Ñaupahuasi

Ñaupahuasi

Ñaupauasi is an Inca (I think) village above the city of Yauyos, Peru. These Inca Terraces run for miles up the valley along the Yauyos river.  Some are preserved and some are in ruins. These are some of the preserved and still used terraces. These are mostly used for growing alfalfa for the cows in Yauyos, but behind the fence to the left someone is growing flowers.

Here you can see walls of the homes in Ñaupahausi. I could not find anything in the Internet on this city. There are no trails to it any only one vague sign (at the end of this blog), although the tourist materials published by the district of Yauyos do mention it several times as one of the important attractions of this district.

 In these three images you can see the keystones and riprap method of construction.

The hillside is covered with stones with flat sides. They probably picked up stone after stone until they found ones that fit. They also used mud, if not as a mortar then to keep out the winds and the cold. Yauyos is about 1,000 feet lower and it is at 9,429 feet above sea level, so Ñaupahausi is definitely over 10,000 feet, maybe 11,000.

Views from the top. Below is the valley of the Yauyos river. As far as you see in this picture there were hillsides terraced by the Incas. On the other side is the Valley of the Cañete river. This town is protected by steep hillside and cliffs.

This is the only stone I found that looked painted. Maybe it is or maybe not.

This is my favorite picture. Look at the stones that are turned to provide shelves, the small hole to perhaps provided light. This is the second ruin in Peru that I have visited and found such expressions of love and family life. In the other, reconstructed ruins I have visited in Peru this personal expression seems to be missing.

These two photos show the beautiful moss covered walls. Some also had ferns and flowers growing from them.

The town of Yauyos way down there by the river of Yauyos. The route to Ñaupahausi is: from the town square, cross the bridge continue on the same street and follow the trail up the hill for about 2-3 hours. You will pass a couple of houses and get to a circle. There are about 3-4 houses near that circle, continue up the road that leaves from the circle. At some point that road goes to the right, the road to the right is the Inca Trail to a different ruin. You want to go left and up, there is no trail so scramble, bushwhack, wade, or whatever you need to do to get to the ruins, which you can see above you.

The mountain above Yauyos

Yes, I really was there.

A patch of corn grown by the road. This shows present day agriculture with all its erosion problems.

This is the "map" that is at the very end of the road that goes up the hill. I found it at the very end of my trek from the ruins.

The Upper Amazon Basin

The Upper Amazon Basin

I often fall in love with wild places; the upper Amazon basin is now one of my loves.  I had expected hot and humid weather that left me unable to move, but no, the weather was perfect! Cooler than the summers here in Cerro Alegre (which are cooler than the summers in Fresno) and only mildly humid. Maybe I visited on a good week but it was wonderful!  
A short list of the adventures: We swam in the birthplace of the Amazon, which is the concourse of two large rivers, the Rio Ucayall and Rio Marañon. The Rio Ucayall is the main tributary, it continues south to a mountain in the Andes south of Cañate. This is where the Amazon River starts. The Amazon begins is in the Peruvian Andes south of where I live.
We saw about 5 species of Monkeys, two dolphin species, the pink dolphin and the grey dolphin, as well as a couple of sloths. We each took turns holding a small caiman then let it go.

Pink Dolphin (that is all we saw too, but it is pink and it swam under our boat without touching it)

Flies, mosquitoes and a monkey bit me, (the monkey was in a zoo) and ants stung me. We were caught in a downpour while in an open boat. I ate a piranha (rather than the reverse). We used smashed termites for mosquito repellent (the only repellant that worked by the way). Tina, my travel mate, was stung by at least 300 ants, which had decided to make a nest in her bed.

These are hanging nests of two different types of birds. The tighter grouping on the right side has a wasp nest in the center of all the birds' nests. The wasp offers the birds some protection and in turn probably gets food from the messy habitat of the birds.

Of course we saw many different insects and spiders and a tarantula. In the wild we saw several of the blue Morpho Butterflies. Our guide pointed out some ants he called fire ants, and some one inch long black ants they call 5-hour ants because the sting leaves you with a fever and hurts for 5 hours.

The leaf cutter ants, left, (they were hard to miss) made trails around the jungle and live in large mounds in the ground, which is surprising because much of the Amazon basin floods during the wet season and other ants make their homes high in the trees, as do termites.
The mosquitoes were horrid. As a group we were allowed to slap each other at any time. By the third day in the jungle I gave up, they had won and I just ignored them. Today, three weeks later, all my bites are almost gone.





The food was excellent.  Typical Peruvian food: rice, a small amount of meat (good for our health and the environment) or eggs and vegetables with tropical fruit.

Fresh Heart of Palm Salad

An example of the excellent food we were served in our jungle hostel.

Monkey

Tina relaxing

Tropical Downpour

Flowers

This boat that cost tourists over $2,000 a week. Many similar boats cost over $6,000 a week.

Night sounds:

These are two of the boats we took. The covered one took us from Nauta to our lodge, close to the start of the Reserva Pacaya-Samiria. At less than 40 dollars a day. We didn’t have air conditioning, but how could you need it?  One of the large boats (at $6,000 a week) left it’s gigantic generator on all night. One fifth of the experience is lost with such interference. (Of course this boat also has gigantic picture windows blocking all the smells, winds so all that is left is the sight...and I guess the taste of whatever food they serve.)

One of the rivers we traveled on. This was during the high water season. At the peak of high water season, in a month from our visit, the water should be one meter higher.

High water mark on the trees.

At that point there is one heck of a lot of water flowing through the Amazon basin. And remember this is the beginning of the Amazon.

View of a river from the airplane. Note the oxbow lakes (dark blue) left when the river changes course and the many different lines which indicate how often the river changes it’s course. The river is brown.

 

A house sitting above the river. In the dry season they would be growing rice and fruit in this same area.










So if you ever want to travel on the Amazon I highly recommend our guide: May Jony Arriaga Chavez at Allpayacu Amazon tours. His English is excellent and he lives in and loves the Upper Amazon basin. The largest city he has been in is Iquitos, which does have about 500,000 people in the greater Iquitos area.

What am I doing in Peru? I am working with the Environmental Section of Peace Corps Peru. We work in three main areas: Reforestation (or forestation), Environmental Education, and Solid Waste.  But we can do other projects as needed for our communities because our most significant job is helping the communities we live in in whatever way we can.

I work in three communities. Two of these Cerro Alegre and San Isidro have sufficient resources to solve most of their problems on their own. The third, Cerro Candela, is a very poor community and the individuals do not seem to understand how to “get it together” enough to solve their problems.  They seem to be overwhelmed by their poverty rather than focused on the resources they do have, as many desperately poor people are.

The other problem these communities have is that the Mayor of the District of Imperial, the district in which these communities are, either pockets the money his district has, or is spending it on things various communities desperately need. Like electricity and potable water. But I am the only one who has suggested the latter possibility.

All of these communities have a problem with garbage. Although the garbage is picked up twice a week many people throw their garbage outside of their homes, on the streets but especially in the small river and the irrigation canals, which run inside and around the community. When I was doing the interviews with people in these communities someone said that people burn their trash because there is no water.  Although only one person said that I found it a really interesting comment. But most of the people thought that throwing their trash was a bad thing and on the other hand burning it was acceptable. In actuality burning it is far more dangerous to the health of the community than throwing it in piles. Both are bad for the environment.

In Cerro Alegre and San Isidro I hope to

1. Install baskets that can hold the garbage above the reach of the dogs that roam the streets.

2. Educate the people in these towns to use these baskets rather than throwing their garbage in inappropriate places.

In Peru people do not have garbage cans, they do not have space to put garbage cans in my town. Although mine are small towns the houses are right next to each other with no space between then. The people put their garbage in plastic bags within the house and then in a 5-gallon bucket or rice sack. The garbage men take the 5-gallon bucket or rice sack, dump it into the garbage truck and then throw it back on the ground for the people to retrieve.

In Cerro Candela I hope to:

1. Help them get electricity to their water pump. They need to be more organized for this bureaucratic process.

            2. Help them get money to install water pipes for the houses that are above the main area of town.  At this time they carry water up a 45 or more degree sloop to their houses.

There are other small projects I could do. One person I work with wants to put an area for the young people to play chess in her small park; maybe we could install an area for younger children to play also. In another town there is a playground that needs to be repaired.  In Cerro Candela the children have essentially nothing, so a library or a play area would be a great addition to their lives.

I have really just started here. Three months were spent in training and three months to get to know your community. Now I start the real work.

Jan and everyone,

Yes the small spoons are very much like demitasse spoons, except everyone uses them here. They don’t use teaspoons. (But if you are really a well-mannered person from the Sierras  (the mountains) you only use a large spoon, meaning no fork either.) Actually hot dogs are only rarely served here. White rice is served almost twice a day. The best cooking secret from here is to put your sweet potatoes in the full sun for 5 days and then in the shade or inside. They are very sweet that way you don’t need to add any sugar (if you ever did add sugar.) They also have a purple sweet potato, which is also very good, (only the outer surface is purple.) Of course, there are various types of potatoes, actually about 2,000 to 4,000, but I see 10 or so in the market every time I go there.

They grow artichokes and asparagus around here but rarely eat them. They are canned for export. In fact 100% or 50% (I don’t remember which) of Costco’s jars of artichokes hearts are canned about ¼ of a mile away from here.

There are several varieties of corn that are commonly served, usually on the cob, in soups. Tamales are usually served Sunday morning. The Tamales are wrapped in banana leaves and pieces of meat and olives and peanuts are mixed into them, rather than the masa wrapped around a filling.  The Corn masa is courser and more brilliant orangish yellow color than what I have had in the US.

mayacoba beans: I had to read a little in the Internet before I could answer this. I was served a dish of yellow beans, three kinds of yellow beans, this last week. Nothing especially different about cooking these but they call them either yellow beans or canary beans. Apparently these were crossed with another bean to arrive at the mayacoba variety.

I have had Quinoa here as well as the U.S. Mostly it is served the same as they serve oatmeal, a soupy drinkable breakfast with canned milk, or it is added to soups.

The food here is excellent, but I can’t really tell you why, the biggest difference I notice is that they use way too much salt, (and sugar) and that they really care about their food. They have a great deal of pride in Peruvian food.

I have had so much ceviche or cebiche that I have no interest in having any more for a few months.  But it also is very good. We only eat ceviche when we are close to the coast and I am about 30 minutes from the ocean. I also had excellent (to die for) goat yogurt last week.

Sopa Seca is the specialty of Cañete. Basically spaghetti with a spicy sauce. I will figure out the recipe and add it to my post one of these days. My father is more than glad to teach me how to make it.

The diets here on the coast generally lack vegetables, there are some but not many, except for the sweet potatoes.  Fortunately they are cheap as well as good. A truck was driving through town offering a sack (50 to 100 pounds, I don’t know but a large sack) for 15 soles (less than 7 dollars).  Fruit is easy to obtain and there are many different varieties, many can be found in the US some cannot.

Things I will already miss about Peru or just take home with me:

1.     Those little spoons they stir the coffee with.

2.     The crowed combi rides (combis are vans that take you almost everywhere.)

3.     Maybe even the moto-taxis (three wheeled motorcycles that take you everywhere, maybe for a slightly higher fee, but they are very convenient.)

4.     The good food. Yep, the food here is much better on average than in the U.S. Occasionally it is oh hum but only at Bembos (like McDonalds) is it worse than oh hum.

5.     Adding lime to chicken soups. Try it. It is excellent.

6.     Very few Peruvians smoke, they know it is expensive.

7.     Many of the houses here have a beautiful sense of architecture.

Things I don’t understand: Why do they start the business day at 8 or 9 when the sun sets at 6 or 6:30? They live a great deal in the dark here. Or at least my families have. When I start early morning patrol to figure out peoples’ schedules then I might learn more.

One thing I won’t miss: The traffic in Lima. At one point there are 6 lanes of traffic going into Lima. OK, I realize this is a big city and 6 lanes going into a big city should be no big deal, except this is on a one way road with only two-lanes.  Driving is a constant game of switching lanes and trying to cut other drivers off. I think everyone hates the traffic in Lima.

I have been up and down the coast of Peru since my last post. I am now in my site in Cerro Alegre in the Department of Lima, District of Cañete, an agricultural area much like Salinas. This is a nice quiet suburb with a few minimarkets, just like Fresno the Mini Markets lack fruit and vegetables, many mototaxi’s waiting to take you to Imperial, the bigger town near where there are an amazing number of little stores selling everyday items.

The nicest place I was at Tina Silva’s site, in the north in Lambayeca. Or at least when I was there, it was country quiet, with a beautiful view of some mountains. I felt I could live there forever. Much of the coast is irrigated agriculture or desert sands. Much of it I passed in the night on buses with the windows covered with shades or moisture. So although I have traveled pretty much coast to coast that doesn’t mean I have seen the whole coast.

I have not been in the Sierras, yet...I will in a few months.

Things I will already miss about Peru or just take home with me:

1.     Those little spoons they stir the coffee with.

2.     The crowed combi rides (combis are vans that take you almost everywhere.)

3.     Maybe even the moto-taxis (three wheeled motorcycles that take you everywhere, maybe for a slightly higher fee, but they are very convenient.)

4.     The good food. Yep, the food here is much better on average than in the U.S. Occasionally it is oh hum but only at Bembos (like McDonalds) is it worse than oh hum.

5.     Adding lime to chicken soups. Try it. It is excellent.

6.     Very few Peruvians smoke, they know it is expensive.

7.     Many of the houses here have a beautiful sense of architecture.

Things I don’t understand: Why do they start the business day at 8 or 9 when the sun sets at 6 or 6:30? They live a great deal in the dark here. Or at least my families have. When I start early morning patrol to figure out peoples’ schedules then I might learn more.

One thing I won’t miss: The traffic in Lima. At one point there are 6 lanes of traffic going into Lima. OK, I realize this is a big city and 6 lanes going into a big city should be no big deal, except this is on a one way road with only two-lanes.  Driving is a constant game of switching lanes and trying to cut other drivers off. I think everyone hates the traffic in Lima.

I have been up and down the coast of Peru since my last post. I am now in my site in Cerro Alegre in the Department of Lima, District of Cañete, an agricultural area much like Salinas. This is a nice quiet suburb with a few minimarkets, just like Fresno the Mini Markets lack fruit and vegetables, many mototaxi’s waiting to take you to Imperial, the bigger town near where there are an amazing number of little stores selling everyday items.

The nicest place I was at Tina Silva’s site, in the north in Lambayeca. Or at least when I was there, it was country quiet, with a beautiful view of some mountains. I felt I could live there forever. Much of the coast is irrigated agriculture or desert sands. Much of it I passed in the night on buses with the windows covered with shades or moisture. So although I have traveled pretty much coast to coast that doesn’t mean I have seen the whole coast.

I have not been in the Sierras, yet...I will in a few months.

Things I will already miss about Peru or just take home with me:

1.     Those little spoons they stir the coffee with.

2.     The crowed combi rides (combis are vans that take you almost everywhere.)

3.     Maybe even the moto-taxis (three wheeled motorcycles that take you everywhere, maybe for a slightly higher fee, but they are very convenient.)

4.     The good food. Yep, the food here is much better on average than in the U.S. Occasionally it is oh hum but only at Bembos (like McDonalds) is it worse than oh hum.

5.     Adding lime to chicken soups. Try it. It is excellent.

6.     Very few Peruvians smoke, they know it is expensive.

7.     Many of the houses here have a beautiful sense of architecture.

Things I don’t understand: Why do they start the business day at 8 or 9 when the sun sets at 6 or 6:30? They live a great deal in the dark here. Or at least my families have. When I start early morning patrol to figure out peoples’ schedules then I might learn more.

One thing I won’t miss: The traffic in Lima. At one point there are 6 lanes of traffic going into Lima. OK, I realize this is a big city and 6 lanes going into a big city should be no big deal, except this is on a one way road with only two-lanes.  Driving is a constant game of switching lanes and trying to cut other drivers off. I think everyone hates the traffic in Lima.

I have been up and down the coast of Peru since my last post. I am now in my site in Cerro Alegre in the Department of Lima, District of Cañete, an agricultural area much like Salinas. This is a nice quiet suburb with a few minimarkets, just like Fresno the Mini Markets lack fruit and vegetables, many mototaxi’s waiting to take you to Imperial, the bigger town near where there are an amazing number of little stores selling everyday items.

The nicest place I was at Tina Silva’s site, in the north in Lambayeca. Or at least when I was there, it was country quiet, with a beautiful view of some mountains. I felt I could live there forever. Much of the coast is irrigated agriculture or desert sands. Much of it I passed in the night on buses with the windows covered with shades or moisture. So although I have traveled pretty much coast to coast that doesn’t mean I have seen the whole coast.

I have not been in the Sierras, yet...I will in a few months.