Lago Querococha
We wanted to see the pre-Inca ruins at Chavín de Huántar so we arranged for our dependable taxi driver, Teo, pick us up and drive us over there. It is a little over 100 km and a several hour trip from Huaraz, up and over the continental divide to some of the headwaters of the Amazon. On the near (western) side at the bottom of the pass is a large lake, Querococha. The landscape was dry, as it was everywhere we went in the Huaraz area.
Well, we didn't quite go up and over — at 4500m we went through a tunnel. As soon as we got to the other side, I cracked up. There was a big road sign and a pull-out proclaiming "Zone of Selfies". Smack in front of you is a prominent hill with a huge statue of somebody standing on what looks like a building holding a cross. It's kind of a scar on the landscape, but since it was a declared zone of selfies we had to take one.
The road going down the other side of the pass was long and full of switch-backs.
Everything was going well and we were making good time, and then all of a sudden things slowed to a crawl. It turns out the region where Chavín is located was having an election, and three political parties had busses with supporters to help get out the vote. Each party had flags of a different color. There was some road construction happening at the same time, so we had one-way traffic on top of the busses. It took us at least an extra hour to get there, but we did make it eventually.
The first place we stopped was the museum, as many of the artifacts had been moved there from the ruins.
The exhibit below shows the transition from human form to animal/god form. Apparently there were a number of stages in the progression.
There were some pretty interesting ceramic bowls recovered from the ruins.
As well as other useful and decorative items.
The diety honored in ceremonies at Chavín is called the Lanzón. There are several stelae in the museum roughly 4m tall. What little research I have done implies there is one stele representing the Lanzón in the old temple at Chavín. However, images in different articles are of different stelae. It's not clear to me whether only one of them represents the Lanzón, or whether they are all different representations of the same diety. The museum contains several stelae; they originally resided inside the old temple where several galleries (tunnels) intersect.
The stelae are carved in the shape of a traditional highland agriculture digging stick, one reason it is now believed the diety was held responsible for crop fertility and a successful harvest.
We left the museum and headed into the town for a bite to eat before heading over to the actual ruins. Teo had a favorite restaurant picked out where we could try Picante de Cuy (Guinea Pig), a Peruvian delicacy. However, that was easier said than done — it was still election day, and the streets were plugged with campaigners from all parties. We took a few detours and arrived at the restaurant, which had a nice small central garden.
The actual ruins are impressive; they are still being excavated and restored. I think the sunken square in the foreground in the picture below is the main square, the area in the lower right corner of the artist's rendition; not the smaller yellow square in the artist's rendition. However, I can't get it to quite work out, as the wall behind the Central Square (the big one, not the one that makes the square itself "sunken") is missing from the artist's rendition; or else the one in the artist's rendition is too tall; or else the artist's rendition is wrong.
If you compare the photograph below with one taken much earlier before most of the restoration work was done, it appears the restoration may be closer to the way it was and the artist's rendition is wrong; or perhaps made earlier before we knew as much as we do now.
The gateway to the temple is centered in the structure, below the protective roofs in the photo above. According to the explanation on the sign at the site,
The columns and lintels of the Gateway are part of the most important iconographic ensemble at Chavín. On top of the columns notice two beings, feminine and masculine, with notable zoomorphic features and heads raised toward a black and white lintel on top of which are carved 16 falcons that converge in the center. The Portal of the Falcons was the end of a ceremonial circuit that began in the Square Plaza and next entered the high areas of Building A.
You can't make out the carvings on the columns in the image below, unfortunately.
The Chavín site is full of drainage canals. According to a sign at the site, the main canal, the Rocas Canal, carried water from the upper buildings to the adjacent Mosna River. According to the sign,
It is possible that these ducts also served as secret passageways and there is evidence that ritual objects were deposited in the canals in the form of offerings to be carried away by water.
Chavín's heyday was from 900 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E., yet the site is built using cut stone. As with later sites such as Machu Picchu, it is still a mystery as to how these people cut stone.
The smaller Circular Plaza, located to one side of the main temple, was still being restored. In the drawing below it doesn't look all that big; but note the stairs and people in the picture for perspective.
The main temples at Chavín are honeycombed with "galleries," which seem more like rectangular tunnels. In addition, there are smaller air vents connecting the various parts of the underground structure; you can feel the air moving through when you are in the galleries. The galleries are at more than one level, and some of them cross and intersect one-another. There is some speculation that the galleries served to amplify and project sound from the underground setting to ordinary people in the plazas outside worshipping the temple gods.
As with just about every ancient site in the Americas, Chavín has outlying markers lining up with the summer and winter solstice at the time of their use.
One of the features of Chavín was a series of sculptures representing human heads transforming into feline features, mounted high on the temple walls. The heads were not all the same, showing different stages of transformation. The transformation was "achieved" with hallucinogens. Only one remains on the actual structure; a few others have been removed to the museum.
After an enjoyable day, we headed back over the pass to the Lazy Dog Inn.
