Across Ecuador

From Piura, Perú, we drove into Ecuador:

Cuenca was our first stop in Ecuador. It was build in the mid 1500’s by the Spanish invaders, and it is packed full of churches. They say that it has one church for every Sunday of the year. The cathedral in Plaza de Armas is incredible big – one may suspect the availability of cheap labor – while many other churches called our attention by their simplicity and bright colors. 

The local archeological museum was a complete disappointment, showing a great collection of artefacts but without proper order or explanations. Just a waist of time.

We went once again to the Cajas National Park. An older post called “Down from Riobamba”, from 4 March 2012, includes a description of the park and good pictures that we took in our previous trip through Ecuador.

Ecuador is divided along three east-west main areas: the western Pacific coast, the highlands, and the east lowlands, called ‘El Oriente’. One way to go from the mountain area to El Oriente is to take route 46 from Guamote to Macas, crossing the Sangay National Park.

A common landscape along the highlands

Climbing across the clouds

Within the park there are two active and one inactive volcanoes, being the main atraction for tourism. There were many tourists visiting the area just to take a look at the volcanoes, however, with our luck, the sky was overcast and rainy so the volcanoes were out of sight. 

At the park the altitude is about 11500 feet, with many high altitude lagoons, and the mountains are covered with low shrubs proper of the cold wheather. The odd landscape makes it a unique place to visit. 

A view of Sangay National Park

Some lagoons at the park

Laguna Negra

The second aspect of the trip was the abrupt change in the landscape once we started our descend on the oriental side of the mountains. Being part of the Amazon Basin the vegetation is completely different than on the western side. Now the mountains were covered with a jungle of the most diverse tall trees, each fighting to get some sun, with noisy rivers running down the mountains and an occasional cascade feeding the torrents.

The eastward slope of the National Park, going down to the Amazon Basin

The fantastic Pastazas River

After an overnight stop in Macas we continued northbound towards Ambato, back in the highlands. The road is littered with small towns growing all sort of tropical stuff, showing not only a change in the landscape but also a change in the local population. Let’s remember that Ecuador is home to a large variety of indigenous people, and each place is unique as much for their dresses, colors, and hats, as for their languages and customs.

Finally we continued passing Ambato and Quito arriving to Ibarra late at night. Here we made a long stop to wash the car and fix a problem with the engine starter. Our next step will be to cross into Colombia by the Tulcan/Ipiales border pass.

Leaving Perú

The Peruvian coast is marked by the immense sand deserts and the precariousness of the peasants’ lives. In addition, the north of the coastal area is also marked by the amount of garbage piling up along the roads, mostly around and inside the cities. Very disheartening to see how life goes down the drain in those places. In my opinion it shows a clear failure of the cities’ government to educate the people and organize the garbage collection and disposal. 

Overall the main highways, though improperly designed, are in very good shape. However, once the central government gives place to the local, municipal and regional government, we can see a collapse of the infrastructures. This phenomenon is not unique to Perú as we can also see it in Argentina and Bolivia. If we take Argentina’s case as an example, the collapse might be due to the failure of the government to collect taxes from the big corporations owning the land, the industry and commerce. On top of that, add the traditional corruption of all politicians and government officials, regardless of political colors.

The situation gets worst as we approached Chiclayo, closer to the border with Ecuador. Even Pimentel, the resort city by the beach near Chiclayo is covered by garbage. The Pimentel beach shows the Peruvian kayaks used by the local fishermen:

Boats made of reeds

A 'carrizo' house by the beach

Six years ago we travelled the same road but from North to South. At the time we noticed the huge extensions of the desert marked as Private Property. Now the same desert has been developed into agricultural land. Most of them is fenced and some has signs stating “Private Property – No trespassing - Order to shoot”. Those plots are worked by the same peasants that live in ‘carrizo’ huts and living a life of extreme misery. As usual, the developers leave zero taxes in the local coffers and this explains in part the collapse of the cities.

ECUADOR

Checking out at the border

The contrast cannot be more evident between the two countries. While Perú shows a general collapse Ecuador shows a country in good shape. Roads and bridges in excellent conditions, widespread agriculture works, no garbage piling along the roads, and well maintained cities. Considering that the people is about the same in both countries, the main difference might be in their ruling classes.

What we did so far

It took us some 4000 miles to get to Nazca. We started in Esquel (Argentina) crossed to Osorno (Chile), then north to Concepción, Santiago, Copiapó, Antofagasta, San Pedro de Atacama, and then crossed back to Argentina through Paso de Jama. This put us in Purmamarca, then north again to La Quiaca, from where we crossed into Villazón, Bolivia.

In Bolivia we visited Potosí, Sucre, Oruro, La Paz, Tiwanaku, and finally the border crossing point at Desaguadero. Once in Perú we drove to Puno, Cusco, Abancay, Nazca, Huacho (north of Lima), and Trujillo.

A previous leg took us from Abancay to Nazca. 

Cusco - Abancay - Nazca

According to the reports in the web the road was extremely difficult, some comparing it to crossing five times Paso de Jama. It was a gross exaggeration. The road is tiresome because of the gazillion curves and mountains that we had to transverse, but it is not as demanding as presented. In fact, it is very interesting.

Much of the road goes through green mountains showing the usual hard work of the farmers working every single place up the slopes. Typically the road goes along some valley where one may see many rivers carrying water from up the mountains. The top of the mountain chains show some high pampas with plenty of llamas, vicuñas, alpacas, sheep and cows. Those animals adapted very well to life at high altitude, and the farmers take good advantage of them.

The last quarter of the road, the westward portion approaching Nazca, shows a change in the landscape. The mountains are dry, there are no more rivers, no agriculture and no animals. However, in spite of the changes, those mountains still attracted us.

We didn’t like Nazca, in consequence we decided to keep driving north beyond Lima. 

The landscape along the Pacific coast shows a constant desert with fog coming from the see wrapping everything, so the overall visibility is quite poor. This bleak landscape is nevertheless populated by many peasants. Many of the live in very primitive houses made of “carrizos”. They make panels with local grown reeds (or canes) cut alongside, then join the panels to make a wall and attach the walls to four posts. That’s it. A few will have a roof made of the same material, in others the roof is a plastic liner, and many has no roof at all. This is extremely primitive, dating probably from Inca’s time, showing that progress never made it to many parts of Perú.

A house made of "carrizos". To be noted: the electricity line going down to the electric meter

A whole neighborhood made of "carrizos"

In order to avoid Lima’s downtown nightmare we opted to take the loop going around the city center. This wasn’t easy drive either but we managed to cross to Lima’s north side in about one and a half hours.

A word of caution:

The Panamerican highway is crossed with speed bumps every time that there is an incoming road or a crossover. Not all the speed bumps are clearly marked. It is a very silly design because it downgrades the highway to a country road level.

SOME REFLEXIONS

We drove through the Southeast and Southwest of Perú, and we cannot less than note the striking differences between both regions. The Southeast part, including the entire region from the border with Bolivia to the northwest of Cusco, has plenty of surface water. This allows the farmers to cultivate every little piece of land, including the mountain slopes to unbelievable altitudes, in many parts still using the same terracing techniques used by Inca and pre-inca cultures. Peruvian men and women are hard workers and make a living in very difficult conditions. However, even when their standard of living is generally low, they can still get busy doing what they know.

The situation is quite different on the west coastal region. There is very little surface water therefore agriculture is much limited. The harsh desert has been fractioned to private owners who can afford the needed investment to transform it into a productive land. From what I saw this terrible desert only needs a little water to become productive. The investors drill water wells to irrigate their crops, vine yards, corn, potatoes, cactuses, fruit trees, and so on. Their labor is composed of the local people that has no chances to ever drill a water well or own a piece of land. These laborers are those that live in the shacks made of carrizos.

It pains to see how the government favors the big investors instead of helping their own people. The same way that the private investors can drill water holes to irrigate their cash crops, the Peruvian government could drill the same holes and give the water to the local people so they at least can grow their food and support themselves instead of living in slums under pathetic conditions. 

We saw posted signs along the road forbidding the drilling of new water holes. This means that probably the underground aquifers are being depleted by those cash crop projects. The same situation happens in Saudi Arabia, where they used fossil water to support cash crop projects until they completely depleted the aquifers. Now Saudi Arabia has to import all their food stuff and there is no more water to support their basic needs.

Each country has different characteristics and I don’t think that Perú will fall in the same situation. However, depleting the underground water to support cash crop projects is a mistake that sooner or later will be repaid, probably with mass migrations to slums around the big cities.

Lima is a huge city and we tried to avoid the city center as much as possible. The outskirts of the city shows houses climbing up the hills in all directions.

The city of Caral represents one the oldest civilizations, with terraced buildings dating some 3000 years BCE. Caral was one of our objectives once we passed north of Lima. However, a combination of problems prevented us to fulfill our objective. The first obstacle is the 16 miles of horrendous road that takes you to the entrance of the ruins, which took us one full hour of difficult drive. Once we arrived – in a very bad mood after the road punishment – we had to walk one mile under the sun to arrive to the ticketing office. However, Caral, like all the Peruvian coast, is in the middle of sand dunes and we were already tired and gave up. Curiously, far away we saw tourist buses parked right next to the ticketing office. Our conclusion: Caral is currently organized to serve the tourism companies, and there are exempted from the walk through the sand dunes under the sun. 

Our advice: DON’T go to Caral. Perú has so many beautiful places that it is not worth wasting time with Caral.

Today we visited the Archeologic Museum in Trujillo. One of the best museums so far with plenty of artifacts, well organized, with samples of the different pre-inca cultures up to the Spanish invasion. 

Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu

Finally, the day day to visit Machu Picchu arrived.

There may be several ways to go to Machu Picchu but the standard way is to take a bus from Cusco to Ollantaytambo (some 44 miles away), then the train to Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu Pueblo), and finally a bus up to Machu Picchu. We took a tour that brought us to Pisaq and Valle Sagrado before arriving to Ollantaytambo.

A view of the Sacred Valley

Ollantaytambo was another Inca’s ceremonial center. The design of the city, the wonderful terracing of the mountain slopes, and the construction details, make it as spectacular as Machu Picchu. 

The suffix “tambo” indicates a place to rest and resupply. In this case, Ollantaytambo was also used as a granary for travelers passing by. The old constructions are still there, on the most aerated sides of the mountains to ascertain that whatever they stored will remain fresh.

Unfortunately, due to astuteness that characterizes me, I forgot to bring the camera up the slopes so I couldn’t record what I saw in this fantastic place. Luckily, for those that might be interested, the internet has plenty of information and pictures describing the place.

MACHU PICCHU

Machu Picchu was build as a resort for the emperors trying to wet away from Cusco’s cold and rain. It is located at a much lower altitude, almost 8000 feet compared with Cusco’s 11200 feet. The city is surrounded by high mountains, inaccessible on three sides due to steep cliffs, and with ample space to sustain a population between 600 and 800 people with the production out of the terraced slopes.

The first thing that impacted us was the magnificent scenery. Huge and wild green mountains surround the entire place, and a multitude of swallows bringing a smile to everyone:

Apart from the incredible mountain setting and design of the city, I was attracted by the construction details. The basic material used for construction of the walls were rocks found at the same location, while all the houses had thatched roofs using local reeds. However, there were at least three construction categories, depending on the status or the purpose of each construction. 

The buildings designed for the emperor or ceremonial purposes show a complete mastery and control of the techniques needed to adapt the rocks to their needs. They knew how to cut the rocks in whatever angle or curve was needed to make perfect assemblages of those huge blocks:

They differed from the construction used for general purpose buildings. For those constructions the rocks were selected for the best fit and glued together with a sort of concrete made of sand, clay and straw:

The walls included some spigots used to tie the beams supporting the roofs:

There is so much already written about Machu Picchu that it will be redundant trying to explain all my impressions of the place. Now we are ready to continue our visit to Perú, even when the next step will be a tiresome trip from Cusco to Nazca with an overnight stop at Abancay. The road is long and difficult but we have rested enough to make the best of it.

By the way, driving on mountain roads is not easy for the brakes. I found a problem with the disk brakes, probably due to excessive braking, which forced us to rework the surface of the disks and change the brake pads. From now on I will be much careful and use the engine brake when needed.

From Puno to Cusco

I expected to travel along mountains high and dry and sparsely populated, however, much to my surprise, the road from Puno to Cusco is surrounded by green mountains and valleys, heavily cultivated and with a string of little towns all along the road.

Once we entered Cusco I realized my second mistake. Instead of a little colonial town we found a big city built around the old colonial town.

The same as in all Spanish colonial towns, there is the “Plaza de Armas” surrounded by cathedrals and administrative buildings. Let’s remember that Cusco was the capital city of the Inca empire, therefore the Spanish town was built on top of the old Inca's constructions.

Cusco has many museums that document the Inca's period as well as the Spanish conquest, the colonial period, the independence from Spain, and the new republic. We really enjoyed the degree of craftsmanship and the quality of the art artifacts left by incas and pre-incas’ cultures. A few examples:

El descabezado

Cuencos en forma de búho y escalonados al estilo Inca

Bastones de mando hechos de madera con figuras talladas de animales

Mi favorito: con pocas lineas lograron una figura abstracta estilizada 

With the Peruvian people, we, Argentinians, have not only a common history but also a common present. We share the same corrupted political system, an equally corrupt ruling class, equivalent popular struggles for the dignity of the people, the same need for work, liberty and equality. On the day of our arrival we saw a demonstration in front of the City Hall by unemployed construction workers. There were about 30 workers and 30 heavily armed police agents, men and women with tear gas, automatic weapons and dogs to contain a peaceful protest. The workers only asked for work but the police was ready for the worst.

Driving through Latin America we see the number of good and bad things that we have in common with our latinamerican brothers.