Hidden Treasures
One thing the guide did get right, was that by staying overnight in Chavín, we were guaranteed to have the site to ourselves, provided we got there early. So we rose early(ish) and took our included breakfast, a basic meal of bread, jam, and juice, before packing our things and heading to the ruins. The hotel owner let us keep our bags locked up in the room until we were due to leave later in the afternoon.
We arrived at the ruins before they’d opened. The small site museum filled fifteen minutes, but the most interesting finds of this site are either in the national museum in Lima, or still buried within the site. We were the first ones through the gate, getting in even before the locals had a chance to set up their drink, food and souvenir stands. From the entrance, the place looked like a rocky paddock, with some walls of stone visible up the end. A few Llamas wandered about the site grazing, but were wary of people. I wondered if perhaps the site wasn’t what it had been cracked up to be.
As we wandered along the trail, there was little to see aside from large piles of rocks, and mounds that appeared to be mostly unexcavated areas of the site. The guidebook tells me there was a landslide here in the fifties that buried the place. The path rambled through undulating piles of rock and earth, and I’m sure that had we hired the living guide at the entrance, there would’ve been a story about this part of the ruins. It wasn’t until we emerged onto the main plaza, a symmetrical square flanked on three sides with imposing stone monuments, that we got to see the impressive nature of Chavín.
As much as I liked the ancient grasp of geometry, the site itself is fairly extensively damaged by time and shifts in the surrounding topography (see above re: landslides). Seeing renderings of what the site would’ve been like in its heyday helped to bring it to life to a degree, but the truly impressive aspects of it lay underneath the battered exterior. We descended the steep steps into the bowels of the main temple—El Galería de Los Laberintos—and found ourselves in a close network of corridors, the dense stone walls shone an ash grey under the dim electric lights, slung together between the old stone cantilevers that must’ve held candles or something similar originally.
In one chamber, there is a narrow viewing window to the large stone totem still entombed in the structure. There’s only room for one, and judging by some of the tourists we saw, not even that, so already we were grateful to have the site to ourselves. The outer walls were punctured with numerous ventilation shafts that almost always sloped down to the outside, and on each, the cool draft of air flowing into the bowels of the structure was clearly identifiable.
The ventilation tunnels seem to have been nothing more than to keep people alive when they were inside, as they didn’t prevent the smell of decay and the cool damp of earth and rock from being a constant presence. The corridors ran on in various directions, branching off into dead-ends or small rooms, many of them interlinked by small, midget-sized portals for only the diminutive members of the community to escape through. Along several corridors the electric lights ran out and darkness stepped in, and it was clear that large chunks of the site are either out of bounds for the casual visitor, or there’s still a lot of it left to be uncovered.
I should point out here, that Chavín is actually over three kilometres above sea level, so the air is a little rarefied to begin with. Add to the mix the congested, stagnant air of the interior of these large monuments, and it became harder and harder to breath. On exiting the labyrinth, by far the most expansive of the available chambers, we snooped in a few more before making our way down to the back corner where the last of the carved stone heads—which once ringed the outer wall of the building—remains partially intact. The rest of the heads have been removed by treasure hunters or archaeologists (sometimes there’s no difference), and now reside in a limited number of museums and private collections.
It was only at this point, that we began to have contact with other tourists, who had either elected not to enter the labyrinth, or who had started along the circuit in the wrong direction. We exited the complex and walked back into town. The stall operators were now mostly set up for the approaching influx of tourists, by now probably starting the descent from the Cahuish tunnel, and the inhabitants of the town were either preparing for their daily bread, or were going into hiding.
We collected our bags (the chicken shit had now largely faded) and went to the market end of the plaza to see if we could find a colectivo (group taxi) to take us back to Huaraz. Being so early in the day, only a handful of colectivos and taxis were even there, and after a bit of haggling, we got a taxi driver to agree to take us back to Huaraz. The deal was that for a reduced price of ninety soles (AUD$30) we would go as a taxi, rather than a colectivo, but the driver reserved the right to pick up any new passengers along the way as he saw fit. The drive up the mountain was no different than the tumble down it the day before, except this time I was more conscious of the large rocks, and points where the road became more of a goat track than a major thoroughfare. Further along the path, towards the Cahuish tunnel, we were to come upon semi-trailers towing loads down the side of the mountain, and I wondered how they would manage with the broken roads further down.
On the way into town the previous day, there were few tourist buses coming back up the valley (most were still in the town at that point), but when we were only 30 minutes into our exit journey, we passed the first of the day’s buses on the controlled fall into the valley. Along the way, we asked the driver to stop at various points so we could take photographs, and as we snaked back up the valley I noticed more of the blackened apertures in the side of the mountains. I was sure they weren’t homes like the subterranean ones we’d seen in Spain (too small). Eventually we asked the driver, and he said they were coal mines.
Not long after that, we turned a corner and I saw a man, his face and clothes black and his eyes two white moons looking down at us as we passed by, as he scaled the debris strewn path from the road up into the narrow tunnel that formed his workplace. He’d have been a great photo model, if only I’d had a model release, I’d have stopped there and tried to get him to do some photos for me (paid of course).
We stopped at the Cahuish tunnel and took photos of the large marble statue the Italians built, then descended (a little too) rapidly down the other side towards Carac, and beyond that, Huaraz. We stopped at Laguna Querococha, where for a few soles, I got to photograph a local campesino woman and her child. I was told afterwards that the five soles (AUD$2) I paid her was far more than she would normally be paid for the privilege of taking her picture. I can’t say that gave me any discomfort—given how hard the life up there must be.
We headed down the valley at speeds greater than gravity intended, and it turned out the taxi driver was also a huge fan of Tecnocumbia. How fortunate for us. Now we’re pin-balling along the valley with nausea AND headaches.
As the valley plunged seaward it widened, eventually merging into a much larger valley that would take us to Huaraz. Here, the landscape reminded me in ways of Spain. The valley was broad, walled on all sides by higher peaks, but in the middle it was rolling hills, open paddocks of crops and largely deciduous trees (where they existed). The peaks of the Cordillera Blanca were obscured by cloud for the most part, but on occasion would clear enough for a jagged white mass to emerge on the horizon, reminding me that we definitely weren’t in Spain.
We arrived in central Huaraz in the early afternoon. The driver had found no suitable passengers to augment his fare but didn’t seem overly concerned, as no sooner did he get us out of the car than he had a new prospective customer haggling a price with him for his next fare. From there we caught a local cab up to Steel Guest House, a moderately priced bed and breakfast perched well up the side of the valley that looked out over much of the city. It was a little far from the city centre, but the rooms were comfortable, and our room had a view of some of the show-ponies of the Cordillera Blanca, and the roof-top gave an unimpeded view of the whole range. We didn’t really take the opportunity to appreciate them though, as after the previous night’s sleep, walking in the ruins and subsequent trip home we were trapo, and went straight to bed, not waking again until the day was almost over.