Let’s continue with the posts by my daughter.
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The Mountains
Below is part two of the Andes series. Part one of this series is “The Call”. I hope you are enjoying. The video at the end is mostly for music. As it is quite long I recommend playing it while you read the below post.
Deep in the Andes Mountains, the call originates. From somewhere within the mists, the arroyos, the rain forests, the altiplanos and folds of the mountains, the string pulls. Can you feel the pulse? As you soar in over the mountains, you realize that these… these are real mountains. These are not simple hills that make you think “oh how tall, how pretty,” no, these are grand. When you look at them it inspires awe. Tall and unforgiving, beautiful and bold, mysterious and full of history, they are as close to eternal as human beings can come in this world. Some are bare, some are covered with rain forests. Some are desert mountains, some contain shrubs. Looking at them, it is easy to believe that the word majestic was made for such as these.
How many civilizations have lived in these mountains? How many have died here? What ruins of older times exist in the folds of these beautiful and treacherous slopes that have yet to be found, or that will never be found? To look at them, one can easily imagine the conquest of the new world happening as we speak. Mist folds around us as we fly over the cordilleras. Shadows and sunlight contrast to bring out in bold relief treasures untold. It is easy to see how a complete civilization might be lost here thousands of years in the past, to be found tomorrow, and remind us of what we have lost. Suddenly, progress does not seem like progress at all. What do these mountains care about DSL or skyscrapers? In a hundred years you and I will not be here, but they will remain.
Through these mountains so many different tribes roamed. Taquileña, Cupisnique, Huari, Chavin, Chimu, Inca, Nazca, Aymara, Quechua, and on and on the list goes. Living with each other, taking over surrounding tribes as opportunity permitted, dying out. Then followed the Spanish, with their dreams of riches and conquest. How brave, how modern, how civilized they thought themselves. How right and knowledgeable. How in control those Spanish thought they were, like as if no other nation had taken over another one in those same regions. Like as if no one could possibly take them over later. They were the top of the food chain. And the mountains laughed.
Keep your eyes closed, let me take you now to the country of Perú. Into the heart of the Andes mountains we go, you and I, strangers in this timeless land, yet pulled here by a string that makes no difference between peoples. Can you feel the rhythm yet? No matter, it will catch you soon enough. Past the Manú rain forests = with all their one of a kind wildlife and gorgeous rivers, flowers, trees, and people. Past Lima and Ica on the coast with their bustling fisheries and even busier cities full of progress and history. Past the desert expanses of Nazcca and over the Nazca lines we travel. Over more mountains and now we’re almost there, almost to the place that has captured my heart, almost to Arequipa.
Over one final crest, and there it lies, cuddled in the bosoms of three volcanoes, full of more history than you or I can imagine: Arequipa. Ciudad Blanca, de eterno azúl, puro sol, montañas de cillar… Mariano Melgar, along with many others, expressed better than I the place it is. Arequipa the White City, eternal blue sky, pure sun, mountains of volcanic rock. So much said in so few words for those of us who have been there, but not enough for those who have not. So let me show you this place, you whom only have my words to put the images of a lifetime into your blood. Listen… can you hear it? It’s calling…
[More to follow…]
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