Friends and Family;
I have left the cloudy, cool and wet mountains for a rapid change of scenery at the desert oasis of Ica. More on that later.
About an hour drive outside of the city of Ayacucho are some ancient Wari ruins that are often neglected as a result of Ayacucho’s sketchy reputation among foreign travellers. Naturally, taking some friendly advice from my good friend Lonely Planet, I went and visited the site with one of the Swiss girls before their bus ride out that night. The ruins themselves were not much; a large collection of ancient walls that spanned several hundred meters, and at one point housing just under 55,000 people. There were some excavated portions, in which one could clearly see the remnants of living quarters of smooth, gray, Andean stone. They were cool enough, but had a significant lack of information and expanation, even in Spanish. The best thing about the sight was by far the view. From where we were, we were high enough that we could see the surrounding mountains very clearly, and the wheat and corn crops at their feet made for some very good photos. (I would upload more photos if the internet cafes could support it. I’m sorry all.)
While we were there, it seemed way to late to continue along the route for the small village a stone’s throw from the Wari ruins, so we made our way back. I came back to Ayacucho with the Swiss bunch to see them off at the bus station on their very unfortunately long bus ride all the way to Cuzco, then came back to the hostel for an early night.
The next day I made my way out in the same direction as the Wari ruins, this time bypassing them completely for the further, and more impressive small village of Quinoa.
Quinoa is a primarily tourist-economy based village at the base of a mountain far enough away from the “scary” city of Ayacucho that small busloads of foreign tourists and swaths of other Peruvians swarm to the city to get a look at the town’s unique artesan crafts. The signature of the town are pottery churches of all different shapes and sizes, with small figures comically poking out of all of the churches windows and doors. The churches have a comical feel to them, as they start small and get bigger and bigger the closer to the spires you get. Some of the churches were just under 5 feet tall. A local tradition seemed to be to buy a church, and then mortar it to the top of your terracotta roof. Most of the houses along the walk through town had little churches sticking up on the top.
The walk through town leads you to the base of a large staircase cut into the side of the red-stoned mountain that leads you up to the Obelisk of Quinoa; a monument comemmorating one of the primary battlegrounds of Peruvian independance. Further beyond the obelisk, you could rent a horse from one of the local cowboys yelling “gringo! gringo!” at you. I ignored them and continued up the mountain on foot, climbing until I came to about as far as I was willing to go with only one bottle of water, which was pretty high. From the vantage point, I could see the city of Ayacucho (and three very interesting Peruvians whose whole purpose in climbing the mountain was picking mushrooms, and who kept reiterating to me that his niece went to the University of Toronto, no matter how many times I acknowledged that I had indeed heard him the first time).
From here I made my way back to the city of Ayacucho, in time to catch my overnight bus to Ica. I arrived on time at 5 in the morning, which I was not expecting as my experience with the Peruvian bus system had always been to add 2 hours to any travel time. The bus company seemed to believe that a cabin full of sleeping people meant the perfect audience for a movie. When the movie finally stopped, a baby started crying, and didn’t stop until it was 2 in the morning. (ugh)
I’ve so far spent the day exploring the wonders of Ica, stopping by a couple informative museums and churches, before I end up at the more tourist-y oasis-within-an-oasis of Huacachina. Hopefully to a more fruitful sleep than last night.
Global Thoroughfare 