be in that place at that time. Those numbers themselves are quite alarmingly disparate but consider that the Inca had an army of (I guess these are rough estimates) 40 to 80 thousand battle hardened troops stationed around Cajamarka. As a show of confidence he only took 7000 with him to meet Pizzaro, he also decided coming unarmed was a good idea. Sometimes one doesn't get a second chance. Whatever you may think of Pizzaro and his ruthless gold grabbing ways what he pulled off that day was quite extraordinary to say the least. He and his men knew what they were up against and it is recorded that none of them managed to sleep during the night before the big day. Well the rest is history and the mightly Inca empire, the largest in all south america was no more. For the record pre Columbian Peru does not equal the incas, in fact the inca empire was only around for under 100 years. Peru was inhabited by an number of diverse cultures who waned and waxed and generally lasted for more than 100 years. Here in the northern coastal desert of Peru, the major civilisations where the Moche, Sican and Chimu, in that order. These cultures were in the main not at all obliterated by the Incas but they did not survive the Spaniards and all that came after. Well, perhaps, I have only been in Peru a short time and I have not been up in the Andes very much. I expect alot of what happens in the remote parts of Peru is the more or less similar to what has always happened in the remote parts of Peru. Maybe. Of the Peruvians I have met so far, a significant number have talked of the sense of Peruvian national identity or the lack thereof. They mention a lack of unifiying national identity and also a lack of education about their past resulting in most people who don't identify with the spanish identifying with the incas, even though another culture was much more dominant in their area. But I don't really know much about that and anyway it is always a tricky, convoluted issue for any country. I am reading the 'Motorcycle diaries', or rather I was reading it while up in the Andes but I have since finished. Well Kelly read the end to me as I lay in a hot beer and fever induced sweat, but that is another story. It is an interesting book (Che Gueveras memoirs of his south american travelling during his days as a young Argentenian medical student). Two things made me a little apprehensive of meeting the campesinos of Peru, the rural dwellers. One was the way Che described them. I quote 'The somewhat animal-like concept the indigenous people have of modesty and hygiene means that irrespective of gender or age they do their business by the roadside, the women cleaning themselves with their skirts, the men not bothering at all.'
This and the fact that the most shocking scene I had experienced, the life atop the land fill site, was inhabited by people who had come there by choice from the Andes.
So I was apprehensive, fearing of being too far outside my comfort zone. Of course I know it is good to get outside your comfort zone and I want to experience as much as possible the differing realities that people of this world call life. That is the main thing I think I will take away from my travels.
Anyway my fears were as yet unfounded, Cajamarka is quite an afluent town being as it is next to a large and productive (and polluting) gold mine. We did see Camposinos living in a very rudamentry manner but not too shocking. In the town itself there was however a sharp contrast between the Peruvians who wore western/modern clothes and those who wore traditional clothes. There seemed to be nothing inbetween. It made me wonder, is it mearly a matter of wealth, do those two types mix socially. Do people wear jeans and a tshirt one day and then traditional, colourful textiles and a wide brimmed hat the next?
We spent a pleasant few days seeing our first inca sites, enjoying the cool climate and even bathing in the banos del Incas. The very same hot spring baths that the Inca emperor bathed in before going to meet Pizzaro and his fate.
We got to go on a little field trip with a bunch of Peruvian birdwatchers and pratice taking on and off our emergency rain ponchos a lot. We bought these one dollar emergency ponchos in Target before we left the States and at the first sprinkle of rain we wipped them out. Well wipped implies a degree of speed, of course by the time we had the ponchos out the rain had stopped. But as it was the tail end of the rainy season in the Andes it showered on and off all day and we got pretty proficient at wipping out and wipping on the ponchos. They were definately a good buy.
Well, that is all for now, I gotta go study maths now. Yeah I know. Why? I don't know. All I know is the exam is probably going to kick my ass, so I better go nerd out.

Bye

ps. We also got to sit and drink good wine while listening to a father and son band play guitar and sing cuban songs under a big poster of Che illuminated by the warm glow of parafin lamps. Awesome.

pps. there should be a few more pics up on my photo site.

Well, I have chosen a photo sharing site and here it is: http://point-zeroth.dotphoto.com

However don´t get too excited, after two days I have only uploaded the meagre selection of photos you will find there. Hopefully I will find a better internet joint or at least be more picky about which photos go up.

Cherio!

I apoligise for being a lame blogger. I am not sure why I havn´t had time to post. I would like to think it is because I am doing so much study (for the distane course I am doing) but no not really, despite trying to make myself study all day long I get disapointingly little done. Something always comes up! Recently we did get to spend 3 days up in the Andes which was very nice indeed. I promise I will find time to write. I am working on getting pics too, but upload speeds are woefully slow here, it takes about an hour to get 4 or 5 pics uploaded. Meh.
I hope you are all well!

Craig

The cathedral at the plaza de armas in Trujillo.
Two TINY little kids dancing the Marinera, the traditional peruvian dance, they were sorta cute.

Hi just a quick little post. Still having a great time here. We are being taken on lots of bird watching trip and musuem visits by the canatura volunteers, pretty much every other day! The bird watching is amazing here, really, in just 2 hours and a gentle stroll we easily see 10 to 20 different bird species! I have been snapping away like a man possessed but a 12x zoom is paltry for nature photography. The countryside here is just splendid. After having been in a dirty, dusty, noisy, smelly urban environment for so long it was, to say the least, uplifting to be in pristine, beautiful nature. I know for sure I want to work in the field of environmental protection/ conservation now. Definately gave me a boost. I will write more soon I promise and I am looking for a good photo sharing site as I have too many pics I want to share. We are also getting into the swing of things with our english lessons, Kelly is great to teach with. She is both better at planning lessons and adlibbing (is that how you spell that?) during the lesson. I am just there is confuse matters with my wacky British english.

Cherio

A moche pyramid

A complex Moche site, basically a royal city.

Kelly with Verdy

Just a quick update. We are settling into Chiclayo, we havn´t seen another gringo since we got here on Monday! It is a nice city though, although we have witnessed our first crime. Sesar (sp?) one of the Canatura volunteers came to pick us up and take us to the house where we would be giving our first English lesson and someone just ripped off his bum-bag (fanny-pack) and took off with it. It happened so fast we didn´t have time to react! Anyway since then I and Kelly have been taking extra special care with our bags. We had been careful before but this was a wake up call as up to now the overwhelming impression I had was that Peruvians were very curtious and honest. It is a shame, I don´t want to be eyeing up everyone on the street with distrustful eyes, but better safe than sorry. The group of volunteers we are teaching english are young peruvians who voluntarily take school children out of field trips to teach them about the amazing natural wealth of Peru and the importance of preserving it. They also do some environmental awareness festivals. Peru apparently has the 2nd largest number of endemic birds in the world, partly due to its varied environment, going from low coastal desert, to high jungle in the andes to the amazon rain forest on the other side. It seems there is very little official efforts to protect what they have. The hunting of birds of prey for sale in rich western markets is one problem close to sesars heart. He specialises in raptors including the massive harpy eagle which they have here in Peru. Our host, Edivali (who is the local canatura chapter leader) has been kind enough to take us on a few sight seeing trips, one to the museum of ´the lord of sipan´ which contained many wonderful gold and shell bits and bobs from the tomb of a Moche king which was found nearby. The story of the discovery of the tomb is like an Indiana Jones story with arceologists and police battling robbers culminating in the death of the robber leader. Anyway most of the priceless artefacts were saved and a good thing too. The Moche culture rules over the northern coastal desert of Peru and were a major pre Inca civilisation here. Their metal working skills were amazing and the gold jewelery of the king was stunning. Their pottery was also very good, often it depected animals in a very life like manner, I was impressed. They biuld huge truncated pyramids out of adobe bricks which when they weathered looked just like large hills and so escaped detection until recently. The musuem was well laid out and the guide entusiastic and informative but photos where not allowed so you will have to take my word for how great it was. It is also always interesting to hear about the human sacrifices and blood drinking that their religious and cultural activities revolved around. OK time is almost up.

Cherio!

Well, what an interesting time it is for me. For more than one reason actually. Most of you know the one HUGE reason why I am in something of a state of bliss. I keep remembering it, that I actually did it and its real and I get tummy tingles all over again. I expect that to last for some time to come. Another unrelated piece of good news took me by surprise and now puts me in a quandry. It is not related to the afore mentions happy happening and it is a nice quandry to be in. What I do want to do is introduce you to OUR newest charge, a very young green iguana names Verdy. How he came into our charge I will write about soon as I am almost out of time in the internet cafe but please enjoy this picture of Verdy in his Verdant Verde Voluptumouness. We hope to find a suitable jungaly home for him and set him free.

Please take care, shake what your momma gave you and accept my heartfelt thanks for all your congratulatory exclamations.

And btw I can´t get the spell checker to work.

Adios!

Looks like I have more time. Well I and mi novia were walking along the shore front marveling (and wondering whether we should be conserned) at the small tsunami which was hitting our chilled fishing hamlet (slash tourist resort) and also wondering what on earth was happening to the sun. Well anyway now that the scene is set a little girl covered in bright green lizards on pieces of string confronts me. Turns out she wants to sell them. I decide I would earn some sneeky Karma by buying one and setting it free (in hindsite, no, but it seemed good at the time). So we took the lizard which turned out to be a recently hatched green iguana home. We thought we might let it loose (not knowing it was a green iguana capable of growing to 4 or 5 foot long and living 35 years) it the little garden at the house in which we were staying. We planned on doing a little research before we did this but the old lady tormented poor Ferdinand (as he was then called) so much he shed his tail showering her in little droplets of blood. That was more than I could handle and I cut him free so he could escape. It was then we discovered his true potential, he could not live in the tiny garden! But when we came to look for him again he was no where to be found! How sad! Luckily Kelly, amazing as always, found him the morning we were due to leave to Chiclayo. Phew! Anyway he is getting along fine and seems to like us handling him. He also likes green beans and sitting on Kelly´s head but we will try and vary his diet. Tomorrow we hope to get a small tank for him to live in (temporarily) as he is growing to very much dislike his current shoe box of a home. It does have air vents and a plastic sheet for a rude window. Sorry Verdy but it is for your own good. Not too far away there is a nice tropìcal foresty natural reserve, we will deliver him to the freedom he deserves!

That´s all

Just a quick update, seems like plans have firmed up and we will be starting our first volunteer project this Monday! Pretty excited about that. We will be teaching english to Peruvian eco tourist guides. More soon.