Field Report

West Coast of South America
October 8 - 27, 2013
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Quito, Ecuador
Wherever you were coming from, or where your flight originated, it’s a
safe bet that when your plane made its descent into Quito, it didn’t have to
descend as far as it originally climbed. This is because Quito sits at 9,350
feet, on the lower slopes of the volcano Pichincha. If you were near a window during that descent, your first image of Quito was of a whitewashed
colonial-style city with few tall buildings, sprawling across emerald green
slopes and canyons.
It is not only one of the highest capital cities, but also the oldest South
American capital; it has the best preserved colonial district; and it was one
of the first UNESCO World Heritage Site. We walked around the balconied
old town, stopping in richly ornamented and gilded churches.
Another image I came away with could serve as an emblem for not only
our days in Quito, but for the entire trip—a cluster of ancient and elegant
towers belonging to various historic churches, rising against the backdrop
of snow-covered Andean volcanoes and a clear sky, shading to indigo.
Thursday, October 10
Quito / Guayaquíl / Salinas /
Embark Sea Adventurer
Anyone who has had a younger sibling who eventually outgrew them—
who has watched their sibling start out as a tiny infant but then grow and
grow, until that gut-wrenching day when they realize their sibling is actually bigger and taller than they are—anyone who has had that experience
can appreciate what Quiteňos feel when they look toward Guayaquíl.
Guayaquíl is but a young upstart, having been founded at its present location only in 1537. But its growth has outpaced the old capital, and though
it remains the seat of government and culture, Guayaquíl is the port of
commerce and the economic engine for the country. And yes, there is a
distinct rivalry between the two.
We hope that Quito did not mind too much when we departed, or feel
jealous when we admired Guayaquíl’s iguana-draped parks and enjoyed
a drive along the lively Malecón waterfront. Or even when we dove into
a tasty lunch in a historic restaurant (with an equally historic saxophone
player). But after all, ours was a seagoing expedition, and the Sea Adventurer
rode at anchor awaiting us, and, well, Quito just doesn’t have an ocean.
Friday & Saturday, October 11 & 12
At Sea / Salaverry, Peru / Chan Chán
Who ever heard of Salaverry? Or Chan Chán? Or Trujillo, for that matter?
And yet two times in history, this area was the seat of great civilizations.
Two different great civilizations. And today we went to see the traces they
left behind.
The first we encountered was the Chimu people, who flourished from around
1100-1470. Their capital, known as Chan Chán, was the largest city ever in
pre-Columbian America. Today it is a sprawling edifice of adobe and mud
plaster, with rooms, plazas, and monuments artfully arranged.
Long before the Chimu people, came the Moche. From their heyday between
100 and 700 a.d., they left us the huge ruins called the Temple of the Sun
and of the Moon, although there is no evidence the Chimu thought of them
that way. They are massive structures, one built into the side of a hill, the
other an artificial hill in itself, with tremendous and elaborate frescoes.
After viewing all the above ruins, we decamped to a nearby hacienda for
lunch, a display of Peruvian horses and dancing, and a Pisco sour. And for
me, my head spinning as I tried to comprehend the fullness of time and the
vastness of the earth, and how not one but two mighty societies could vanish
into the sand of this desert, that Pisco came just in time.
Sunday, October 13
Lima
Lima is a big city, by far the biggest we would encounter. The reason people
come to big cities is to have options and opportunities; and so it was for us.
We arrived at Callao, the storied and once pirate-haunted port for the great
city, and diverged on our various missions. Those who wanted to experience
the ancient history of the area went to Pueblo Libre with our archaeologist,
Hector Williams, and visited the private Rafael Larco Herrera Museum,
housed in an 18th-century mansion built over a 7th-century pre-Columbian
pyramid, and displaying 3,000 years of ancient Peruvian art and artifacts.
Those who were interested in the colonial period of Peru’s history went on
the Colonial Sites Excursion, strolled through the gorgeous Plaza de Armas,
examined the Casa Aliaga, and delved into the dark catacombs beneath the
monastery of San Francisco.
And the birders, well, they went out and saw birds. At a place called Pantanos
de Villa, and they reported the findings excellent.
All of us got back barely in time for the ship to sail…because when you
have opportunities like these, you have to milk them for all they’re worth.
Monday, October 14
Pisco / Paracas National Reserve / Nazca Lines
I remember as a kid lying on the floor in front of the TV, my eyes glued to
a fascinating documentary special, narrated by Rod Serling, called Chariots
of the Gods. Among many pieces of pseudo-scientific evidence the program
advanced to “prove” its claim that “ancient astronauts” had visited Earth,
one stood out as the most compelling and convincing. And today, after all
these years, we saw that evidence firsthand—the Nazca Lines.
Actually, not all of us saw it, since some chose instead to visit an ancient
Inca roadhouse called Tambo Colorado. No ancient astronauts have been
known to visit there. And some of us couldn’t go directly for our flights to
the Lines, since the air service’s equipment was limited. In the meantime we
drove out onto the Paracas Peninsula, a beautiful place, but as barren and
lifeless as the moon, or, perhaps, as the aliens’ home world.
For those who did fly over the Lines, the most astonishing thing about the
gigantic spidery drawings in the desert was the fact that they cannot be
recognized as coherent figures from the ground—you must be able to fly
to comprehend them. And for those who remember Chariots, they remain a
fascinating enigma and a symbol of the mystery that still remains in the world.
Tuesday & Wednesday,
October 15 & 16
At Sea / Arica, Chile
When you arrive in Arica, you know you
are in the desert. The driest desert on
earth, in fact—the Atacama. The hills are
sere and brown, the sky is clear and blue,
the sun is sharp and bright, and the air is
warm and devoid of the slightest thought
of humidity. It is not a place where people
should live.
And yet people have lived here for a very
long time. The city was built on a preColumbian site, and a few of the former
residents remained behind—in the form
of some strikingly well-preserved mummies, as now housed in the Museo de
San Miguel.
What made (and still makes) life possible
here is a concentration of living energy
around the margins of the town, all of it
made possible by the presence of water.
Water flows down from the Andes and
enlivens the fertile Azapa Valley, which
would otherwise be as lifeless as the
El Morro headland that looms over the
town.
Our birders found the delta of the river
teeming with life. Ocean water, specifically the nutrient-rich Humboldt Current,
is another source of biological productivity, and of the town’s current prosperity. Of all the ways that nature bestows
its bounty on humankind, perhaps water
in the desert is the most manifest.
Thursday, October 17
Arica / Lauca National Park
We awoke on this long-awaited morning still in
Arica, anticipating a day of drama. And we were
not to be disappointed. We set out early (the birders at 0430!) and drove toward the Andes. This
part of the West Coast of South America is a thin
strip of seashore and desert, a mere fringe of land
fenced off from the rest of the continent by the
towering ridge of the longest and second highest
mountain range on earth. Today we would ascend
to those heights, to the high altiplano of Lauca
National Park. In other words, from the coast to
over 15,000 feet—all in the course of a morning.
It was a punishing experience for some, but the
rewards were many. Strangely, we started in fog,
then burst into clear, clean Andean air. We made
several stops at an old church, an Inca fortress
that once guarded the pass, a tiny white-stone
high-altitude town, a boardwalk that led us to a
colony of odd high country animals called vizcachas, and viewpoints revealing, of all things,
flamingos.
It was breathtaking—literally. At last, gasping
with amazement, or maybe just for air, we reached
our goal: Lauca’s Lago Chungará, a large lake
speckled with Andean waterfowl. The perfect
cone of majestic Parinacota presided over the
scene, allowing itself to be reflected in the lake.
Then we turned and descended, switchback after
hairpin turn, down and down, falling like an
arrow from the sky, until we reached the coast
again and our comfortable ship. Drama is all
very well during the day, but it’s best to leave it
behind when night comes.
Friday, October 18
Iquique / Calama / San Pedro de Atacama
Deserts are an acquired taste. Everyone, it seems, enjoys a rocky seacoast
or a field of flowers. But deserts are so definitively inhospitable and
lifeless that not many can relate to them. Nevertheless, with a sense of
anticipation or morbid fascination, most of us packed our bags and flew
today into the heart of the most deserty desert on earth.
We landed in the major mining town of Calama and had time to visit the
old church at Chiu Chiu and the Inca fortress of Pukara de Lasana before
driving into the even higher and drier region of San Pedro de Atacama.
We had lunch at our hotel and then strolled to the Plaza Principal and the
Archaeological Museum. We spent the rest of the day on the moon—or
at least in the Earth’s closest equivalent, a place aptly called the Valley
of the Moon. The Valley is a wrinkle in the earth’s crust, a desert landscape just as otherworldly as its namesake, but much more colorful, and
at least as dramatic. Especially when the real moon, in a ridiculously
appropriate gesture, full and round on this night of all nights, rose from
directly behind Licancabur Volcano…as we watched, spellbound, from
the top of an enormous sand dune. At that moment, if you did not acquire a
taste for deserts, well, you never will.
Saturday, October 19
San Pedro de Atacama / Antofagasta
In the desert, water is life. This is something we all know
intellectually, but today provided a graphic, visceral demonstration.
San Pedro de Atacama, where we awoke, is an oasis, a
place where some vast underground sheet of water flowing down from the mountains breaks the surface. So the
pretty adobe town has trees and flowers and a few birds.
But look beyond the edge of the settlement, and you look
out across a lifeless wasteland extending to the summits
of the Andes, or to the next oasis. We set out to visit two
of these.
The first is known as Lago Chaxa, and was perhaps the
strangest lake any of us had ever seen. It was hundreds
of yards wide and about a foot deep, and several times
saltier than seawater—we crossed miles of salt flats to get
there—and full of flamingos. Yes, flamingos. Sure, we
all expected to see them, but still, the sight of giant pink
birds in a salt flat in the high mountains was a little startling. What’s more, we soon realized that we were seeing
three species—Chilean, Andean, and Puna.
In fact, the whole lake was teeming with life. Besides the
flamingos, there were Andean avocets, Baird’s sandpipers,
Wilson’s phalaropes, olive-backed mice, and orangebellied Fabian’s lizards.
Before returning to San Pedro to start our drive down to
the coast, we stopped at the village of Tocanao. Its church
and bell tower dated from the 1600s, and featured cactuswood trim. The line of willows and tamarugos along the
edge of town announced the remarkable presence of running water. It drove home the point that in the Atacama,
where there’s water, there’s life, and where there’s life,
there’s water. You do not find one without the other.
Sunday, October 20
Isla Pan de Azúcar
It was as though we were traveling through
some vast outdoor Ripley’s Believe It Or Not
Museum. What could possibly be more amazing
to find in this region of scorching desert and
arid mountains than flamingos? Well, the only
thing you could conceivably name would be
penguins. And lo and behold, here they were.
Multitudes of penguins, scampering down the
shore or sitting on their “front porches” in front
of their burrows. These were Humboldt penguins,
the most northerly species in the world barring
their close relatives in the Galápagos.
We were cruising in our Zodiacs around an
island called Pan de Azúcar. The island got
its name, which means “Sugar Loaf”, from its
blinding white color, and it got its white color
from the guano produced by its many avian
residents. Besides the penguins, these included
Peruvian boobies, red-legged cormorants, and
the eponymous guanay cormorant.
And while we were looking across at the
penguins and up at the cormorants, quick and
sinuous movement from the water’s surface
attracted our attention. Pan de Azúcar, it turns
out, also hosts a population of the seldom seen
South American marine otter, one of only two
maritime species in the world, along with the
northern sea otter. We watched these rare and
elusive creatures swim in the kelp, dive, climb
out on rocks, and even eat pieces of crabs
they’d caught. Unheard-of, never-before-seen
photographs were taken.
This coast had amazed us yet again.
Monday, October 21
Islotes Pajaros / Coquimbo /
La Serena
For a strange, brief period in the early 20th century,
the excrement of certain seabirds was one of the
most valuable materials on earth. The world was
starving for nitrogen, and the only source of it was
guano of various kinds. Large-scale agriculture
had come to depend on it, and without it there
would be massive crop failures. At the same time,
WWI loomed on the horizon, and nations were
building stocks of munitions, and nitrogen puts
the “N” in “TNT.” Guano is the only substance
ever to be in demand simultaneously for the preservation and destruction of human life.
It was then that the attention of the world focused
on places like Islotes Pajaros. The evidence of that
attention was visible to us on our Zodiac cruise in
the form of white-coated ruins, all that was left of
the once huge guano mining operation.
We also found, on this larger island, the same wild
profusion of life as the day before: Humboldt penguins, three species of cormorant, boobies, pelicans,
and also a real sea lion rookery (as opposed to the
haul-out we had seen previously).
The river of wealth produced by the guano flowed
through the nearby port of Coquimbo and its sister
city of La Serena, a lovely place that we visited in
the afternoon. These towns benefitted enormously
from the mining operations, operations which
must’ve been devastating for the birds and seals
that lived on Pajaros. What does it say about us
that we might value the effluent of a creature more
than the creatures themselves?
Tuesday & Wednesday, October 22 & 23
At Sea
Quo me cunque rapit tempestas, deforor hospes.
“For as the tempest drives, so I shape my course.”
This ancient saying, quoted by Boswell as a motto of Dr.
Jonson’s, could be the motto for all expedition travel, and the
saying of the day for us. But we faced a tempest not of wind,
but of bureaucracy.
It seems there had been a small plane crash in the ocean somewhere near Isla Mocha, our intended destination, some weeks
before. An intensive search by the Chilean military had proven
fruitless. Meanwhile, the eyes of the nation and its news media
had been singularly focused on this remote and normally disregarded area—to the point that the president of Chile found it
expedient to schedule a visit to Mocha. And he chose the very
day that we were supposed to be there. So our permission to
land was summarily revoked.
Next we set our sights on the nearest island down the coast,
Santa Maria; but the military denied us landing permission at
the last minute.
So we toodled over to the mainland, hoping to land at a town
called Lota. We asked for the blessing of the harbormaster…
who passed our request on to the local Coast Guard commander…
who bumped it back over to the municipality. These entities
continued to bounce our humble request back and forth like a
volleyball, none of them willing to make a decision…until we
ran out of time and had to sail for our next destination.
We could console ourselves with the fact there were worse
places to be than on this wildlife-rich ocean with an able
lecture team—and, as we learned at that night’s Liar’s Club
contest, a hilariously disingenuous one. And also with the fact
that we had been witnesses to a classic demonstration of South
American bureaucratic paralysis.
Thursday, October 24
Valdivia
There seems to be almost a rule on this itinerary
that the more violent a history a place has had,
the more peaceful and charming it is today.
Pedro de Valdivia, ruthless conqueror of what
is now Chile, waged a brutal campaign against
the native people of the area, particularly the
fierce Mapuche tribes—until he was captured
and executed by a Mapuche chief.
Today, the town founded by him and bears his
name is a pleasant regional center. It is a city
graced by rivers; our ship anchored in one,
and we landed by Zodiac on the bank. Then as
you drive into town, if you’re not crossing one
river, you’re driving along the bank of another.
Valdivia also boasts a fine botanical garden
with many native trees, and many in full
spring bloom when we were there, plus an
ancient clay fortress (Torreon de Barro), a great
museum, a fascinating fish market with many
edible oddities, and, treasure of treasures, a
renowned chocolate factory. We did all of it.
As we made ready to leave the Hotel Villa del
Rio, where we had lunch, we got word that
student demonstrators had blocked off the
bridge we needed to cross to get back to the
landing. They were protesting the high cost
and poor funding of education in Chile. So we
hung out at the hotel a while longer.
In the end, the incident afforded us only a
slight delay. But it did provide us an indication
that the old Mapuche spirit of rebellion is not
entirely dead. Fortunately, however, Pedro de
Valdivia is.
Friday, October 25
Chiloé Island
Chiloé Island has always been a world unto
itself, as any Chilean will tell you. As movements
toward national independence swept through
Latin America in the early 19th century, the
Spanish Crown lost more and more ground.
Finally the royalists were left with just one
spot—Chiloé. The town of Ancud, where we
landed, overlooked the strategic strait leading
to the Gulf of Corcovado, and the fortress of
San Antonio felt the thud of many cannonballs.
Chiloé has always had its own distinctive culture. Chilotes (island residents) still believe in
a unique set of myths and spirits, some helpful,
some malicious, but all their own. Our program
for the afternoon was to hunt one of those
spirits.
The goddess in question was the voluptuous
mermaid called Pincoya. We found a big statue
of her in Ancud, and another representation in
Dalcahue, where we drove for lunch. But the
manifestation that interested us at present was
a small seabird that bears her name, the Pincoya
storm petrel. That name had been given to the
bird only very recently by its discoverer and
designator, our own Peter Harrison, world seabird expert.
Surely Pincoya, honored by Peter’s application
of her name, had invested the bird with her true
spirit. Which might explain why it proved so
difficult to find. For in the legends, Pincoya is
the sort of being who, the harder you seek for
her, the more elusive she becomes.
Saturday, October 26
Puerto Montt / Lake District /
Disembark
At last the hour had come when we had to leave our
floating home behind. But standing on the shore in
Puerto Montt, you have wondered if something had
gone terribly wrong—were we disembarking in southern Chile or at some lake port in the Swiss Alps? For
many of the place names, the surnames of the people,
and even the items on menus in the restaurants were
distinctly German, and the scenery consisted of
Germanic-looking mountains and a profusion of lakes
scattered over the forested landscape. Our short drive
to Puerto Varas offered no reassurance, for that town
was even more European, its architecture and surroundings straight out of the Black Forest.
Not to worry. We were still in Chile, but in the region
known as the Lake District, which, owing to its
resemblance to parts of the Alps, had received huge
waves of German and Swiss colonists in the 19th
century.
It was the icing on the cake—a cake of many, many
layers. Most itineraries take you to see one single
specific environment. We had started this journey
in the equatorial cloud forest; had embarked the ship
in the humid tropics; had sailed through temperate
seas and into the driest desert on earth; had ventured
up into the High Andes; and now found ourselves
in a temperate rain forest, on the verge of a colder,
Antarctic-influenced climate zone. It was truly a huge
breadth of environments to experience on one trip
down one coast.
What true travelers collect and horde is not gold
but experiences, and the West Coast of South America
has been a treasure trove.
Mike Messick
Lynne Greig
Ellen McIlvaine
Kevin Clement
Jack Grove
Peter Harrison
Shirley Metz
John Buchanan
Mike Moore
Rick Price
Photo log text by: Kevin Clement
Photography by: John Buchanan, Mike Moore, Gary
Krosin, Jack Grove, Shirley Metz, and Einar Gall
Hector Williams
John Yersin
This photo log has been produced by Zegrahm Expeditions and is the property of Zegrahm Expeditions. Any unauthorized use of images included is
hereby prohibited.