jwg | Entries tagged with mpei2010

On Friday afternoon I went to BGALA, the BGLT MIT alumni reception. Saw a few people I already knew from various situations including Stan Zanarotti who introduced me to a couple of people: "this is John - he was my boss for a summer ~25 years ago on the Multics project".

On Saturday morning we had the annual (22nd one) Pride brunch in City Hall. I've been one of the organizers of this (it used to be the Cambridge Lavender Alliance - political org - with the Mayor's office; now it is the GLBT Commission with the Mayor's office). I was MC + I gave a short speech outlining the work of the Commission. Among other things we gave a Recognition Award to Alice Wolf, a Cambridge state rep who is not running for reelection; she was the Mayor during the first one of these events and has been very supportive of GLBT issues in the City Council when she was a member of it and the legislature. Also we gave an award to the Mass Transgender Political Coalition for achieving passage of a Transgender Rights bill this year. An award was also given to a Cambridge High School student and we gave the Bayard Rustin award (for a person of color who has done lots of work for the GLBT community as Bayard Rustin did many years ago, to Priscilla Lee - among many other things Priscilla was a GLBT Commissioner for a few years ago.

After this we bussed down to the Pride March where we walked the route and Gays for Patsy did some two-stepping and we did some almost-Contra dancing. Ran into various people along the way.

After this we cruised around City Hall plaza for a while chatting with various people and seeing what kind of booths, I ran into the Gay Officer's Action League booth and talked to the president there about some training we are trying to get to happen in the Cambridge Fire Department.

After this we went to MIT where an ad-hoc Multics reunion was being held. There were about 15 of this there plus about 5 people on Skype. It was amusing when we got there because people (all extremely experienced software people) were having a lot of trouble getting Skype to work - and the solution was - install a new version.

And then for the evening we had our traditional Pride Dance with Dean Allemang calling to the music to Spank Me!

Today I am going to do nothing, except....

This year we went to South America twice. In March we went to the Galapagos. And in November we went to Peru primarily to go to Machu Picchu and Easter Island. Originally the Machu Picchu visit was to be after the Galapagos trip but major rain storms in Peru in January washed out the railroad and the site was closed to visitors since there was no way to get there - and Aqua Calientes, the village at the base, was flooded too. This turned out to be a boon since the Machu Picchu trip was rescheduled to November and the opportunity to go to Easter Island arose.

These were two incredible trips - both organized by Ken McFarland - the Greek Island trip in 2007 and the Tanzania trip in 2008 were his also. In March we go to Egypt on one of his trips.

Highlights of the Galapagos were blue and red footed boobies, great frigates, land and marine iguanas, tortoises and turtles, sharks, penguins, and lots more. ( A land iguana )
All my LJ postings for the Galapagos trip are here.

Highlights of the Peru trip were day-of-the dead at Lima Cemeteries, churches in Lima and Cusco, Inca structures near Cusco, and just about everything about Machu Picchu - structures, overall site, history/mystery.
( Machu Picchu )

Highlights of the Easter Island trip were the Moai, the carvings, the history/mystery too, the banana sled racing, the native dancing, our dancing, the overall ambiance, the flora, and the volcano crater.
( Seven Moai )

My LJ postings of the Peru and Easter Island trip can be found here.

Oh yes, and don't forget the Pisco Sours!

We visited a cemetery where almost all the graves were decked with flowers and some with local artifacts. In one of them there was a book to read - with the pages in the correct position for reading.

Inside the church there were lots of wood and some stone carvings. The cemetery was some distance from the church.

Click here for some pictures:

Two kinds of dancing on Easter Island. One night we went to an entertaining native dancing show. Here are a couple of fragments of what they were doing.

Then we did our own - some English Country Dancing and a couple of Contras. We danced Easter Morn but didn't do Easter Thursday because we didn't have its music.

Several fragments of English Country Dance	a fragment of a Contra

We lucked out in our timing when we heard that there was going to be Banana Sled racing one day while we were there. Contestants are decked out in body paint, almost no clothes, and sometimes feathers or other decor. There were men, women, and children who did it. The sleds are constructed from two stalks of a banana tree lashed together and the people slide down a long steep hill - usually holding their legs up in the air. I think this is only done several times a year; I don't think this was a major contest because there weren't a huge amount of spectators there. I took lots of pictures of course and a few movies. My camera isn't ideal for movies and at least once I had to scramble to get out of the way when a sled went significantly off course.

Click for pics ->

</a

There are three large, dormant volcanos on Easter Island plus several smaller ones. This one, Rana Koa, was the only one we got to see the inside of. It is a verdant spot with a lake. Some reeds - origin South America (same as are found in Lake Titicaca) - grow here and were used to make boats of varying sizes.

In the '50s and somewhat later a supply ship came to Easter Island once a year and that was the only regularly scheduled method for transport of people and goods. Now it comes once a month. This ship, Samson, was there being unloaded the whole time we were there. There is no good dock or harbor so the unloading was done onto small craft. The ship used to take away lots of wool since there were large herds of sheep on the island.

When Thor Heyerdahl went in 1955 he had to hire his own ship since he didn't to have to stay a whole year in case there wasn't much to do (that wasn't a problem of course).

Now there are 1-3 flights a day, mostly from Santiago but some from Tahiti. At the airport there was a model of an expanded facility and I suppose there will be more flights when it is built.

In addition to the large statues there is a lot of craftswork both ancient and new. Wood carvings, carvings on stone, and many artifacts found in caves - some secretly controlled by families. In Heyerdahl's book, Aku-Aku, he describes receiving lots of these artifacts and how he got to explore some caves.

Click here for some pictures of
carvings, caves, and sculptures ->

As we went to various places on Easter Island we saw various collections of Moia, some standing up and some not in very good shape. There were some in the quarry where they are made that were works in progress. I read in Aku Aku, Thor Heyerdahl's book about his trip that some of the local made some new ones using what they thought were the tools that were used. They also raised them with long wooden levers, placing rocks underneath as they got higher which is thought how they were originally done. Nobody is very sure how they were moved to their place; they were all built at the same quarry on the side of one of volcanos. The red stone TopHats came from a different quarry.

Here's one that is partially carved.

Click for pics in Flickr->

To help protect these artifacts there were some amusing signs here and there.

Click for pics in Flickr->

Easter Island is in the Pacific Ocean in the middle of nowhere. It is 2,300 miles from South America, 2,640 to Tahiti and 1,289 miles from Pitcairn Island, the nearest place. People from Peru and people from Polynesia migrated to it. There is lots of controversy among archeologists and historians as to who was really there first and who constructed and who destroyed the statues. Thor Heyerdahl was convinced that it was the Peruvians who constructed the statues because there was little evidence that Polynesians did stone construction and the Incas and other Peruvians were serious stone artisans, On the other had the concept of family and godlike images was more Polynesian. The natives had a written language with symbolic items but no-one has figured out how to read it. What a fascinating history! It is hard to imagine people in the 3rd to 10th centuries venturing such long distances and discovering and settling on this small island of about 64 square miles in size. And then they built over one thousand colossal statues which had to be moved from the quarry to their places by means not yet understood.

It is called Rapa Nui by the natives, Isla de Pascua by the Spaniards - it was named Easter Island by James Cook who "discovered it" on Easter Sunday in 1722. A late Peruvian invasion which brought smallpox and took away slaves was the main cause of loss of population. It is not a very hospitable place for agriculture and the Rapa Nuins cut down most of the trees (probably trying to turn it into farmland) which made it difficult to build new sea-going canoes which among other things were needed for fishing.

These were the first Moai that we saw:

Another view of a few of them and some more current additions.

Click here for Flickr Set ->

We climbed up to the SunGate which is the entrance to Machu Picchu from the Inca Trail and was the place where Hiram Bingham first encountered it. It is at 8,924 feet and gives a good view of the site since it is about 1,000 feet above it. The zig zag line in one of the pictures is the road that the busses use to get from Aguas Calientes to the site. The mountain on the other side is Huayna Picchu and is a bit higher. One of our group climbed it but most of us opted for the SunGate which was an easier hike. (8-9,000 feet feels a lot lower than the 11-12,000+ feet of Cusco and its surroundings).

There were a number of llamas roaming around - mostly with some identification on their ears. There were a few flowers scattered in chunks in the rocks - we saw several lizards basking in the sun and there was a rodent as well. Most of the fauna were humans. Late morning there were about 1,000 wandering about but late in the afternoon or earlier in the morning it was sparsely populated and I was able to take quite a few pictures with no people visible.

Click here for a Flickr set ->

The trip from the top of Huayna Picchu to Machu Picchu.

The Incans had no form of writing so there is no written record but what is known is based upon oral tales passed on through generations and the work of arceologists and historians.

Machu Picchu was built around 1460 by a group led by Pachuacuo Onca Yupanqui, one of the most effective Incan rulers. It is thought that it was to be a royal estate and religious retreat; it contains residences as well as various public buildings. The structures are built with granite blocks cut with stone or bronze tools and smoothed with sand. The blocks fit together well; no mortar was used. The walls slant a bit probably to make the structures more stable. They used thatched roofs and some have been reconstructed. Corn and potatoes were grown on the terraced gardens.

About 90 years later it was abandoned; perhaps because many people died from small pox but also they were trying to protect it from the Spanish invasion. It was clearly built in a hard to find and reach place that could be defended. They obliterated the trail to it when they left and the Spaniards never did find it. Some of the locals knew where it was and helped Hiram Bingham find it in 1911.

Click here to embiggen map:

A 25 sec video tour

Click here for Flickr set ->

I saw some photographs of Machu Picchu about 45 years ago and knew that I wanted to go there. Finally we did and set off on the train from Cusco on the morning of Nov 4. We were supposed to go in March after our trip to the Galapagos but severe rain storms in January washed out the railroad and closed the resort.

Here is the first view as we came in the entrance:

I must tell a side story from long ago. When I was about 12 years old I was visiting a friend in NW Connecticut at the end of the summer and the golf course needed some caddies. I went there and there these four elderly gentlemen who needed caddies. I became the caddy of one of them and he introduced himself as Hiram Bingham. I caddied for him a few days. I learned that he had been the governor of Connecticut and also a Senator; he and his friends talked about political stuff a lot. (I don't remember how well he played golf.) It was only some years later that I learned that his real fame was the discovery of Machu Picchu in 1911.

Click here for photos of the trip there->

While staying in Cusco we took several bus tours to nearby places in what is called the Sacred Valley of the Incas. There we saw some Inca structures and terracing which they used to do farming on hillsides and got some some good views of the surrounding countryside. The Incas were good architects and engineers (and astronomers). Their mortarless stone structures lasted well and some were used by the Spaniards as foundations for their buildings.

The first day was tough since we had just gotten to the higher altitude of Cusco (11,300ft) and some of these sites were even higher. Most people had trouble sleeping the first night. I could hear and feel my heart beating for hours while lying awake in bed. Another day in Cusco with nothing much happening on the first one would have been better.

Click here for a Flickr set ->

After Lima we flew to Cusco to explore it and its surroundings and then go to Machu Picchu. Cusco is the gateway to Machu Pichuu - the only way to get to Machu Picchu other than by foot is via train from Cusco.

Cusco has a long interesting history. It was headquarters for various indian tribes and in particular it and the surrounding fertile valley and hills were dominated by Incas. One of it's key leaders, Yupanqui, was strong on uniting the various tribes. (too bad he isn't around today. ) After his success he was renamed Pachakuteq Inka Yupanqui. His architects designed the city to be in the shape of a Puma. Sanctuaries were aligned with the stars. For more details see this article (veracity not confirmed). Our guide who explained lots of things (too many for some people) did not cover this. Later of course the Spaniards invaded Peru (Pissaro in 1534) and their influence is seen in many of the buildings - many of which are build on top of Inca foundations. It's interesting to think about how the Spaniards occupied the west coast of South America which required some extremely difficult traveling since you had to sail around the tip of South America which is quite treacherous.

We had several quick trips to plazas, churches, and convents in central Cusco. The main square was a couple of blocks from our hotel (it's where the bus parked to let us on or off). Cusco is a big city with a rapidly growing current population of almost 400,000 - of course that's small compared to Lima which is ~8 million. It is definitely a fascinating place and I wish we had more time to explore there.

Click here for some pictures ->

Click here for pictures
of children in the square->

On our first day in Cusco; while still attempting to adjust to the altitude (11,200 feet) we went on a bus trip into the Sacred Valley of the Incas. One of the things we did was to visit a farm near Cusco where they had alpacas, vicuñas, and llamas. They sheared them, spun and died the resulting wool and native weavers were there as well. Even in this rural setting the light bulbs were CFLs; energy conservation is big in Peru. They explained about the dying process and we got to feel all the lovely wool they had hanging there. The camelids were mostly just grazing around but there was a bit of activity as seen in this amusing scene (~45 secs):

Click for some Flickr pictures ->

In addition to all the woolwork there were other things as this:

It was still one day before the official start of the trip but many of us were there. We made a trip into Lima to visit two adjacent colossal cemeteries on the Day of the Dead where we were told there would be huge crowds - and there were. The cemeteries have many huge arrays of graves - a bit like Japanese compartment hotels - but even bigger. There were also lots of more elaborate monuments. There were many people there refreshing flowers and doing other decorations as well. Many vendors selling food and trinkets including some pretty fancy bread and candies. We saw/heard a choir.

The tour guides warned us to be careful and the many police who were present also warned us. It felt perfectly safe. There were huge crowds of people but the place was vast and there was lots of room to wander about. It was an interesting experience and we were all glad we went.

There were many of these structures and lots of people:

Click here for Flickr set ->

The choir and a bit of view (47 sec)

In Lima there are a lot of taxis made from 3-wheel motor cycles with some flashy decoration. When we went in to join the crowds at the cemetery there were lots of them milling around.

A short video showing a line of them.

We arrived in Lima late in night (2 am) and after getting our luggage and clearing customs and immigration went to the hotel which was right there. The next morning we, Ken McFarland who is the trip organizer, and Ralph and Ka7 who were the other two people who arrived several days early went into Lima to the Museo de la Nación. It is one of thew archeological museums in Lima and had some pretty terrific of ceramics made by Moche, Wari, and Nasca people who lived in various regions of Peru in the first millenium.

Here is a Flickr album of a bunch of them.

I thought this picture particularly striking. It is someone typing up a list of the order that bodies will be picked up after a massacre by the Shining Path that occurred on Dec 3, 1989 in the town of Orurillo.

The museum itself is a big modern concrete mass (too bad since there are some really nice buildings in Lima) but the inside has some interesting views. Here is one.

We're back from a most fabulous trip to Peru and Chile. It was even better than I expected and my expectations were high. I need to work on pictures by selecting a few from the ~1600 I took for some detailed postings but here is a quick summary

- In Lima we toured several cemeteries which were jam packed with people honoring the graves and enjoying themselves on the Day of the Dead and some some historical buildings in the center of town.

- In Cusco and its surrounding area we visited some of the best of the Spanish colonial architecture and some Inca structures.

- In Machu Picchu we spent many hours wandering about the ruins and climbing to the Sun Gate which is where hikers on the Inca Trail get their first view.

- On Easter Island we saw many many Moia including some under construction and some in bad shape.

- We learned a lot about Inca and Rapa Nui history and culture from our two well informed and personable guides.

I've wanted to go to Machu Picchu for a very long time. We were supposed to go in March but heavy rains washed out the railroad so this was the postponed trip which was augmented by a trip to Easter Island. We probably got better weather in Machu Picchu now than in March. The weather was quite good. It was cloudy in Lima (it apparently always is) and there were occasional rain showers elsewhere but they all occurred at night or when we were in a bus traveling to another spot.

Cusco is at 11,300 ft and a bit higher nearby which presented a bit of a challenge to many of us; but everyone did OK, with struggling up stairways and lots of fast pulse rates. Sleeping the first night in Cusco was a challenge.