As most everyone knows by now, I was down in Peru for a few weeks in May/June doing fieldwork. I have posted lots of photos on facebook, so I thought that I would take a slightly different tack here. This is some of the other stuff that went on down yonder.
So first, we arrived at the airport in Lima, and drove to Miraflores where our hostel was. Driving in Lima is not for the faint of heart. This (if there had been lines at all) would have been a 4 lane highway...we were at least 7 cars wide. People just turn where ever and whenever they want.
Once in Miraflores (a quarter of Lima), life is quite nice. There are lots of restaurants, and touristy things. It is not really my kind of place, but it is not terrible. The beach in Lima is really quite nasty. The water is the wrong color, and there is usually a lot of trash floating in it. The surf on the other hand seems to be phenomenal.
One of the major crops down near Pisco (where we spent most of our time) is cotton. I have been told by the locals that Peruvian cotton has special properties of softness and durability which other, inferior, cottons lack. All of the work is done by hand. We would see hundreds of people slowly walking-stooping through the fields, slowly filling their big bags.
Pisco itself is a pretty run down place. It does have a far better excuse than most places though. In 2007, the town was nearly completely destroyed by an earthquake. I can not tell you whether the streets use to be paved or not, but they certainly are not now (there were 3 main roads that were paved).
Life for the average Peruvian seems to be pretty hard work. When we started working, people were already out in the fields or offices, and when we got back, they were getting back too (you tend to put in longer days during field work then normally...lots to do and not much time). Here are a couple examples.
This girl was simply coming home from school. This involved taking a taxi-bus for about half an hour, then crossing the river twice (it had two channels at this point), then walking up the far back (which consisted of a 20 m gravel bluff) and up to her village. I somehow think that we might put more effort into learning if we all had to cross raging rivers to get to school.
Here are some shepherds. They are bringing the goats back home after grazing them for the day. There are, however, lots of little goats which are too small to make it across the river. So, they formed a human conveyor system. The first woman would bring them halfway across the river, and the second would then grab them and take them the rest of the way (I only saw men herding twice). This is certainly an excellent criterion for choosing a wife. Anyone who can carry a goat under each arm while crossing a fast river (barefoot none-the-less) must be a worthy spouse.
Now onto food. Food in Peru is among the best in the world. I ate constantly while I was there. Everything that was put in front of me was astonishingly good, even the Guinea Pigs. In these examples, I am eating a very tasty fish, and some cow stomach (Cau Cau).
Now for a (most likely) not so apt transition from food to brain surgery. I am not sure if everyone knows, but the Inca (who ruled much of the central Andes up to the 16th century (when the Spanish landed)) were excellent surgeons. There are uncountable ways to obtain a brain trauma in the mountain valleys in Peru. We personally saw rockfalls land in front of our truck, and had pebbles come crashing down on us while sampling (but that is why we wear helmets!). The Inca, alas, had no helmets. So what do you do when your best mate gets a boulder to the nooodle? Well, obviously, you pull out your machete and slice off a bit of their skull. Oh, and it helps if you also deformed the head while they were young. In case anyone is worried about the brutality of this, it does have pretty sound medical grounds (releasing the pressure of a swelling brain), and the success rate was apparently not too bad. This poor chap also had a hole on the other side of his head....it was grown over with new bone.
This is probably a bit of an letdown after the last section, but much of the country still relies on adobe blocks for building. Here, some people had simply cut the local mud-flow deposits into bricks and let them dry in the sun. Pretty handy. It does however make Archaoelogy a bit of a pain in the butt, since you can not tell the difference between a new abandoned building, and an old abandoned building.
And while we are on architecture, here is a quick photo for Chris. A John Deere on the Pan American Highway...
And while we are on the subject of work. Here is a gratuitous SCJ photo for Dave. "El Ziploc".
Ok, before we end, I wanted to ask if anyone could tell me why the Peruvians would always choose such bizarre art for their hotels. What does a couple frightened Victorian girls, a small sneaky dog, and a confused St. Bernhard have to do with the Andes? I am at a loss.
So, we are finally at an end. I will just leave you with a couple photos from actual work, so you can see some of what I do. Here is some lovely rock that has at some time in the past been smoothed by a river. I am now about 30 m above the river. So we are hoping to find out how old these rock surfaces are so that we know how fast the river has cut into the mountains.
Sampling was a bit hairy, but what is the point of being a geologist if you do not get to hang out on steep rock faces on occasion?
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