To Speak of Cabanaconde

i am a little bit unsure of how to handle the remaining months of updates. i haven’t written a real update in almost three weeks… and those three weeks have perhaps been the densest, perhaps been the most intense, perhaps been the most emotionally charged, perhaps been the most remote, perhaps been the most detailed, perhaps been the most elaborate weeks of my trip to this point.

So obviously i would be a great fool to try to pack everything from those weeks into one update.

i think how i am going to try to manage this, then, is to write my updates in dual. i will describe the present as i have sought to do since the beginning of my trip… but also i will break my three weeks down into a series of miniature photo essays describing stories, which will perhaps leave out a few of the more aesthetically pleasing pictures, in order to at least provide a glimpse of some of the experiences that i have met.

i am a compulsive disclaim-er. So i would not be myself if i did not disclaim the next indefinite number of posts obsessively.

You will likely find some very large holes in some of my photo essays. i warn you beforehand… there will be a photo essay over the bullfight in Choco on June 28… but there won’t be any pictures of bullfighting. These three weeks have demanded a lot of me… i dare say more emotionally than physically… and so as a result my photography became tremendously volatile. Some days i took pictures that i number as among my best with surprising frequency. Other days… i couldn’t even look at my camera. So expect a lot of variation in quality.

And expect perhaps a slightly volatile writing style. i am still trying to get my mind around the past three weeks… and not doing such a good job of it. So if i sound a little bit bipolar at times… well… please be patient with me. Perhaps as weeks and months provide a buffer of experience and perspective to separate me from the blinding intensity of the moment i will acquire a more balanced and fair and realistic and consistent vision of what my time in Cabanaconde, Choco, Mina, Chachas, and Andagua held for me.

And obviously… don’t assume that i am writing an exhaustive account of what happened over the past three weeks. In fact… don’t assume that i’m hitting the important points or the high points. i tell you beforehand… i’m not going to. The most significant moments are probably those that i will fail to mention altogether. This will merely be an account of a few experiences that were typical of life over the three weeks that i was gone from the outside world…

But of course to say that these experiences were typical of life over those three weeks really doesn’t mean anything at all. All that it means is that these experiences are what i want you to think that life was like. i took enough pictures (around 2,150) that i could paint these three weeks in whatever way i want. And it is impossible for me to present anything without painting these three weeks in some light or another. So if you want a more holistic view of how these three weeks have been—or how the trip in general ends up—i’m afraid that you’ll just have to buy me coffee on an afternoon or evening when you have a few free hours and let me tell you my impressions in person.

Am i shameless? i think that i am. But i’m completely not kidding. i will definitely talk about my trip and show pictures at the cost of some coffee. No matter who you are.

So after that brief (hahahaha…) disclaimer… i suppose i’ll actually update you as to what has happened since my last update.

i’ll give the very quick overview of the past three weeks of my life for those who have no idea whatsoever about what it is that i am talking.

i suppose that i will start on Saturday, June 21 in Arequipa. i caught a six hour bus to the town of Cabanaconde on one side of the Colca Canyon. Then i caught a two hour truck to the bottom of the Colca Canyon. Then i backpacked to a village called Choco, where i lived for eight days. Then i trekked to a village called Mina, where i lived for a day and a half. Then i trekked over two high passes to the village of Chachas, with a brief hitchhiking detour. Then i hitchhiked to the town of Andagua. Then i caught a 10 hour bus to Arequipa. i spent the day in Arequipa before catching a 15 hour bus to Lima. i then caught a 10 hour bus to Trujillo. i then caught a 7 hour bus to Huamachuco. That is where i am now.

And that makes the three weeks seem so simple. i kind of like it.

i haven’t taken any pictures since Saturday in Andagua. i also haven’t been anywhere but inside of buses since then… so that shouldn’t be too surprising. As a result… i obviously don’t have any new work to put in this part of the update. That will change with my next update, i’m sure.

i arrived in Huamachuco last night at about 8:00. i don’t really know anything about Huamachuco yet… but i’ll pretend briefly. Huamachuco is a city of several to many thousand people. It is located at about 10,500 feet in the Andes of northern Peru. The people generally seem to speak Spanish, which is very fortunate for me. If they spoke Mandarin Chinese or Mandika or any other language starting with “Mand…” i would be in serious trouble.

i am in a much wetter part of Peru. It rained during part of the bus ride in last night. At times i could see a light dusting of snow on the roofs of houses… but that was at a higher elevation than i am at right now. The clouds are heavy and sincere.

Today is the day of the “paro”. Everything is closed down and people are marching through the streets in protest of… life, i suppose? It seems to be a little bit of a general populist strike… a strike in which people say “We’re not happy, but we’re not really sure why! We think we want more money… but what we know for sure is that we’re not happy. So we’re going to protest so maybe you will see our dismay and fix things for us.”

We’re not sure who the “you” is who would fix things… but presumably it is the government… and from what i have gathered in talking with people… the government would fix things by turning Peru into USA South. i feel like this probably isn’t actually what they want, although they think it is. Certainly there are many aspects of life in the US that would be an incontrovertible upgrade over conditions here in Peru… but i assure you that if they all started earning twenty times as much money and lived in bigger houses and gave all farming responsibilities to agricultural industries and all had cars and dogs and 2.3 kids… they would find that they would find that they still wouldn’t be happy. Social or economic status is never going to make them happy—there will always be somebody above them, and if there is no longer anybody above them then they’ll just get bored and find the whole world petty. A place is never going to make them happy—they’ll probably like it for the first week or two, and then find that this new place is filled with problems of its own. There is a natural urge in humans to seek wealth and to seek the perfect location. The problem is that there isn’t wealth on earth enough to satisfy their desires. The problem is that there isn’t a place on earth good enough to fulfill their hopes. The problem isn’t that they desire too much—or that you desire too much, my American friend. The problem is that they try to fulfill their great desires with small and petty things like money and places. What good is money? What good is a place? They were made for a purpose that is high and that is noble and that is rich and that is beautiful… and until their eyes have been open to this purpose such that their lives are unselfconsciously poured out as offerings before the great God who created them, they will always find that there’s not enough money to meet their desires and that there are flaws with the place in which they live.

Which is not to say that they are wrong to seek for and to fight for social justice and improved living conditions. But if that is where they stop… if they seek for and fight for social justice and improved living conditions and nothing greater… they will find that all the social justice and all the improved living conditions will only leave them burnt out, disappointed, and disenchanted. Rather, they stand before a God who will “render to each one according to his deeds. To those who by persistence in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and immortality, He will give eternal life”. Why settle only for seeking for social justice and improved living conditions when you could first seek for glory, honor, and immortality? Would that their eyes be opened and that they would be granted the grace to see the richness of the glory of God and the satisfaction that only comes from joyfully selling all to buy that field of the kingdom that the treasure might be theirs.

Very well… enough about Huamachuco and small aspirations and unsatisfied people (are there any other type?).

i left Arequipa on the evening of Saturday, June 21. i think the bus actually left at 1am of Sunday, June 22.

The ride to Cabanaconde is always a fun one. The road goes over a pass that is around 15,500 feet high. All through the trip the bus stops to pick up new passengers. Two years ago i counted around 225 people on our 60 passenger bus. But i couldn’t count the people who crawled into the luggage space under the bus. And there were many of them.

This trip wasn’t so intense…but the aisle was packed.

i arrived at around 7am and settled into my hotel room… it was nice to fall into a nap for the remainder of the morning before taking the afternoon and evening to stretch my legs and walk around Cabanaconde for a little while.

Cabanaconde is located at around 10,500 feet on the side of the Colca Canyon. It is the access point for a number of villages on the other side of the canyon, villages to which there are no roads. Villages like Llanca, Ucuchachas, Mina… and Choco. Choco was my first destination.

There is ice cream in Cabanaconde. This is very important.

i spent the evening on top of a small hill just outside of town. i took a pretty fair number of pictures… 200 maybe?

But i’m just going to put two in this update.

Why? i suppose so that you’ll buy my coffee when i get back so you can see the rest?

i just can’t leave that alone, can i?

i suppose that i’ll start with an overview of the town.

Sunrise and sunset while deep in a canyon tend not to be particularly impressive in and of themselves… so it is necessary to be a little bit more creative. i tried a few ideas to preserve some element of drama and dynamism in my sunset pictures… i will leave for you to judge if they worked or not (and i will also tell you that i didn’t include my best pictures in this update… coffee? [actually… i haven’t included many of my best pictures all trip long. Coffee isn’t the only reason… the main reason is because i’m trying to tell stories, not to show off my photography, and so i try to include pictures that advance the cause of telling a story.]).



So this is Cabanaconde. i waited until the sun had set and darkness had begun to settle into the valley. As dusk fell, lights began to come on in town. i framed the picture with three elements in mind: i included a rock to anchor the foreground and hold in the lower right corner of the frame… and was unsure if it would be visible or not, but hoped that i would get a result similar to this from it. Subtle but present. i held the artificially lit town of Cabanaconde in the mid-left of the frame as the main interest. Finally, i included the barely visible snow-capped summits in the upper left as a final counterpoint to the town and to provide a sense of place. The summits are part of the volcanic triumvirate of Hualca Hualca, Sabanacaya, and Ampato. For Philip… the EXIF data is: ISO 200, f/. 9, 8 seconds. Since i know you love landscape photography so much… Also… the PJ a few posts ago wasn’t you, i’m afraid… it would be a friend of mine named PJ Accetturo. You should facebook him… i think that you would appreciate his photography and i think that he would appreciate your photography. His name is Peter Accetturo on facebook. Also, anybody else that wants to facebook PJ should do so. He’s a good guy, no matter what kind of horrible things Jordan Kilmer might say about him. And since they’re both in North Africa together right now, they can’t read my blog, and since they can’t read my blog, i can talk about them in front of the whole world. Speaking of which… all are invited to pray for PJ and Jordan—as well as a number of other close friends of mine—who are in North Africa right now… as well as other friends that i have in Chile, South Asia, and Peru. They are doing real work that yields real fruit, and i think that you would find being a part of what their work to be real and satisfying and worthwhile. One of my close friends, Brittany DiSalvo, told me yesterday that she thinks that praying for her friends who are overseas is possibly affecting her more than it is affecting them. Rest assured that your prayers do affect those of us who are overseas… but perhaps you would find that those prayers also change you.

Around ten or twelve years ago Sabancaya erupted, depositing dark ash on the summit of Ampato. The dark ash expedited the melting of snow on Ampato, revealing mountainside that had been obscured for hundreds of years. A climbing expedition stumbled across a perfectly preserved young lady… an Inca who had been offered as a human sacrifice at over 20,000 feet of elevation some 500 years earlier. The story was covered fairly extensively, even earning at least one full length article in National Geographic.

Finally… when i struggle to put together a meaningful composition, you may have noticed that i try to find a way to stick myself in the frame to include a human presence to add a little bit of life to the scene.

But i also find that just standing in place and smiling like a moron (although i am pretty good at doing things like a moron, if i may say so myself) just isn’t very satisfying.

Plus it doesn’t make my hair do cool things for other people to make fun of.

So… sometimes i think that maybe i could jump instead of standing in place.

And i promise you that if you were to stand and watch me take some of these self-portraits… you would immediately admit me to a mental institution for life. But every once in a while… one works out well enough… and so i am willing to subject myself to such absurdities if it gets me what i want.

The practice generally consists of me finding a low place to put the tripod, composing a pleasant but static and uninspiring fine art landscape scene with some sort of interesting light, setting my camera to a remote setting with a self-timer, activating the remote, and timing a jump that will hopefully not look utterly moronic.

Sometimes i get lucky with my timing. And sometimes my hair flies powerfully into the air. That yields pictures like this… and with this i leave you.



And what terrifying hope do we in frailty embrace.