Salt, Corn, and Dramatic Scale

6/19/2007

Anyone who has read a topographic map, drawn grading lines, or made a landform model from cardboard will appreciate this:

This is a 500 (or so) year old ruin called Moray (pronounced more-eye).  It is in the highlands of Peru overlooking the Sacred Valley.

The current thinking is that it was used as an experimental agricultural station.  The general landform is natural, but the Inca people created the terraces descending into the depression, each of which has a slightly different average annual temperature and humidity.  The Incas cultivated hundreds of varieties of corn and potatoes, across thousands of feet of elevation range.  Moray, apparently, re-created a mountainside, in a contained environment, so they could test new hybrids (yes, the Incas hybridized corn and potatoes 500 years ago) and experiment with irrigation techniques.  It has been restored, by local laborers, to its supposed original state.  Corn has even been replanted in the lowest rings.  The scale of this is immense (here's me in the middle),

made even more so by the walls themselves.  Were this just a cavity in the earth it would be, I think, less profound a space.  The stone "topographic lines" of the terraces tangibly etch the dramatic drop and overwhelming breadth.  My eyes could easily follow these lines and, in so doing, recognize the scope of the work performed here.

 

And speaking of scale, nearby is a salt evaporation complex in gleaming use today.  If Moray is tough to take in, Salinas is utterly jaw-dropping:

 

 

Streetscapes: Cuzco-style

6/15/2007

If anyone out there would have use of a streetscape pattern book of Cuzco, Peru, I am available to spend several months creating it.  Any takers?

 

Cuzco is a chunky city: Spanish clay brick and stucco plunked on top of Inca stone walls, red tile roofs (in various states of repair) shifting angles all over town like some high altitude Qbert video game, and streets made of dusty grey stone laid unabashedly building face to building face.  Mmm, dusty grey stone...  Sounds like, well, not something you'd want a pattern book of...  But stick with me for a minute.  This stone -- in basic iterations of regular hexagons, irregular flagging, and pebbles -- manages to be completely different on almost every street.  I spent an afternoon sketching and photographing and here are some (paltry) examples:

This is a typical flagging-and-pebble layout, which is used commonly on pedestrian streets.  This pavement goes edge to edge (see the 2nd sketch, below).  Another option (first sketch, below) combines flagging and pebbles with some tiny grade changes, to create "cart tracks" for cars and delivery trucks.

Cart tracks are pretty common in Cuzco, either on the surface (like this one, in hexagons and pebbles)....

...or because there are often drainage channels right down the middles of roads (here is one in pebbles and squares).

Below is a sketch of an example that actually has sidewalks, cart tracks, and a drain gutter all in different shapes of that same dusty grey stone.

And isn't this one of the most beautiful open trench drains you've ever seen?

So... anyone for that pattern book now?  I promise I'll keep expenses low...

 

Courtyards and Carbs.

6/11/2007

Five-year-old Mili is entertaining herself by chasing guinea pigs around the kitchen.  In the Peruvian perspective, these are "cuy," and they are not pets...

 

We are at a homestay in Chinchero, a small city on a big Inca ruin on the high plains just west of Cuzco.  The home is a study in spareness: dirt and stone floors, a dual burner propane stove for cooking, wood planks on clay bricks for chairs and counters.  It is a residential reality check.  But more than that, it is fascinating urban design.

 

Historically, Inca cities (as opposed to the palaces and agricultural complexes that tend to perch on hillsides and be far more frequently photographed), were the result of fairly well regimented city planning.  They were built on the grid system, with streets enclosing walled superblocks accessed through small doorways in the stone.  There are parts of Cuzco where this still exists, and the city of Ollantaytambo (in the Sacred Valley east of Machu Picchu) has some excellent remaining examples.  But even though Chinchero was never really an Inca city, per se (it was more of a country retreat) the superblock-courtyard idea has been handed down through time, and is expressed here in many of the residential areas of town, including the humble home in which we stayed. 

 

The streets are tight, and mostly pedestrian only.  All have a drain gutter in the middle and many have stone and concrete stairs (which we saw being painstakingly constructed by hand by women in their 60s as part of a government funded public improvement project).  Here's a typical one:

 

There are small doorways in the stone and clay-brick walls that face the street, and these doorways open into residential courtyards: open spaces around which are a series of buildings essentially backing up to the street and to adjacent residential compounds.  Perhaps it is better illustrated than described, so here is the home we stayed in, roughly:

 

All of this creates a flexible space for accommodating family functions, larger gatherings, livestock (which, yes, live quite close at hand), and the produce of the season (ceremonially, corn, potatoes, and other crops are harvested and brought into the home before going to market or to larger distributors). 

 

The evening's menu: "lomo saltado," a sauteed mix of onions and peas and fried potatoes and (yup, we did it) cuy; served with rice and bread.  And the next morning: fried potatoes and rice laid over with a fried egg.  They say carbs are supposed to be good for altitude...

 

Peru Rocks.

6/5/2007

After about 2 weeks in Cuzco and the Sacred Valley of the Incas, I have more pictures and information than anyone would possibly want to sift through.  For now: a sampling of stone.

 

This is at Sacsayhuaman (pronounced "Sexy Woman"), a ruin above Cusco.  It's basalt, and there is no mortar.

 

This is at Ollantaytambo.  These granite blocks were hauled more than 6km to the top of a hilltop overlooking the city.  Some are more than 20' tall and weigh well over 50 tons.  The knobs were for carrying the stones (yes, carrying by hand), and some were used as sundials.  Again, there's no mortar here, the stones were cut perfectly to fit.  This was built before 1530 AD.

 

This street in Cuzco (the oldest continually inhabited city in the western hemisphere) is flanked by stone walls.  On the left is the Inca wall, from the 1500s.  It has earthquake prevention measures (the lean-back of the wall and the smaller sliding stones at the base) and is tightly fitted.  On the right is a Spanish wall, from a later era.  Part of this wall just outside the picture was falling down.  A nearby postcard seller told me that the wall on the left was INCA, and the wall on the right was INCApable...

 

Here is Cuzco's famous 12-angled stone.  Remember: 1500s, no power tools...  Pretty amazing (but there is a 32-angled stone at Machu Picchu...).

 

Just below the 6000+ meter Salkantay Mountain is Apuchita Pass (4600 meters), so named for these granite cairns scattered about.  The piles (apuchitas) are built by trekkers and locals as small offerings to the mountain gods (the apus).  When we arrived here after a 800 meter, 3 hour climb, our guide built an apuchita with us and scattered flower oil over the pile, to ask for a safe journey and good weather for the remaining 3 days of our hike.  It worked.

 

Machu Picchu.  Those words tend to bring up some image of perched ruins, ancient cultures, and hordes of tourists.  Amazingly, this great Inca city manages to be simultaneously grand and intimate.  On my second day there, I found my way (accidentally) into some of the residential ruins and in the 5 minutes I wandered looking for the way back out, I heard no one, saw no one, and could see nothing but stone and grass -- despite being perched several hundred feet above a river valley and surrounded by about 3000 visitors.  I have been to no other place like this.  The image here is the Temple of the Condor.  Yes, that's a native stone outcrop built upon with blocks carved from the mountain itself.  Andean white granite.  500 years old and counting.  (Machu Picchu is currently nominated as one of the new 7 wonders of the world, along with 21 other sites.  You can vote here, but you have only about a month....)

 

Oh, they also grow a lot of corn in Peru.  Big corn.  1200 kinds of corn.  Here's Kerri sampling the fresh-out-of-the-stewpot variety in a market in Pisaq.