Monday, March 12, 2018- Cruise day 48; Salaverry, Peru

Monday, March 12, 2018- Cruise day 48; Salaverry, Peru

When we awoke, the ship was enshrouded in fog, and still in the water.  We had set an alarm to get up early enough to get breakfast before our excursion, and as we got dressed, the captain made an overhead announcement that the ship was holding outside the breakwater to the Port of Salaverry, and was not able to proceed to the dock until the fog lifted.  The captain said he had a high degree of confidence that the fog would lift in time for our excursions to proceed as scheduled, so we went to breakfast and saw the fog lift gradually, and then the ship was able to proceed to the dock, arriving about a half hour late.  

The crew was scrambling to get the gangways set up and people disembarked. We boarded our tour bus but then ended up sitting for another 20-30 minutes because we were missing one passenger.  That passenger ended up not showing up after 30 minutes, so we departed a half hour late.  Fortunately, there was free Wifi on the bus, so we were able to get caught up on our email and upload pictures.  They had double decker sleeper buses with plenty of leg room, a bath room, and even a tiny galley in the back with a cooler full of bottled water.  

The drive through Salaverry was not very scenic.  The area around the port looks like a giant landfill, with piles of construction debris, dirt and trash.  There was another industrial area where the Pan American Highway was lined by 20’ high concrete walls with look out towers and very sturdy looking central gates suitable to keep zombies and invading armies out.  This highway stretches from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego, so we are developing some familiarity with it.  

Although this area is a desert that receives less than 2” of rainfall per year, their main industry is agriculture thanks to several rivers that flow from the Andes.  These produce very fertile valleys leading to the Pacific ocean.  There is also quite a bit of sub surface water that indigenous people in ancient times learned they could tap by simply digging sunken gardens into the ground.  They produce a lot of crops including sugar cane, all manner of fruits and vegetables, and are a leading exporter of asparagus in the world.  They export nearly all of their crop because it is not native to Peru, and Peruvians haven’t acquired a taste for it.  

For quite a distance, we drove on the Pan American Highway with the Pacific Ocean to our left, and huge sand dunes to our right, with farms between the highway and the dunes.  There are many huge chicken houses with black fabric roofs and chicken wire sides that are hundreds of yards long.  The Peruvians have acquired a taste for chicken.  I guess it must taste like guinea pig.  

We turned inland to get to the first archeological site called the Temple of Lady Cao, who was discovered in a burial chamber within a huge burial mound fairly recently.  The area around the site looks like a giant landfill with piles of dirt, construction debris, and trash scattered across the arid landscape.  You might have easily missed it, thinking it was just another huge pile of trash, but the wind had eroded out some unmistakable adobe brick walls covered with ornate designs.  As the site was excavated, it was discovered that generations of the Mochica people, who ruled the land between 100-800AD, had buried a series of tombs in an inverted pyramid pattern.  Each level was completely sealed up with adobe bricks and buried before the next level was added.  Lady Cao is Peru’s King Tut.  She was buried with servants and treasure, and all of it was intact when archeologists uncovered it.  It’s amazing that the Spaniards hadn’t discovered it when they raped and pillaged Peru 600 years later.  The main construction was adobe bricks with plaster decorative frescos that were well preserved.  

Once this tomb was discovered, many other Uluru like dirt mounds scattered around the coast in the area were also found to be tombs.  

It is thought that the Mochica people were adversely affect by the La Nina/El Nino cycles and developing trade up and down the coast of Peru caused the Mochica to evolve into the Chimu peoples.  The Chimu’s were invaded and conquered by the Inca in the late 1300’s , less than 100 years before the Spaniards invaded and destroyed all traces of indigenous civilizations they could find to spread Christianity.  

Our second stop was the ancient capitol of the Chimu civilization called Chan Chan.  It looked like a walled city, not unlike the Forbidden City in China, but in adobe.  Because the Spaniards ran amok through this city, it was largely reduced to ruins, but what remains is still very impressive.  The most unique feature of the site are horizontal diamond patterns carved into many of the walls.  These supposedly reflect a fishing net theme.  There are elaborate carvings along the base of the remaining walls of birds, squirrels, fish and other symbols.  The site spread out over at least a city block, and there are lots of other structures in the surrounding area that remain buried in sand and dirt.  Within the walled fortress was a large open well where they simply dug down to the level of the water table, which was 20-30ft below the surface.  

We had mediocre boxed lunches on the buses as we drove to our last site, which is called the Temple of the Moon.  The Spaniards gave the site that name because there is another temple a short distance away which they named the Temple of the Sun.  Only the Temple of the Moon is excavated and open to the public.  It turns out this site is a stadium for human sacrifices.  It has elaborate frescos depicting the process of warriors battling in ceremonial costumes, followed by the losers being stripped naked and marched to the execution arena.  Some were hurtled off high walls, while others were chased down a rock face and then decapitated and chopped into bits, resulting in a river of blood.  Pretty gory stuff.  They probably did all this because of climate change in an attempt to appease the gods to make it stop.  I guess it’s a good thing the Spaniards put a stop to that, or people who drive SUV’s might find themselves hurled off high walls, or chased down rock faces to be decapitated and mutilated.  The site is about as bit as a modern NFL stadium.  Football wouldn’t be nearly so popular if the losing teams were sacrificed at the end of each game.

We ended up being some of the last people back on the ship.  We came back an hour after the previously announced all aboard time, and the ship was held for us since we were an official Princess excursion.  

After an early dinner, we saw the early show of Daniel and Kimberly Craig, a husband and wife circus act team that we had actually seen on the Diamond Princess on our Japan cruise last fall.  We were impressed that they could speak Japanese as well as english.  Their act had been shortened slightly by cutting out the unicycle, but it was pretty much the same act, which was entertaining and well performed.  They do seem to spend a little too much time goading the audience to cheer for them though.  

After the show, we took part in a 70’s game show, which was part 70’s music trivia and then having to run to one of the cruise staff doing odd tasks like wearing 3 watches, a man wearing lipstick, a woman wearing men’s shoes reversed L-R, bearing all of the team’s cruise cards and showing a selfie of the entire team.  What killed us though was one team won two of three bonus rounds where the team had to dance YMCA, and those were each worth 3 points each.  After a while, the team next to us had done so poorly (just 1 point), we started to help them by giving them the song titles and artists so that they could get a few points on the board.  It turned out to be way too much effort for a bottle of champagne.  We had won the 60’s game show earlier in the cruise, so we should have known better, but we still had some fun.  

Tomorrow is a sea day and another installment of the progressive trivia.  We have to gain 3 points over the Motley Crew if we’re to catch up, so thinking caps on.