To Speak of Departure

And so bring i one more update before i leave for Choco.

There is little to speak of in this update, and only a few pictures to include in this update… but i thought that i would try to be up to date when i departed.

My bus leaves for Cabanaconde at 1am on Sunday morning. i will have the day to spend there relaxing, shopping, eating last-minute ice cream, taking pictures, dancing in the streets, riding cows, and eating alpacas. If everything works exactly according to ideal plans (hahahahaha!) then i will catch a truck out of Cabanaconde on Monday morning, probably at around 6 or 6:30. If things continue to work exactly according to ideal plans, then i will arrive in Choco sometime Monday evening. Probably pigs will fly, too.

Speaking of pigs… my heart goes out to my dear friend the Great White Pig of Death. i hung out with this kindly pork in 2006, which is when this picture was taken. The Great White Pig of Death greeted us every time we tried to find a nice tree downstream to use as a restroom. It lived under a small dropoff that had to be descended to get to the river. i imagine that this beast of dignity and scale and wonder is no longer with us, however i thought that it warranted mention.



i’m actually going somewhere to which i have traveled before… so i figure i’ll throw in another picture or two to testify to the beauty of the place. This was in my veryvery first post… but i think that most of my current readers maybe didn’t ever see that post. It is Choco from a short distance upstream.



That is where i am going… after i cross the Colca River, which has been known to look like this from time to time (like in the summer of 2006).



What’s fun about all of these pictures… is that they’re hopefully not nearly as good as the pictures that i am going to take in this trip to Choco.

Further… Choco was my destination in 2006… this year, Choco is my launching pad. i will be spending some time in the higher villages of Mina and Pullcho as well before heading over the 17,000 foot Paso Cerani to herds of llamas, internet cafés, small buses, telephones and D’Anafria freezers below. And will maybe have a yareta fire in honor of the Coleman Stove Experience of 2006.

Watch out for those trees that are disguising themselves as rocks.

So… you should hold out hope that possibly i will take some pictures that are not terrrrrrrrible while i am gone.

Very well… onward.

As i mentioned in my last update… i did some work with a short-term team from Georgia over the past week—yay Parkview!

My pictures tend to be from VBS’s… but i feel like i spent profitable time with the team aside from translating… be it putting almost enough people in the back of a truck, eating, sitting in a cold circle under the stars while Matt and Aaron took requests for praise songs, staying up too late talking to Will, angrily throwing my wallet out of a combi window (a slight exaggeration), admiring goat heads in the market, preparing to kill the bathroom operator, or just talking to any of them… i can honestly say that my time with them was enjoyable and encouraging.

But… my pictures tend to be from VBS’s. And surprise! More pictures from Vacation Bible School!

On Tuesday afternoon they led a VBS a few miles up the valley. Every mile up the valley is a mile distanced from Cusco, and consequentially the economy becomes more centered around subsistence farming and the population becomes more Quechua… and it is beautiful.

And... portrait of me translating. Photo courtesy of Aaron McGarity.



As kids began to show up, i tried to shoot off a few portraits.

i feel that in general (and i say this knowing that my best portrait of this trip was taken with no landscape context whatsoever… so it’s definitely a generalization and not a hard-and-fast law) my best portraits are either taken with my 50mm fixed lens or zoomed out to a wide angle and that they usually feature a unity between the person being portraited and the environment within which he or she lives. Even in the aforementioned portrait (which can be seen from a post about two weeks ago), the presence of the boy’s bread and staff provide indications of his environment even though the background is an off-white blur.

So that’s what i was going for in this portrait (which is not one of my best portraits from this trip… but at least i tried). Plus… i even managed to include myself in action in the bottom right corner. What fun!



Finally… another picture that is not one of my better pictures from this trip… but a picture that demands by being posted that i tell the story behind it.

So i suppose that the subject matter is fairly obvious… some people in the back of a moving truck.

There were quite a few of us back there, actually… this probably goes down as my second most pleasant truck experience ever in Peru.

i was standing in the back middle of the truck. Every time the driver accelerated, it became very important that i not let people fall out the back, because if they fell out, i would be falling with them. i didn’t have a roll bar or anything to hold onto, so i occasionally bruised the shoulders of those in front of me. Sometimes i prayed that we wouldn’t hit a bump too fast, let go of everything, and tried to get my camera in place for a picture of what was going on. This was one such attempt. For PJ’s sake, this was somewhere between 1/5 and 1/8 second at 18mm in a fast-moving truck without holding on over a bumpy rock road.

But i'm not going to post it because of internet troubles. Sorry.

Sorry, PJ… i only bring you up because i know that you won’t be reading this in quite some time.

So i draw to a close my last update in some weeks. Hopefully i will be back in the land of globalization sometime around July 7 or so and will begin updating again.

i think that when i get back (and my mind may change on all of this, and if that is the case, then i am afraid that all of this will be lies. Forgive me.) i will post one incredibly broad but shallow update that lets you know that—yes—i do live, that includes perhaps two pictures which will probably be selected more for being pretty than for any intrinsic photographic merit or for any storytelling purposes, and that provides a basic outline of what i did. It will probably read more like an itinerary than a good book.

Throughout the rest of the trip i will perhaps include more in depth stories and insights. It will be about a three and a half week span of travel, two weeks of which will be spent away from “civilization” and on my own… so i reallyreallyreally hope that i come up with a halfway decent story or two. Any time that i run low on things to stay… i may stick more information in. And likely i will continue the blog for a little while after i make it back to the states… unless there is just no interest in it whatsoever. Then i’ll probably just keep writing novel-length facebook messages to whoever happens to be the victim of the day.

So… remember that if, when you are translating, you have no idea what the speaker is saying… announcing the beginning of a massive party is always a viable option.

And… pancake-battered chicken fried steak is a potato-peeler’s tornado fleeing delight.

To Speak of a Town in Review

Hmm… this will be a strange update, and i am unsure of how to structure it.

i believe that i will endeavour first to recount the events of the past few days in the fashion of other updates, then to discuss what i anticipate over the next few weeks, and finally to take a retrospective approach towards what i have experienced and what has been impressed upon me during my three weeks in the area around Cusco.

First: Two short-term trips arrived in Cusco on Saturday. i am capable of translating to some extent, and translators are always in short supply… so my services as a translator have been made use of ever since.

On Sunday afternoon i played two hours of soccer with some of the local men and men from the church. i’m not good for too many consecutive sprints up and down the field at 11,000 feet… but having such a leveling experience with them was very refreshing and enjoyable. As i would make runs down the sideline, my name became samuel instead of gringo. It is nice to be seen as on the same level as everybody else rather than as distant or strange or foreign.

On Sunday night i translated for the short term teams at the church’s youth service. After having not translated anything since last July, it was a little bit of a shock to my system to dive back into the world of translating by translating a sermon… but i made it through the night alive, fear ye not.

Thanks to the pleasure of wonderful conversation, i got not so much sleep on Sunday night.

But Monday allowed me to take a laid back morning before resuming translating in the afternoon.

The two groups worked on two main projects today: a massive expansion project at the clinic that the missionaries run, and a Vacation Bible School for some of the nearby kids.

i spent most of my time trying to corral the children and trying to communicate to them what the short-term teams were saying. Included is a picture from some game time at the park across the street from the church.



As dusk approached we returned to the clinic, where the others were still hard at work. Here Keith makes sure that a section of the framework for the flooring is square.



i post this update on Tuesday morning. i will be translating more on Tuesday afternoon and for much of the day on Wednesday. On Thursday i pack up and leave Cusco… which brings me to a natural point in this update at which to speak of what i have experienced here… however, before i do that, i will address what the next several weeks will likely hold for me.

So second: As i just mentioned, i leave Cusco on Thursday night. i do not have a rigid itinerary, however my expectation is that i will be in the village of Choco by Monday or Tuesday, and probably by no later than Wednesday. i plan to spend about a week in Choco, during which time i will spend time with old friends, play soccer with the men of the town, take pictures of waterfalls for Lisa, and hopefully visit the mines on the Colca River.

After that week has passed, i will backpack farther up into the valley in which Choco is located, with the intention of reaching the town of Mina. i will spend one or two days in Mina, and then perhaps attempt to locate the town of Pullcho, which may or may not exist, and may or may not be located at over 16,000 feet above sea level if it does indeed exist.

i will probably not spend more than one night in Pullcho, though, if i even spend a night there. Within a day or two i will endeavour to backpack over Paso Cerani, from which i will be six thousand feet of descent away from the town of Andagua. From Andagua i will be able to catch a bus back to Arequipa, where i will hopefully arrive by July 6 or 7.

From June 22 until July 7 i do not expect to ever have access to the internet. As a result… i won’t update my blog. If i find a way to update my blog without accessing the internet, i’ll be sure to let you know. But perhaps news of my continued survival will make it to my blog once or twice while i’m out, and be sure to check back in a week or so into July, for i am sure that i will have something of some interest to say for the time that i was out and about.

Which brings me to my third point, a brief retrospective with regards to my time in Cusco.

This is a topic about which i have had many thoughts over the past several days… and none of these thoughts have been written down, and as a result, most of these thoughts for all intents and purposes no longer exist now.

i came to Cusco desiring to get my feet under me a little bit more firmly, to spend time with relatives, to try to connect a little bit more with the people, and to do a little bit of hiking. i feel that i largely succeeded in these intentions.

Further, i was able to see a great deal of pressure fall from my shoulders as i made an effort to enjoy photography more than i forced photography, and instead took time to try to read and to learn. Perhaps i have succeeded a little bit in this, and if so, that in itself has made my time here worthwhile.

i climbed 1700 feet higher than i have ever been before.

And so my time in Cusco has been profitable.

But i feel that it is indeed drawing near to time to move on. My aim in this trip was to spend much of my time in remote and extremely rural villages. i am currently in a village, yes, and most of the people in this village speak Quechua, yes… yet it is not what i had aimed to experience when i left for this trip. It is a few short miles away from an urban setting. Cars drive up and down the road all day. Where i aim to be a week from now is miles from the nearest road, and that nearest road sees little more than a car or two per day. i think that it will be stimulating for my photography and for my mind and for my soul.

So onward i go… i will update at least once more before i leave for Choco, but will have begun my travels by Thursday night.

And yay road trips! Do enjoy, spake he, Alabama and German companionship.

To Speak of Children and Evening Light

And so it is that my body was left weary by Tuesday’s climb.

As a result, i have spent much of the intervening three days resting. The majority of my time was spent reading and studying… and yet somehow i have taken more pictures since my last update than i took in all of my time in Aplao.

Admittedly… most of them were not so good… the quality in general was lower than that of my Aplao pictures… but it wasn’t a bad two-day run.

I first managed to drag myself back to the land of the living (after my Wednesday internet trip, of course) on Thursday afternoon. i stumbled around blindly for a while without finding anything tremendously worthwhile to shoot… and eventually found myself in the presence of some small children. i took a fairly consequential number of pictures while i was with them…

At around 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon i took a few pictures of some boys playing with their tops outside of the building in which i was staying.

His name is Nelmer. He is always in front of my camera. No matter which way i am pointing it. It is fairly intense.



i returned to take some more pictures as it began to get dark out. The kids swarmed me mercilessly… but occasionally there would be a break and i could back out so as to organize some sort of composition besides a close portrait.

This is the road that leads towards San Jeronimo, the nearest town. This road ends two kilometers away. Town is a shot distance farther.



i had to get a picture of myself with the kids… so… it’s not a great picture by photographic merit… but these are the kids that i took a couple hundred pictures of.



A few long hours of reading and studying woke up with me on Friday morning. At 3:45 i set off towards San Jeronimo in order to try to take some pictures in evening light at the railroad crossing.

About halfway to the tracks i encountered a lady and three men working in a field alongside the road. i talked with them briefly, and quickly conversation gave way to pictures. i had a mud fence separating me from them, however i tried to take what pictures i could… and perhaps one or two of them were reasonably acceptable.

Their names are Maria Atayupanqui Viuda de Ccollo, Dionicio Huaman Huaman, and Vicente Huamantapia. They were harvesting a grain that is used to feed “rabbits, horses… all types of animals.”

“We grow all types of foods here. Potatoes, corn, quinoa… all types of food,” they told me.

Maria took a brief break from working and walked towards the fence that separated me from her. “Here, the men and the women work. That is how we will advance ourselves here. Nobody will be lazy, the men and the women will work, and we will advance ourselves.”



Eventually i made it to the railroad crossing… a place where the rural villages and subsistence farming plots begins to give way to a more urban setting… not a purely urban setting, but a place where small stores and restaurants reign instead of corn fields and drifting pigs. A few moments spent at the railroad crossing will yield a diverse cross-section of the local population… elderly Quechua ladies dressed traditionally, their walk—though stooped dramatically as a gnarled cane keeps them from topping over—proud and dignified… stray dogs searching diligently for anything at all to chase after… small children playing with tops… or perhaps young men in soccer jerseys running into town. (For Philip… and anybody else that may care: f/. 10, 1/10 second, 95mm, if i remember right).



Or perhaps it is not a young man in a soccer jersey… perhaps it is a middle aged man pushing his cart.



And as i began to walk back for dinner, the man at the house on the corner stepped out to greet me.

His name is Sandro. He is a student of agriculture. He would like to travel to America someday… for there are good aspects to all places and bad aspects to all places… but America seems to be a beautiful place that he would enjoy visiting, he said.

“And if you want to see any of the other local sights… Ollantaytambo, Saqsayhuaman, Q’enqo, the ruins of old Cusco… just come find me and we can go.”



And i feel that there is so much that i should say… that this update has been very fast-paced, very limited in scope, and very lacking in insight. i would remedy that if i knew how… and yet it seems that tonight i have no words by which to do so.

My next update may be my last update from Cusco. Perhaps it will contain more of a view to what has been on my mind by way of retrospection.

And in closing… Make of this what you will.



And remember… though we know that the cat is the one to be held responsible, we make it our aim that all passes well and we have no need of blaming the poor thing.

To Speak of Pachatusan

i am quite tired again tonight… we shall see what words i have and what words i do not have. Perhaps i have more than i feel that i have… but perhaps this will be short.

Probably i will begin by saying something about it being short, and then will proceed to write a novel.

i took a fairly leisurely day on Monday—lots of reading and studying and such. Shortly after lunch i tried to go take some pictures by the incredibly bad-smelling and garbage-choked river… and i took a lot, but was pleased with few.

And as tends to be the case when i am running low on ideas… there will be a few self-portraits in this update as well. i’m sorry that you have to keep looking at me.

Self-portraits?

Well… one of the local schools had let out shortly before i arrived to take pictures at the river. A group of boys were playing with tops as they waited for the truck that would take them several miles up the valley to their village.

i came over to take a few pictures… but of course as is customary when i try to take pictures of a group of kids, within moments every kid was within about nine inches of my lens. It’s hard to take pictures of them that way… but was it Capa that said “If it’s not good enough, you’re not close enough”?

Sorry, Henry… i think i was close enough… the problem must lie elsewhere.

So… after having taken a few pictures of the kids, i decided to look to see if any of them were not terrible. As i recall, the conclusion was to the negative. However… as i was looking, of course the entire mob of kids suddenly was head to head with me. i looked at the next picture… and then the next picture… and then the next picture… and then flipped my camera around so that the lens was facing up instead of the display screen and snapped off a self-portrait of me and the kids looking at my camera.



And so i set off on Tuesday at 5:50… Pachatusan, a 15,930 foot mountain usually hidden from view by nearer and lower mountains was my target.

i did not see Pachatusan for the first time until after i had walked ten miles. Poor logistical decision after poor route-finding decision had left me walking much more than i really needed to… and as i crested a ridge at about 11,400 feet, i quickly observed that i had overshot my quarry by a solid mile and a half at least, and would have to work my way back towards her.

Needless to say… i was not persuaded that i would be able to summit today… i still had 4,500 feet of vertical gain separating me from the summit and i was feeling quite worn out already.

“Hola, papito!”

The voice came from a man walking down the road that i had finally found. In his hand was a rope tied to his horse.

“Adonde vas?” he asked… where was i going?

“Arriba, arriba, arriba!” i replied… gesturing upward and repeating the word several times in typical local fashion to emphasize my point. i wasn’t just going up, i was going up, up, up. If not more ups than that.

And from that statement he asked me to join him, for he was going up as well.

One thing led to another… and soon he had talked me into riding his horse for the course of the time that we would travel together for a small fee.

It wasn’t quite riding bareback… he had tied a few sacks which he would soon be filling with potatoes onto its back… but it certainly wasn’t quite a saddle, either.

As was evidenced by one of my early updates from Cusco… i am hardly an authority on those things horse-related. But i will have you know that i did not fall to my death a single time.

1,100 vertical feet later, we parted ways.

His name is Saturnino Quispikuña. He farms potatoes at 12,700 feet on the side of Pachatusan.



One thing led to another… and suddenly i was at 14,000 feet. And then at 15,000 feet, licking a frozen waterfall. And as i dragged myself onto the summit… my head spun and my stomach felt kind of funny. i took a step back.

i was standing at 15,930 feet. About twelve inches from my foot the mountain was no more. And a river ran through the valley 7,000 feet below. Never before have i seen a drop so huge or so vertical.

i had thought about doing a handstand for my summit picture while i was climbing. i decided against it out of fear that 16,000 feet would cause me to drop myself on my head on a very pointy rock… but as i stood on my small patch of earth from which i could reconsider… i decided that a 7,000 foot tumble was not my current idea of a good time.

i was too tired anyways… and didn’t have the energy to get my tripod out. (Note: i dragged my tripod up all the way to the summit and back… 21 miles on my feet… to an elevation of 15,930 feet, and then back down to the town at the foot of the mountain at 10,400 feet… and didn’t take it out of its bag. Once. i did hit a dog with it, though.)

So… i instead backed out to 18mm, stopped down to f/13 so the background would be kind of visible, and held up the camera to show me and my awesome dropoff. And tried really really really really really hard not to fall over backwards. That would have been mostly bad… but would have made a great story. Somebody else would have to tell it, though. And… the awesome faces that i make in summit self-portraits are completely unintentional. It’s a gift?



For some reason high places seem to be associated with high thoughts. It is often thought that the summit experience is one of great revelation and insight.

It normally goes more like… *Big gasping breath* “Mmm… tired was am i right now…” *Big gasping breath* “Hike long for today as it had maybe i could eat a banana” *Big gasping breath* “Snowflake yum dark comes hours not many” *Big gasping breath* “Gnome to take picture of” *Big gasping breath* “Down to go place good now were then” *Big gasping breath* “Now done not to fall tired falling bad.” *Thre more big gasping breaths*

And i wish that i could have had time to sit on the summit… to eat and to drink and to be merry… to write poetry and to take pictures of flowers… To take a summit picture of me juggling the rocks that used to be the summit cairn…

But it was 2:30… i had spent over eight and a half hours in getting to the summit… and i had three hours until it would get dark out. So i picked out what looked like a good trail somewhere down in the distance to aim for (or maybe it would end up being an irrigation ditch… what can i say… i was tired?) and started down.

The misery of tall, dense grass from between 15,000 feet and 14,000 feet needs not be relived again soon… and then the improvisation of finding that my path was not a path… and soon it all gave way to a Quechua village at 13,000 feet.

“Disculpe, mamita… busco camino que sigue a Huasao,” i said to a Quechua lady who had just walked out of her thatch-roofed home. “Excuse me, ma’am… i am looking for a trail that leads to Huasao.”

A look of confusion flashed across her face and she called for her granddaughter. She was a monolingual Quechua speaker… one of the first that i have ever met, actually.

She pointed me in the right direction with the help of her translating daughter, i emptied my entire Quechua vocabulary on her, and headed down.

And shortly was passed by a boy with a backpack on. And then another.

i stopped this second boy.

“Are you coming from Huasao?” He was.

“Is that where you go to school?” It is.

“And so you go this way every day?” He does.

“This way”… “this way” is a trail leading from 10,400 feet in Huasao to his home in the Quechua village at 13,000 feet. Every day… down and up in order to go to school.

i think i need not say more. His name is Fernando. He is eight years old.



And so i have arrived back safely.

i think that the next couple of days call for some rest :-)

And may gunpowder tea be a source of joy for you.

To Speak of Warmth in Green

And despite times when the contrary would seem to be so, time does occasionally take it upon itself to pass quickly… and in many ways has done so over the past three days.

i suppose that i shall merely speak chronologically, addressing what has passed in a reasonably concise manner without speaking at great length… my reasons being that i am tired tonight and that i do not feel that i have very much of any particular insight or interest to offer tonight.

So if this update reads rather crisply and pointedly… perhaps that is why.

i am, these days, feeling a little bit less of an urge to force myself to go do things and to try to force things to happen. And so Friday morning, for example, i spent five or six hours sitting in the Powlison’s house reading.

At lunch on Friday i was invited by one of the local missionaries to travel to a nearby Quechua settlement for a showing of the Jesus film. Seeing the opportunity as a chance to take some pictures in a fresh locale, i leapt at the opportunity.

The settlement was at 12,000 feet, and we arrived at about 5:15, just as the light was beginning to fade… making my photography a test of the limits of my equipment.

My first picture from this settlement is probably going to seem to many to be one of the least impressive shots that i have posted… however i am much more pleased with it than most others that i have posted.

The focus is abysmally off, but it contains some of the complexity and depth that i have desired for my pictures. The first people to come were, of course, the children… and these particular children, as is the case with most children the world over, were rather thrilled at the appearance of a camera.

“Toca foto de mi!” they would yell… Spanish their second language, as evidenced by a phrase that would be ridiculed in most Spanish classes and by most native Spanish speakers.

Their faces would be inches from my camera. Tough working conditions, i suppose.

And all of the sudden there was an opening. Girls running in circles with arms locked. A boy looking back as he ascended the small hill on which i stood. A little bit of chaos below. Auto-focus went all the wrong places… but at least i saw something when i took this picture. It is better than can be said of most of the pictures that i have taken this trip.

And as a technical note for readers who are photographers: i am not very happy with my RAW processing of this picture… i feel like the tint is too much toward red and the temperature is a touch warm. Also, as the lighting conditions were pretty intense for pictures taken this evening, i will include some EXIF data: This was at ISO 400, 50mm, f/. 1.8, underexposed -0.7, and 1/80 second.



And… this is almost certainly my favorite portrait of the trip so far.

His name is Anderson, and he is eight years old. i do not know more of his story… but on this evening he sat alone off to the side, his stick—a walking stick?—in hand, occasionally taking a bite of his bread. He seemed much older than his mere eight years.

i approached him and asked if i could take some pictures. He assented… and immediately assumed the rigid and self-conscious posture that makes me cringe. i fired off a few (18, to be exact) shots and hoped for a distraction. i do not know what it was, but something suddenly attracted his attention, and his guard fell as he glanced to his right. Which left me with this picture.

ISO 800, 50mm, f/. 1.8, underexposed -1.3, and 1/60 second.



Gradually a few more people arrived. As they took their seats on a bench, i tried to frame a simple image providing a broad overview of the people.

ISO 800, 50mm, f/. 1.8, underexposed -1.3, and 1/13 second.



“Toca foto de mi abuela!”

i was reluctant… i didn’t want this lady to feel pressured into having her picture taken… Quechua women tend to be shy and modest, and i wanted to respect that… yet as i asked if she was sure that it was ok to take her picture, she nodded her approval with the quiet pride that is so characteristic of Quechuas that i have known throughout Peru. Her name is Sebastiana Velazquez Chocce. She maintained a quiet dignity as i tried to wring every last drop out of the long gone light. It was dark out. i could hardly see her. Autofocus couldn’t see her. i auto-focused as best as i could, and tried to manually finesse the focus from there. Not that it mattered a whole lot with as slow as my shutter speed was. Then it was an issue of holding my breath, putting on my best surgeon hands, and clicking away in hopes of something reasonably sharp.

This was the closest that i came.

ISO 1600, 50mm, f/. 1.8, underexposed -1.7, and 1/8 second.



And as a side note… it gets kind of cold at night at 12,000 feet.

On Saturday i ventured back into the hills.

It was a fairly straightforward day… my intention was to get a reasonably early start, climb Cerro Pintas, a hill just over 13,700 feet tall, and then to climb a nearby unnamed hill that is around 13,930 feet tall.

Friday night had been a fairly late night, and so after breakfast and gear-assembling at the Powlison’s i didn’t start hiking until around 8.

My aim was to find my way to what appeared to be a trail in the valley between the two main ridge systems leading to the mountain from the west. i found what seemed to be a road leading in that direction… but it stalled out in a steep-walled valley very early on. Walking in this area is unreal… there is so much history that is by now merely part of the landscape. Trekking through this valley… i quickly stumbled upon seemingly endless ancient terrace works… abandoned for unknown hundreds of years, but very evidently of human origin. There is, in my opinion, nothing to equal the scale and the pervasiveness of evident ancient artifice that has proven to exist in this area.

Eventually, however, i found my trail… and it took me surprisingly close to my target. By 11 i was standing on the summit of Cerro Pintas. Climbing makes for tough photography, because i usually don’t get to places from which i desire to take pictures until the light is utterly deplorable… and since i am alone, i don’t have a victim to shoot portraits or action shots of. So… i am left with little but myself to add interest to shots.

i tried a few summit self-portraits… and this is one of them, more or less. i set my tripod up on the summit, scrambled down to a ledge surrounded by vast dropoffs (which sadly aren’t very evident in this picture… it is hard to know how things will look when i can’t look at them as i take the picture) and tried the tired old trick of the jumping self-portrait… it has worked better for me… but i thought that i would go ahead and post this one. One thing that i learned is that i am not very good at jumping at 13,700 feet after having hiked a pretty solid distance. And my hair is doing some pretty awesome stuff, if i may say so myself.



Finally… i descended Cerro Pintas and set off for the other mountain. i summited shortly after noon, and once more was left to think of summit picture ideas. i decided essentially to frame a decent landscape selection on a tripod and then walk through the frame with a remote and snap off a bunch of pictures in hope that one or two of them would be not horrible. Most of them were very horrible… but i kind of liked this one. Cerro Pintas is right behind my left elbow.



And that is all for now, i suppose… and a celebration of two months, for sure.

To Speak of the Usual

Another two days have passed since my last trip to the internet.

Another two days… with little to report.

One of my biggest hopes when i came to Cusco was that i would be able to do a lot more social photography—that i would be able to get close to the people, that i would be able to take pictures of what is important to them, that i would be able to describe daily life… and so far i am really struggling in this endeavor.

What i find instead is that the only time i seem to get pictures that i like very much is when i am getting out away from people and shooting landscapes while climbing things… which is really what i wanted this time in Cusco not to be about.

So… i have a few more social ideas to try that would be a little bit of a break from what i have tried to do in Cusco, and i have a few more mountains to try… hopefully a little bit of variety and a shift in vision will serve to get me better pictures.

Because i feel like my photography is really degenerating right now, and it would be best if that wasn’t the case.

i spent Wednesday morning by one of the waterfalls that i have found. It is in my last picture in this update. It was nice to have a few hours to sit outside, listen to a waterfall, do some reading and praying… and i found that as i sat by the waterfall it grew quieter and quieter and quieter.

“This is interesting”, i thought… “i guess the longer i sit out here the more i get used to the sound of the waterfall, so then i don’t notice it as much.”

After two hours of sitting by the waterfall, i gathered my belongings and started back, throwing a final glance toward the waterfall.

i was shocked to see that indeed it had slowed to a trickle. A few pathetic drips tumbled from rock to rock. It was hardly the inspiring force that i had come to two and a half hours earlier.

And this is the strangeness that is a heavily irrigated area… this creek seems as if it has been running for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. It is right between two mountain systems, and so is a very natural streambed. The rocks are smoothed by what can only be the passing of years and years of water…

And yet a half mile or so upstream there is an irrigation project… sometimes water gets diverted from the stream, and sometimes water is allowed to flow into the stream and in that way… the people here turn their waterfalls on and off.

But on Wednesday afternoon i went for a walk in hopes of maybe taking some pictures that weren’t too bad. i didn’t really succeed, but at least i tried.

This first picture is a prime example of degenerating photography… admittedly… in retrospect i probably would pick a different picture to use in this slot if i were to do it all over again (and which i obviously could do if i felt like spending the time to change it)… but i was forcing things a bit for this one… and should have probably aimed for a better point of view.

But his name is Julian. As i walked by his small field, he was digging up his latest crop of potatoes. It was still a little bit early… the light was mostly just harsh. i really could have used some clouds to break up the intensity of it, actually, but i worked with what i could. i climbed up onto the terrace that he was working on to take a few pictures. Here is one of them… probably not the best, probably not the worst… just kind of a middle-of-the-road shot from his potato harvest.



i can’t say that i haven’t taken many pictures since my last update—i’ve probably taken around 200—but i can say that i haven’t taken any that i like. So… one thing i’ve learned is that as a photographer, if you can’t please yourself, you should at least try to please the crowd. And i have also found that a cheap and easy way to please the crowd is with really cute kid pictures. So… there’s not a lot to it, there’s not much of a story to go with it… but here are some really cute kids. Not a fantastic picture, but some really, really, really cute kids.



And finally… i woke up on Thursday morning and headed back to my waterfall with a tripod and the shade of morning to try to take some pictures of the waterfall. This is a tough waterfall to take pictures of, because it occurs at a bend in the stream with fairly steep walls on either side of the streambed. As a result, there is a very limited number of places from which i can take pictures of the waterfall… the most success that i have had has come from a rock just a few feet in front of the final cascade… but i lose the entire upper portion of the waterfall from there. Regardless… it’s not one of the better waterfall pictures i’ve ever taken, but at least you will be able to see a little bit of where i have been spending my time.



Hopefully i will have something better the next time i update… i think another mountain hike is in the plans for the next couple of days, and i also have an area that i am going to try to document… if i can do so in a way that is at least slightly meaningful. The potential is there, i’m just not sure that i am equal to the task.

To Speak of a Short Walk

i hate typos.

i sometimes reread what i have written previously… and i find a typo or two. They make me kind of angry. Please forgive me for my occasional typographical gaffe.

i am writing once more from the Cusco area.

The past few days have passed reasonably quickly… Sunday with church and John Piper sermons, Monday with another casual mountain stroll.

i am writing this Monday night… and am pretty tired, so i will probably make this a shorter than usual update… although it probably still won’t be short. Again, apologies.

i’ll start with a little bit more portraiture… just a picture of a man, i think i took it on Saturday evening, but it may have been Sunday evening. Just a little bit of 18mm portraiture, i suppose.



And as a post-processing note… i made extensive use of the clone stamp in this one. You see… this man apparently has weak convictions about zipping up his pants (a common area for Peruvian men to have weak convictions in, actually)… and while i aim to portray the culture honestly… well… this is one area where i felt that it was ok to take some Photoshop liberties. i zipped up his pants for him in Photoshop, in short.

And this morning i decided to go for another walk. This would just be a gentle, easy walk along the road… i would get to know the area better, take some pictures of people doing what they do, not kill myself, and come back feeling awake and energetic.

Hahahaha… Right….

So i made it a few feet when i heard some water running in the valley below. i am kind of maybe a huge waterfall addict… so i had to investigate, of course. i charged down the hillside… saw that there was indeed a small waterfall… and worked my way back to the road.

i lasted 50 yards… if even that. At the first switchback i saw a weak trail leading straight ahead. i couldn’t help but follow it… it could take me to the home of some elves, maybe, or perhaps even a door to Narnia!

i can be kind of an ADD hiker sometimes…

It goes without saying that this trail, like most Peruvian trails, inexplicably died out after a few feet. That didn’t stop me from pretending it still existed, though! Tenuous slab-climbing moves on loose dirt, intense bushwhacking on a sixty degree slope, aggressive laybacking with hands full of grass… words don’t really express what i had to do to make progress over the extremely steep valley (canyon?) wall.

But sometimes… my progress would bring me to another waterfall… this one is five feet high! That’s pretty cool…

And a little farther… and i hear something roaring. This one’s taller than me…

i wanted to see what it looked like from above… so i worked my way to the left in hopes of finding a way up. A rock wall blocked my way… but a few fun moves brought me to the top.

And what was waiting for me there was unlike anything that i had seen before. It didn’t translate into pictures very well, and i fear that nor will it translate into words… but perhaps if i try with words and pictures both, you will have some sort of conception of it.

The stream funneled into a very narrow stretch of rock that acted like a tunnel with the top half cut off so that we mere mortals could observe the internal happenings. The tunnel S-curved, forcing the water up onto its sides, before opening up as the waterfall as i had seen it from below. For this picture, i backed out to 18mm, stopped the aperture as narrow as it would go for a slower shutter speed that would blur the water, held my camera about an inch or two above the water (note the water spot in the bottom left corner), and tried to hold my camera still for about 1/20 second. Which yielded this… which was taken just before the S-curve.



i eventually did find my way back to the road… but not until marveling at a wide range of waterfalls… from 30-foot three-level cascades to a fifteen foot straight drop off of an overhang. This road seemed to like to go up, and it did so quite well until coming to a stop at what looked like a forgotten tree farm at 12,000 feet… trees planted in row after row, with the intervening spaces slowly becoming overgrown with other kinds of trees and brush.

i was a little disappointed that the road had ended… and then i was suddenly at a pass at 12,300 feet. All thoughts of the road ceased… i charged madly up the hill on one side of the pass… but all too suddenly found myself standing on a little 12,600 foot summit directly over Cusco. Cool… but not quite what i had been going for.

i decided to try the other side… and after more technical near-vertical grass climbing and endless up-and-downing over false summits and proving my rare knack for taking all of the wrong trails and avoiding all of the right trails, i found myself on top of a 13,460 foot hill. This is a little bit of a different landscape style for me… but here is one of my summit views, looking towards Cusco, parts of which can be seen in the distance.



i thought i would try going back a different way, and started doing so immediately. Probably because i could see a decent trail from the summit that seemed to be going generally down. It seemed a little bit more appealing to me than descending near-vertical grass. i love that stuff.

And as i started towards the trail… i was greeted by some old ruins. How old they are is difficult to say… but i think they are pretty old. The sort of care that went into the structure in question is simply unseen in recent architecture… my guess is Spanish, at least a hundred years ago, likely older… although Inca is not out of the question completely, i think. My summit is in the background, too.



My short day’s walk… ended up yielding 11 miles, 4,000 feet of elevation gain, and a high point of 13,460 feet. That makes me tired.

And don’t forget… we, too, would like to echolocate.