Random Rambles

I heard someone describe Arequipa as ‘the prettiest city in Peru’. That isn’t exactly how we’d describe it. Like most cities in Peru (in Latin America, for that matter), there is a picturesque colonial centre surrounded by ugly rings of auto parts shops, junkyards, clogged roads and slums.

Still, it’s the second largest city in the country, so we stop in for a few days.

Many of the building are built of distinctive whitish stone called sillar.

Our hotel has a tortoise in the garden named Lolo. He is surprisingly entertaining.

In the background here is the El Misti volcano. The linked article gives way more information than any normal person would want to know, but what we find interesting are the Inca mummies they have found on the top. Human sacrifices, experts reckon, of children to the mountain. The Gods everywhere and in all times demand blood.

Of literary interest is the birthplace of Mario Vargas Llosa, a Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian novelist. The museum contains very well-done multimedia presentations of different epochs of the writer’s career. (All in Spanish.)

I remember in about, oh, 1980 I was in New Zealand and met a well-read South American. I asked if he could recommend a few Latin American authors. He provided the names Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), Jorge Amado (Brazil), and Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru).

We do a day trip to the Colca Canyon. There are some really high mountains along the way.

This area is popular with climbers and hikers. This time, we opt for the one-day bus tour.

A brief stop in the village of Maca.

There are the usual ladies trying to thrust their baby alpacas into your arms. They don’t seem to have a problem if you simply take a photo of them holding the alpaca.

We stop in a place called the Mirador del Condor, where you might catch a glimpse of a condor, if you’re lucky.

It’s a long day trip that begins in the middle of the night. We are happy to be heading back to town.

Next stop is Nazca. Our go-to bus line in Peru is Cruz del Sur. They are super-safe and comfortable.

It takes about ten hours to get to Nazca, on the Pan-American Highway. There’s a lot of magnificent scenery along the way.

Much of the trip features the Pacific Ocean on one side and sheer, rocky outcrops on the other.

The photos are blurry because they were taken through a bus window. Sorry.

It’s a great shame that this marvelous scenery is marred by truly staggering amounts of garbage on the side of the road.

Late that evening, we arrive in Nazca. Nazca is the home of the famous Nazca Lines.

The only way to appreciate these is to fly over them in a small plane.

One of the more, um, original people on our flight is Peter, from the Czech Republic. He doesn’t speak a word of Spanish or English, but we manage to communicate using a combination of mime skills and Google Translate.

And so we take off. At least half of the clients suffer from air sickness.

Everybody manages to suffer without any actual vomiting, so that’s OK. The problem is, the aircraft has to do a lot of maneuvering so that both sides get to see the lines. (Or ‘geoglyphs‘, as they are known in Institutes of Higher Larnin’.)

I’ve been fascinated by these even from the ridiculous Erich von Däniken days.

They are unique and quite incredible. Who came up with the idea of making these creations, and why?

The truth is, nobody knows, although I’m sure many academic careers have been founded on theories and speculation.

To quote Wikipedia: ‘Determining how they were made has been easier than determining why they were made.’

There are over 700: we manage to see 23. No wonder for some people, studying these is their life’s work.

Pretty amazing stuff. We hope they can survive the – seemingly impossible-to-stop – onslaught of overpopulation that is beginning to encroach on the area of the lines

An overnight bus takes us to Lima.

Our accommodation is in the Miraflores neighbourhood of Lima. Both visitors and inhabitants flock to Miraflores rather than risk their lives in the increasingly run down, dangerous and impoverished historical centro.

There is civilized life in abundance here. In a park, people from all walks of life pair up and dance, just for fun.

Now this is the very height of civilization: Miraflores has a parque de gatos.

Scores of kitties are well looked after by volunteers.

We have our own resident cat in the hotel.

One day, we visit the Museo de Oro. Less famous than its namesake in Bogotá, it still has nifty stuff.

Besides its admirable collection of pre-Columbian artifacts, it also has thousands of weapons, armour, and military uniforms, unfortunately in a state of neglect and decay. That’s what happens when you bequeath your collection to the Peruvian government. (In comparison, see the magnificent Larco Museum below. We’re certain that the dead hand of government has no part in its excellence.)

Another day, we venture into the centro.

It’s safer in the daytime, with lots of people around.

There is some kind of fiesta going on, with groups representing, we guess, different barrios in town on parade.

We come across a Casa de la Literatura Peruana in a transformed train station. Very impressive. We should have one of these in Canada.

Another museum we visit is the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI for short). It is surprising well-curated, popular, and well-run, unlike the dysfunctional snake pit that is the National Gallery of Canada.

Sight or Insight of the Day

In Lima, we visit the incomparable Larco Museum. This museum is, at the very least, on par with the one in Santiago. Descriptions are given in half a dozen languages. The English is perfect. It’s obvious that there are powers beyond the Government of Peru at work here.

By far the largest number of exhibits are pre-Inca. Maybe it’s something in the water, but Peru had many cultures that had cities, surplus produce, and highly skilled specialists centuries – even millennia – before the Incas. Especially in ceramics and textiles, we’re talking about ancient Egyptian levels of perfection here.

For instance, the wrinkly guy portrayed here even has a nose that’s slightly askew for verisimilitude.

These ceramics are thought to be authentic portraits of the subjects.

Most of the items were found intact in graves. Fortunate that the Spanish never found them, otherwise it’s probable they would not have survived.

Other material goods are just as impressive. In comparison, the products of the indigenous people in North America often resemble the output of a pre-school art project. Maybe it’s the rarified atmosphere up here.

The Cusco area is home to one of the great wonders of the world: the fabled citadel of Machu Picchu.

Yeah, no – we didn’t go there.

In this day and age, you have to plan your visit to Machu Picchu weeks – if not months – in advance, such is its popularity. The only way to make an impromptu visit (we are told) is to wake up in the middle of the night, take a bus to a train to a bus and try to finely coordinate this with a pre-purchased visit timeslot. We don’t make plans that far in advance because our rambles are – Ta-dah! – random rambles.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter much for a couple of reasons. There is now a Machu Picchu Museum in Cusco itself. When Hiram Bingham first brought the world’s attention to Machu Picchu in 1911, he hauled a lot of artifacts back to Yale University. A century later, they have been returned to Peru.

Secondly, we have both been to Machu Picchu before, 40 years ago. (Separately, but who knows, we might have crossed paths at that time.) If a visit here is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, we’ve had ours.

There is plenty to see in Cusco itself.

Our hotel is in a colonial-era building. It supports a charity that benefits street children in Cusco.

There are lots of cobblestone lanes to wander around in.

We marvel at the ingenious Inca stonework that we see throughout the centro. You can’t slip a piece of paper between the joints.

Being such a tourist town, this means someone is always shoving a restaurant menu or a tour brochure in your face. And they don’t stop after you politely say ‘No, thanks.’

It’s a small price to pay for access to people-watching opportunities in town.

The Convent of Santo Domingo is built on the ruins of the Inca treasury temple of Coriconcha.

The Incas didn’t get to enjoy their empire for very long. From its founding to the Spanish conquest (1438 to 1533), they had less than a century of lording it over subject peoples before becoming subjects of conquerors even more empire-hungry than themselves.

The weather is coolish. For a change, we wear the heavier items in our limited wardrobe.

A common sight is the Inca Kola delivery truck.

Almost every street corner has women offering to let you have your photo taken with their pompom-bedecked alpacas. It’s hard to resist.

Cusco Cathedral is the most prominent edifice on the main square. It’s built atop the ruins of an Inca temple, like most churches in Cusco.

The Convent of Santa Catalina is now a museum of the monastic life. A few nuns still live here.

Not surprisingly, we see a lot of religious stuff in heavily-catholic Peru. This symbol appears above many doors. According to some, ‘IHS’ stands for ‘Iesus Hominum Salvator’, that is, ‘Jesus, saviour of mankind’ in Latin. According to others, the name Jesus, spelt ΙΗΣΟΥΣ in Greek capitals, has the abbreviations IHS (also written JHS, IHC, or ΙΗΣ).

Por qué no los dos?

Some kind of hubbub agitates a crowd of indigenous women in town.

A coffee break turns into indulgence in a fancy dessert, complete with edible flowers.

One day, we join a full-day tour of the Sacred Valley. It looks a bit like Austria from afar.

An instant improvement is to include ourselves in the photo.

The first stop is Pisac.

Pisac, like many Inca towns, is built on top of a mountain, surrounded by intensely-cultivated terraces.

You still see traces of these terraces all over the Andean region (that is, the former Inca empire.) Most of them are no longer used.

There was an extensive cemetery here that was looted by the Spanish. No great surprise there.

After lunch, we visit Ollantaytambo. It’s another steep climb. Our guide incentivizes us by telling us part of a story, then promising to reveal the result at the next level. It works.

When I was here last, we joined the Inca Trail here. I vaguely remember hiking up these steps with a full backpack.

These enormous slabs are said to be a ‘temple of the sun’. Our guide tells us that this is in doubt. That’s the problem with pre-literate cultures: without a written language to record things, all history is legend, old wive’s tales, and ‘oral tradition’ usually involving talking animals – nothing is concrete.

We read somewhere that each of these slabs weighs 50 tons.

Next stop is Chinchero, which like many places in Peru still has an active textile-weaving culture.

I’m personally fascinated by the Tom Mix hats that so many local ladies wear.

We get a demo on the production of textiles in the area. For more information on what looks like a dollhouse in the background, see the ‘Sight or Insight of the Day’.

There are also Inca ruins in Chinchero. As usual, a church has been built on top of the demolished Inca structure.

This method of stone construction proved to be good protection against earthquakes, which this part of the world has a lot of.

Sight or Insight of the Day

A lot of people don’t know this*, but in Peru, Guinea pigs are food, not pets.

*I’m borrowing this phrase favoured by Donald Trump. He uses it whenever he learns something new that he assumes nobody else knows either, even if it’s commonly known or obvious. There are many, many things that Donald Trump doesn’t know. Because he’s an idiot. Or should I say ‘A lot of people don’t know this, but Donald Trump is an idiot’?

This is true throughout the Andean region. Guinea pig, or cuy, is served up piping hot in cuyerias everywhere. We can’t help but see them as cuddly pets. Such is the strength of food prejudices the world over.

At one time, when much younger, if someone dared me to sample this, I would say ‘Here, hold my beer’. Being much older and a little wiser, that’s now a hard ‘nope’.

Lake Titicaca is the ‘highest navigable lake in the world’, according to some. (Have we mentioned our wry distrust of superlatives?) It’s shared between Bolivia and Peru.

We take a bus from La Paz to the Bolivian lakeside port of Copacabana.

At San Pedro de Tiquina, we disembark while our bus is ferried across a channel on the way to Copacabana.

We eventually arrive in Copacabana. What is the connection between this Copacabana and the more glamorous beach in Rio de Janeiro?

I’m glad you asked. After a bit of research, it turns out that this is the original Copacabana, involving statues of the Virgin rather than beachgoers in skimpy clothing. Huh. You learn something every day.

This is the Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana, where the good lady resides.

Stalls outside the church sell items asking Our Lady for relief from many ailments.

We take a two-hour boat ride to the Isla del Sol.

At the landing point on the island are some Inca ruins.

As soon as you step off the boat, you’re faced with a daunting climb up a seemingly never-ending set of steps. It’s been like this since we entered the Andean zone: puffing away like geriatrics, shuffling slowly uphill while trying to breathe the thinnest of air. (Isla del Sol sits at 3976 metres above sea level.)

Once you’re on top, you get good views of the lake.

This is Teodora, the host of our homestay.

I try to make friends with the local animals.

We walk to the Temple of the Sun, also known as Pilkokaina.

As usual, the learned guesses about the history and usage of this place are just that; guesses.

We see the boat we came in on heading back towards Copacabana.

When we return to town, we board a bus for Puno, in Peru.

Puno is a small city with a pleasant colonial plaza and surrounding streets.

Everyone in town is preparing for the Candelaria, which is apparently big thing in Puno.

Our plan is to visit the island of Taquile. Maria came here with her sister Lucia 40 years ago, when they were young and adventurous. (They still are, in many ways.) It was pretty rugged then, and is still relatively unvisited.

On the way, we stop off at the Uros Islands. These don’t strike us as some kind of cultural achievement.

We just find the floating island life to be poor and squalid. It doesn’t look like a good life, even from their viewpoint. We can’t wait to leave.

The most interesting thing: a floating general store arrives, and the locals line up to make their purchases.

After climbing yet another Hellishly steep set of steps, we are met by our homestay hostess, Dinah, who spins wool while walking and talking to us. Taquilenos are famous for their skill in textiles, and have some kind of UNESCO cultural certification to prove it.

We succumb to the magnetic pull of the local craft market.

People here speak Quechuan – the language of the Incas – and Spanish.

There are no cars on the island. Picturesque adobe houses line the pedestrian alleys.

The main square is the red-hot centre of the village.

There are Inca ruins at the highest point of the island. Of course, we have to go. So we plod ever higher until the trail runs out, wheezing and panting.

As usual, we’re rewarded with a spectacular view.

Plus, we get to take a long break.

On our final day, we find the beach. It looks like a fine beach, and Maria is eager to take a dip in Lake Titicaca, but we have to make it back to the other side of the island for the boat back to Puno.

The departing boats leave from a different location than the arriving boats.

Finally, the route to the departure dock is all downhill.

To ensure we don’t get lost, we are accompanied by our ten-year-old guide, Elisabet (Dinah’s daughter).

Sight or Insight of the Day

While departing from and arriving to the docks at Puno, we notice a large ship berthed nearby.

This is, like, an ocean-going vessel. We wonder how it got here, since there are no ship-building establishments on the lake. We can make out her name, ‘Ollanta’.

It turns out she was made in England – Hull, to be exact – in 1931. According to Wikipedia:

 “…they assembled her in their shipyard with bolts and nuts, marked each part with a number, and then disassembled her into many hundreds of pieces and sent her to Peru in kit form.” 

The pieces were brought to the lake by rail and re-assembled. She appears to be in pretty good shape for a ship that’s nearly a century old.

What do you think of when you think of Bolivia? Is it the final scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Paul Newman and Robert Redford make their cinematic last stand near San Vincente, in the south of the country?

Or maybe Bolivia’s best-known agricultural product, the coca leaf and its derivatives? There’s even a coca museum in La Paz.

Coca is found in many everyday products here.

Of course, coca is important to other consumer products.

According to Wikipedia:

“When launched, Coca-Cola’s two key ingredients were cocaine and caffeine. The cocaine was derived from the coca leaf and the caffeine from kola nut (also spelled “cola nut” at the time), leading to the name Coca-Cola.

In 1903, the fresh coca leaves were removed from the formula. After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using “spent” leaves – the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with trace levels of cocaine. Since then (by 1929), Coca-Cola has used a cocaine-free coca leaf extract.“

Personally, when I think of Bolivia, I think of the pre-Inca civilization of Tiahuanaco, as exemplified in the iconic Puerta del Sol. Even though I’ve been to Bolivia long ago, I haven’t been to either Tiahuanaco or Lake Titicaca.

Before our day-trip to Tiahuanaco, we visit the National Archeological Museum in La Paz

La Paz is a big change from Chile. It’s definitely more third-worldy. It’s cold. And high (3650 metres above sea level.) And it rains a lot.

This is a statue of Christopher Columbus. It has to be fenced off to prevent destruction by irate mobs.

Poor Christopher. Like poor old Sir John A. Macdonald at home, in my lifetime he has been transformed from hero to villain. Manufactured outrage compels folks to prove their 21st century moral superiority over people who have been dead and gone for a long, long time by smashing public property. Statue-toppling seems like a pretty low-IQ endeavor in my book, but that’s just me.

In case you haven’t guessed, this is a personal bugbear of mine. It annoys me that statue-topplers always claim to be acting in the spirit of ‘social justice’, but it’s a sad fact that dumb people just like to break stuff.

While in La Paz, we visit a few markets.

The Mercado de las Brujas has all kinds of witchy ingredients.

There seems to be a market on every second street. This means things can get a little congested.

I remember these Blade Runner-ish conditions from my last visit. The population has probably doubled since then.

Indigenous women in Bolivia seem to be strangely, um, rotund.

We think that some kind of hoop device is worn under the skirt.

The demonym for someone from La Paz is ‘Paceño’. (We learn this after buying a local beer of that name.)

People sell handicrafts on every street corner.

The day arrives for our tour to Tiahuanaco. This was one of the remarkable pre-Incan (let alone pre-Columbian) civilizations that sprouted up on the continent.

This gate was used by Evo Morales at his inauguration. Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, Morales led the country from 2006 to 2019 and was extremely popular until he tried to bypass the constitution and seek – surprise! – a fourth term.

As usual for politicians everywhere, the rot sets in after a certain amount of time in office. Now he’s famous for impregnating underage girls and building himself a luxurious presidential palace atop a skyscraper in La Paz.

Back to Tiahuanaco: in the small onsite museum, we see a statue of the Decapitator Deity.

We were amused to learn about this Tiahuanacan deity in the Archeological Museum in La Paz. He is usually shown carrying around the severed heads of his victims.

The name reminds us of either a WWE wrestler or the next Schwarzenegger movie.

Some parts of Tiahuanaco have been restored, with mixed results.

It’s a cold, rainy day when we visit, but we make the best of it.

When we finally get to the Puerta del Sol, it’s a bit disappointing to see how small it is. I thought it was Arc de Triomph-sized (see photo of the Puerta above). It doesn’t help when we are pummeled by a punishing hailstorm in the few minutes we have in which to view it.

Lake Titicaca is nearby. In olden days, it came up to the city itself.

Sight or Insight of the Day

One major improvement in La Paz since I was last here: the wonderful teleférico network that crisscrosses the city.

Produced by a hybrid Austrian-Swiss company (not surprising, since those two countries seem to have a duopoly on the global market for ski lifts and cable cars), it’s the ideal way to avoid the chaos of terrestrial travel in La Paz.

It goes almost everywhere. It is safe, clean, comfortable, efficient, and quiet.

La Paz is in a sort of crater – a valley, really – so it’s a city of steep hills. You get a great view of the surrounding mountains from the rim.

You also get a bird’s-eye view of the street life below.

The system is quite new – it opened in 2014. It’s probably the most modern thing in Bolivia.

Ok, that’s a really slick piece of marketing. Robinson Crusoe, as most people know, is not a real person. He’s a fictional character made up by Daniel Defoe. That character was based on a composite of tales of survival popular at the time, one of which was that of Alexander Selkirk, who was indeed marooned on this island from 1704 to 1709.

The island is 757 KMs distant from Santiago. There are no scheduled flights. You have to leave from the private aircraft terminal with its hangarful of Learjets and Citations.

The departure area is suitably luxurious.

Our craft, however, is not a jet. It’s a 70’s-era Piper Cheyenne.

After a couple of hours, the island is sighted among all that empty blueness.

We are met at the airstrip for the transport to town.

This trip to the island is by special request – a gift for Maria’s upcoming birthday.

Then it’s a 40-minute ride in an open boat to the town of San Juan Bautista.

Along the way, we pass a rock formation known as ‘the gorilla’ to those with an active imagination.

We catch our first sight of San Juan Bautista, population 800.

We stay for a week at this hotel, La Robinson Oceanic, overlooking the water.

This is Rita, our very friendly host, with Chulita, one of two dogs on the property.

She gets a lot of attention while we’re here. (The dog, that is.)

Most people come here to fish or dive. We’re here to relax and do a bit of hiking. Parts of the trail are covered in gigantic Pangue plants.

There is a very rare red hummingbird, only found here. We’re lucky enough to see half a dozen of them flying from branch to branch nearby.

(It took many, many photos to catch this one sitting still.)

For the locals, fishing for lobster is a common occupation.

San Juan Bautista has suffered several tsunamis in the past, the most recent in 2010.

A ship arrives from the mainland every fifteen days or so, bringing essential supplies.

The inhabitants are very friendly. Of course, everybody knows everyone else. Islanders are very civic-minded: there’s virtually no trash or graffiti. The town plaza still has an unvandalized Christmas tree made up of crochet squares.

We hike up to the Selkirk Lookout, the highest spot on the island. It’s also where I took the photo mentioning Maria’s birthday.

It’s a stiff climb, but worth it for the different landscapes we go through.

Daniel Defoe took a lot of liberties with the Selkirk story. In the book, Crusoe’s island is in the Caribbean. And Crusoe is marooned for 28 years, versus four years and four months. And there were no cannibals and no Friday.

Still, the Robinson Crusoe story is one that virtually everyone on the planet is familiar with.

Besides the original, there was the Swiss Family Robinson, published inn 1812 and subsequently made into a Disney movie.

And then there was the Space Family Robinson – several TV versions and a comic.

There is a craft brewery on the island.

We visit for a tasting and dinner. There’s a great view from the patio..

Dinner is seafood ceviche, seafood empanadas, and beer.

One morning, Maria goes snorkeling while I nurse yet another cold at home.

Maria fetches some of these photos from the excursion company’s Instagram page.

There are seals everywhere here. They’re very playful and curious.

The seals hang out with the humans of their own free will – no bribery involved.

Another chapter of island history is the sinking of the German warship Dresden here in 1915.

It was fatally shelled by several British warships. One shell penetrated the cliff face near town but didn’t explode. Maybe someday.

There is a trail to the next bay over.

This is in fact the bay that Maria went to on her snorkeling expedition.

Our last day arrives. It’s another lengthy boat ride over choppy waters.

On our way to the airstrip, we are shown the only sandy beach on the island. It’s covered in seals.

The airstrip is on the only flat surface. There were plans to build a road to town, but I think that’s been abandoned.

So we say goodbye to our second Chilean island destination.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We didn’t mention our companions on the island: Roberto, Carlos, and Steven.

This is a trio of life-long friends, Colombian-Americans, all very successful business owners. All kind of eccentric.

They’re keen sports fisherman, and regularly meet up in the world’s more exotic locations to yank unbelievably huge fish out of the ocean and to rib each other mercilessly in English and Spanish.

(The island is probably most visited by fishermen and scuba divers.)

They accompany us on the flight to the island and back, and stay in the same accommodation.

Very interesting guys, generous and kind, but kind of high maintenance, like many people with lots of money.

Back from Easter Island. We have to wait until January 07 for the flight to our next destination, so we cool our heels in Santiago for the third or fourth time this trip.

Speaking of dates, in Real Time, today is January 10 – Maria’s birthday!

A brief roundup of our activities: we visit the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. It is superb.

Even better, there are no self-loathing, groveling messages of apology and abject kowtowing to the Culture Wars that make many Western museums such repulsive places these days. Looking for examples of this peculiar self-flagellating folderol, I come across this article. Sheesh, just crawl into an alley and blow your brains out, already.

We stay in several different places. In one place, we meet a Belgian man and his teenage son. The evening is spent singing golden oldies on the son’s El-cheapo Bolivian guitar.

One day, we take another wine tour, this time to the headquarters of Concha y Toro.

Another day we ascend the Gran Torre Costanera. It’s the tallest building in South America (for now). According Wikipedia, it also ‘includes the largest shopping mall in Latin America‘. I don’t know, we’ve seen some pretty big malls in our travels.

The view from the top is, um, panoramic.

The Museum of Memory and Human Rights is about the history of the Pinochet regime.

It’s well designed for random wandering. If you want an idea of the kind of things that were going on at the time, the film ‘Missing‘ (1982) may be worth re-watching.

We like the way the building makes extensive use of copper – a material that Chile has a lot of.

La Chascona is the poet Pablo Neruda’s house in Santiago. (He also had one in Valparaiso, which we visited earlier, and another one on the coast, where he’s buried.)

It has, among other things, a painting by Diego Rivera. Considering the minimal security, I fantasize about stealing it.

Santiago has many lovely buildings and tree-lined neighbourhoods. Too bad it suffers from two serious problems: garbage and graffiti. At seemingly random street corners, small mountains of garbage appear overnight and begin to grow. The graffiti, I believe, is the result of an extended period of social unrest (that is, ‘riots’) that took place between 2019 and 2022. Which normalized the destruction and defacement of public property. Which is pretty ironic, considering Chile probably enjoys one of the most equal and financially healthy governments in Latin America.

Something we haven’t seen before: the Santiago Metro has 21 lending libraries in its system.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Speaking of the Metro…as we are taking the subway one day, we come across this travel poster.

It’s for the Juan Fernandez Archipelago – AKA ‘Robinson Crusoe Island’ – which happens to be our next destination.

We love Easter Island! It might be our favourite place on the trip so far.

Arrived here after one of the most comfortable flights ever (Emergency Exit row seats!) The aircraft is so new, it looks as if it’s just been unwrapped from the cellophane.

Mataveri International Airport has a quaint grass-hut terminal. We are greeted with floral leis on arrival.

Interesting airport fact: Easter Island had no useable airport beyond a dirt field until the Americans built a base here (1965-1970) and constructed one. In 1985, they came back and extended the runway to serve as a possible emergency landing strip for the space shuttle.

It feels like we’re on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. Nobody here is in much of a hurry. Hanga Roa, the main (and only) town, has a population of around 7,000 people.

There is no deep harbour. There’s a small beach in the centre of town that regularly has sea turtles swimming leisurely a few metres from shore.

Needless to say, there are lots of friendly dogs.

Easter Island has an interesting and controversial history. In reality, much about the original Rapa Nui people is unknown, or guessed at wildly. A handful of proven facts:

• humans did not arrive on the island before the year 1200 AD
• Rapa Nui people are Polynesian people, as proved by DNA and linguistic evidence (sorry Thor Heyerdahl, they did NOT come from the South American mainland)
• Rapa Nui people underwent a lot of self-inflicted troubles even before the arrival of satanic Europeans – of course, it was no picnic after Whitey arrived, either

The main draw are the moai, the giant statues that you associate with Easter Island.

It also seemed like a good place to spend Christmas. It turns out there’s a song by an ’80s-’90s English band, Sad Lovers & Giants, titled ‘Christmas on Easter Island‘. The lyrics don’t seem to have much to do with Christmas OR Easter Island, but what the heck.

There are reported to be over 900 moai on the island. Some come in groups.

Some used to have eyes made of coral and obsidian. In this case, they have been restored.

Almost all have long ears, big noses, and beetling brows.

People may remember the comic strip ‘Sherman’s Lagoon‘. Sherman is a shark. He has a friend and preceptor, Kahuna, who is obviously patterned on the moai.

A specialty of the island that we have for lunch almost every day (in different locations): tuna empanadas. These are large empanadas stuffed with thick chunks of fresh tuna and melted cheese.

There are things to see besides big statues. One day we visit a couple of caves.

We visit Orongo, a Rapa Nui ceremonial centre.

These have been partially restored.

Orango is perched on the rim of Rano Kau crater. On one side is the wetlands on the crater’s bottom.

On the other side is the ocean, with the small island of Motu Nui, the site of the ‘Birdman‘ contest. This bizarre egg-hunt was extremely important to the Rapa Nui people.

How remote IS Easter Island?

• Its closest inhabited neighbour is Pitcairn Island, 1,931 km to the west
• Its closest point to mainland Chile is 3,512 km to the east
• Its closest point to Point Nemo – the furthest point in the ocean from any land – is 2,688 km

I’ve never even heard of Point Nemo. Apparently that’s where space-exploring countries try to dump their superannuated space stations.

Back to the moai: often, images show the figures standing on a grassy hillside.

These photos are often taken at this location, Rano Raraku. This is the quarry from which almost every moai on the island comes.

The many that so picturesquely cover the hillside are ones that hadn’t been delivered yet when moai production was suddenly shut down entirely.

An interesting note: moai are often shown facing the ocean like vigilant sentinels. But when put in place, they almost always faced inland, to protect ‘their’ community.

You can see several that were abandoned in mid-carving.

We go to the beach three times while here. There’s only one, Anakena. It’s clean and uncrowded.

A week is over all too soon. It’s back to Mataveri Airport for flight LA844 to Santiago.

Our flight back is even better than our flight here. For some inexplicable reason, we get to fly back business class! Five and a half hours of sheer luxury. We could get used to this.

A final comment…sad to hear that former President of the United States Jimmy Carter just passed away at age 100. He was a decent man. See you in another life, Jimmy.

I think Jimmy deserves another tip o’ the hat.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Another Easter Island mystery.

We rent a car for three days. While looking at Google Maps for interesting places to visit, We come across this intriguing feature.

Hmmm, an ‘Old NASA site’? It’s on the road to Anakena Beach, so we stop on the way.

What remains looks like something out of the TV series ‘Lost‘. (Which I’m rewatching at the moment.)

The facility opened in 1983. I manage to find some brief footage of its inauguration here (https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/223943/). We can’t find a closing date, but the site is clearly abandoned.

It’s interesting that in the film clip, the area is totally bare. Today, it’s surrounded by ranches and trees.

From Puerto Madryn, we fly to Iguaçu Falls. These are Victoria Falls/Niagara Falls-comparable wonders of the natural world.

We hear that the experience of the falls is different between Argentina on one hand and Brazil on the other. We resolve to visit the falls from both sides. First we visit the Argentinian side, since we’re in Argentina.

From the gate, you travel a few kilometres on a miniature train to get to the pathway that leads to the ‘Garganta del Diablo‘, or ‘Devils’s Throat’.

The water plunges over 80 metres down to the bottom.

Cinephiles may remember these falls in one visually spectacular scene from the 1986 film ‘The Mission’. A Jesuit missionary, lashed to a cross by the Guarani people, is then sent over the falls, cross and all, to meet his maker.

 It’s a pleasure being so close to the cataracts – other places would probably not have the access points so open and uncaged, in order to prevent suicides and deaths from unattended hyperactive children.

The flow is exceptionally heavy because it’s been raining a lot in this area.

There are scores of birds, Great Dusky Swifts, that live in nests protected by the rushing waters.

On the Argentinian side, you can walk several paths that lead you past tributary falls.

All this moisture means a lot of greenery in the scenery.

Learned something new: Cabeza de Vaca, the Spaniard famous for his Odysseus-like wanderings around what is now the American Southwest for nearly 10 years, was in 1541 the first European known to have seen these falls.

On our way out of the park, we spot an Agouti, a large, rat-like creature, solemnly enjoying some fallen nuts.

The next day, arrangements are made to taxi across the border into Brazil and be picked up again later in the afternoon.

The Brazilian side features a single path that most people walk along, being treated to amazing views along the way.

There are coatis everywhere on the path, ready to scoop up anything dropped by the human element.

We’re glad we took the trouble to visit this side. It’s like seeing a new set of falls.

According to Wikipedia (referring to the combined falls), ‘Together, they make up the largest waterfall system in the world.‘

The name Iguazú comes from the Tupi-Guarani words “y”, meaning “water”, and “ûasú”, meaning “big”. Of course, there’s a fairy-tale attached to its origins involving a beautiful woman and an outraged deity.

The climax of the trip is walking out to the end of a boardwalk that is surrounded by a thundering maelstrom of water in all directions.

It must’ve been a death-defying experience to actually construct these boardwalks.

We can’t stop laughing with exhilaration as we are deafened by the roar, drenched in mist, and pummeled by the wind created from many, many tons of falling water.

Also on the Brazilian side is a bird park, which we visit before returning to the Argentinian side.

The Tancredo Neves Bridge connects the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu with the Argentine town Puerto Iguazú. The green and yellow represents the Brazilian flag, the blue and white represents the Argentinian flag.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We wind up our trip with Pete and Judith in Buenos Aires.

We only spend a couple of days here, but I’m impressed how Buenos Aires – indeed, other parts of Argentina – cope under the disadvantage of being in an eternal state of near-total economic collapse.

There may be hope for it yet. More photos to follow.

I know we aren’t quite up to date on the blog. Just wanted to let people know where we are in Real Time this December 24th.

After seeing off our friends Pete and Judith at the airport in Buenos Aires for their return flight to Canada, we catch a flight back to Santiago. We spend a few days there before flying here, 3,500 KMs across the Pacific from the Chilean mainland.

Easter Island’s claim to fame are its giant statues known as moai.

We are here for a week before returning – again – to Santiago.

Happy holidays, everyone! Stay safe.

From Mendoza, we fly south to Puerto Madryn. It’s evident that we are now much further south. Long pants are required.

(Historical note: who knew that the Welsh once had colonial aspirations in the area? And ‘Madryn’ itself was the name of a castle in Wales.)

Even though the climate is cooler, the beach is still inviting on a sunny day.

Maria and Pete brave the frigid waters of the Atlantic.

The major draw here is the Valdes Peninsula, a UNESCO-designated heritage site.

You don’t have to go far out of town before you feel the isolation.

The landscape is largely flat and unpopulated.

On the pebbly beach, we are visited by a very bold loica. He’s obviously used to mooching off of humans. But we don’t give in.

Our accommodation has a parrilla-style grill. Pete builds up the fire as we prepare for a home-made churrasco.

The main attraction of the Valdes Peninsula is whale-watching, but this is not the season. It also boasts an enormous colony of elephant seals, but we don’t see any. So it goes.

We do, however, see a mara. I’ve never heard of these creatures. They look like a cross between a deer and a hare.

We also see a rhea and its young. ‘Ostriches live in Africa. Emus live in Africa. Rheas live in South America.’ This is one of the many arcane facts we used to learn in the third grade that seem to have been dropped from the modern curriculum.

We think there may be some elephant seals around, but they are beyond the range of our binoculars.

We stop in the quaint village of Puerto Piramides, where the inhabitants seem to be outnumbered by whale-watching companies.

(Interesting note – a bit of research reveals that this was the site of mysterious submarine activity in 1958 and 1960.)

Next day, we take a long drive in the opposite direction to the Punta Tombo penguin reserve. Everybody loves penguins.

It’s quite astounding. Thousands of penguins build their nesting burrows here.

There is a well-built boardwalk 1.5 kilometres long that lets us see the penguins close up.

Many of the burrows are far from the sea. It’s strange to see penguins waddling a kilometre or more from the water.

Of course, the seaside is the most popular gathering spot.

These are Magellanic penguins. According to Wikipedia, they are named after Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who spotted the birds in 1520. (We also learned about Ferdinand Magellan in the third grade.)

These look a lot like the penguins we saw in South Africa.

It’s encouraging to see the efforts Argentina is making to keep these little guys safe.

There are other animals around as well. Guanacos graze calmly among the penguins on the move.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Back in town, we splurge on a meal at the Matilde restaurant. In the front window, entire lamb carcasses are slow-roasted over a wood fire.

We walk home, in an effort to work off our surfeit of roast meat. Judith still has room for some ice cream.