June 7 - Chavin de Huantar

The bus with 14 passengers picked us up today and we were pleased to see that we had the same guide that we had the day before. Nilda is very knowlegible about the area as well as being very simpatica.

The way to Chavin took us north along the excelent road we came in on from Barranca Sunday. At Catac, a small farming community, we turned east toward the Cordillera Blanca. The road was terrible, with huge potholes and patches of deteriorated or deteriorating blacktop.
The view was a feast for the eyes. A high intermountain plateau swept up toward the Cordillera Blanca with a dozen high snow capped peaks stretching off to the north toward Huascaran.

After suffering for an hour and a half on the road, we reached the high point of the trip, the Cahuish Tunnel  (14,816 feet). Passing through it, we left the Pacific watershed and entered the watershed which feeds the Amazon basin. Almost immediately, we noticed ever increasing greenery as we dropped down into the Chavin watershed. Patchwork farms appeared on the hillsides with villages in the valleys.

In about another hour and a half from the tunnel, we rolled into the town of Chavin. David, as well as Elena and I had visited the town and site before, David in 1968 and we in 1977. The town certainly had changed. Most of the houses had a relatively new coat of paint and there were some decent hotels as well as restaurants. In addition, a beautiful new museum financed by the Japanese Embassy had been built.
Neither David nor I could remember much about the Chavin ruins except the tunnel leading to the famous "Lanzon", the stone representation of the Chavin cosmos, which was at the end of a narrow tunnel under part of the piramid complex.

The Chavin culture flourished about 900 BC and served as a theocratic center for the Chavin culture. It appears to have been a pilgrimage center to which people from far and wide came to bring tribute and hear predictions from the priests that could effect planting and harvest seasons. The culture flourished for 900 years and, even after it passed into history, the culture´s influence remained strong in subsequent Peruvian cultures.

The piramids and the stone courtyard are very impressive.

This is the entrance to the biggest piramid.To the left the white stones represent the male side of the duality and the right the female.

In a tunnel under the complex.

Pieces in the new museum.

Others views of the town of Chavin.

Our guide, Nilda, and the Raimundi Stone which details the Chavin world view.

This stone was looted from the site many years ago and was found being used as a table in the house of a local land owner with the bas relief side down. Raimundi, a lunch guest at the home of the land owner, lacking a napkin, wiped his hand on the underside of the "table" and discovered the bas relief. Thus, the world recovered a priceless archeological piece.