We are again at sea on our way along the Peruvian coast to Callao. Peru’s coast range looms in the mist to starboard, and now and then you get a brief glimpse of the Andes beyond. Incidentally, we are far enough offshore that normal mountains and hills would be beyond the horizon. That’s how high these “foothills” are.
Building whole house, in and out, with drywall
House made of drywall
I have a bunch of pictures from yesterday, but yesterday was more vivid than pictures can convey. At 2:30 four buses of us left for the field tour called Man in the Desert, as I said yesterday. These are some extra little tidbits from that tour, since today is totally uneventful. And when you’re sailing this far offshore, “uneventful” is a much-desired blessing.
Llama geoglyphs
On the edge of Arica, two guys were building a one-story house entirely out of ordinary cheap drywall, inside and out. But then, why not? Drywall melts in rain, but it never rains here. As in never.
Geoglyphs are patterns—artwork—built right into the landscape. The Atacama is famous for its geoglyphs of animals, men, and indecipherable forms. Sometimes they scraped away the top layer of caliche, revealing bone-white gypsum below. Sometimes they stacked rocks along the line they wanted to form. Sometimes they used both methods. According to our guide, the dancing male figure, the two llamas, and something else on the hillside beyond used the latter. Animal figures are always facing toward the ocean, she said. The llamas are no exception; the ocean was behind us as we viewed them.
Don’t let the green in the llama picture fool you. It was the back yard of one of those mom-and-pop nurseries, about 400 square feet of intense green. Everything else is tan.
Coke sign beyond the bend in the road - made of coke bottles.
There are modern geoglyphs. The biggest Coca Cola sign in the world is formed completely out of empty Coke bottles, bottoms out, on the hillside shown in the picture. Apparently the occasion was Coke’s 120th year. They built the sign, then a muckamuck came out to insert the final empty bottle into it, with great hoopla.
Speaking of hoopla. Cunard really does it up big. I’ve said that. The Man in the Desert tour took us to an art installation out in the Atacama. When we got there, two fiesta dance couples were performing. Pictures do not adequately convey how the sun catches a whole lot of tinsel in their costumes—true suits of light. And the ladies wore three-inch spike heels and nylons. In the Atacama.
Dancers with light suits. And the women are wearing three inch spike heels.
Cunard also got us the museum tour. The museum is in Spanish only, but the guide went through giving highlights. A few of us can read Spanish, so we sort of wandered our own way. The museum is primarily to hold mummies in rigorously controlled conditions. So far, about 300 mummies have been found, about half natural, the others treated by contemporaries. The dozen or so on display were displayed quite tastefully in muted light.
One of the plaques said that they would export 8000 botijas of oIive oil a year back when it was all pressed by hand. I asked a museum docent on the gate how many liters a botija held. She said anywhere from five to seven. I guess standard weights and measures did not pertain then.
But any way you pour it, that’s a hekuvalotta oil.