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Pachacamac
Entry 22 of 49 | show all | print this entry |
Finally I found time to write all the postcards (the first issue) and send them. Since Lima wasn't my cup of tea (well, I saw only the centre, there are also other quarters like Miraflores or San Isidro which should be OK) I decided to leave after the first night. I went by the public transport through the Lima city - it was sooo bad. Right now I can't find any proper comparison to describe the situation in the streets, but sometimes there were like only 5cm of space around every bus and every car. When I got into the bus, I asked the driver to drop me on the place where the buses to Pachacamac leave from. He wasn't really friendly, but mumbled something about 20 minutes. Well, it was one hour in the overcrowded bus :( Then we got to the old Panamerican Highway from where I went in a colectivo up to the Pachacamac.
Pachacamac is a complex of temples, pyramids and other buildings which are older than 1500 years. Its name means something like "Creator of the Earth". When Hernando Pizarro conquested the main temple he was so disappointed because he didn't find any gold, but a wooden figure of the demigod and oracle Pachacamac.
I was also disappointed when I got up to the Temple of the Sun, the highest point from which you could normally see the coastline and two islands. Unfortunately there was so thick fog, that I could only guess where there is the ocean. There is a legend about these islands:
Once upon the time there was a beauteous virgin who didn't want to cross her legs with any of the huacas (Well, I thought that a huaca was something like a temple, but even the english version of this legend uses the word huaca for some guys or whatever). Let's call the virgin Maria, 'cause I forgot her right name. One of the huacas, let's call him Jose, was so smart that he changed himself into a bird, threw his male germs on a lucuma fruit and dropped the fruit on the ground while Maria was sitting under a lucuma tree. She ate the fruit and - became pregnant and after nine months gave birth to a baby... Nobody, not even Maria, knew who the father was. When the baby started to crawl, Maria thought maybe the child could recognize its father and invited all huacas to a session where the baby could find its father. Because Maria was incredibly beautiful, all the huacas put on their best clothes, full of gold, to impress Maria - only Jose dressed himself like a begger. Just in short: as you might've expected, the baby crawled to Jose, but Maria didn't like him. "I am not gonna live with a begger!" said Maria, took her child and walk away. And then Jose changed himself into a beautiful man, all in gold and spoke to her: "Look at me now, this is right me". But Maria didn't even turn back "I'd rather disappear than that!!" shouted she... and when the sea touched her feet she and her child changed into these islands. And since then you can (if there is no foggy weather) see two island looking like two persons close to the Pachacamac coast.
After the Pachacamac tour I went to Pisco, several hours south of Lima. In Pisco I bought a tour to Islas Ballestas (which are also called the Galapagos for the poor people) and to the Paracas preserve.
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