Aloha from Loja

Loja, Ecuador is a great, smallish city in the south.


This is a statue of Loja's founder in the plaza off the main plaza. Lojanos love their plazas, their colonial architecture, and statues of various heroes. Simon Bolivar must have a hundred statues, busts, and murals all over town.


After my bus in Peru was hijacked and I was threatened and robbed at gunpoint, which I am counting as a near-death experience, the only significant life change I have made is that I am eating more dessert more frequently and sooner. I am visiting a lot of pastelerias like this one in Loja. Ecuador makes a pretty good doughnut.


View of Loja. But it is actually rainier than this right now.

Aloha from Loja

Loja, Ecuador is a great, smallish city in the south.


This is a statue of Loja's founder in the plaza off the main plaza. Lojanos love their plazas, their colonial architecture, and statues of various heroes. Simon Bolivar must have a hundred statues, busts, and murals all over town.


After my bus in Peru was hijacked and I was threatened and robbed at gunpoint, which I am counting as a near-death experience, the only significant life change I have made is that I am eating more dessert more frequently and sooner. I am visiting a lot of pastelerias like this one in Loja. Ecuador makes a pretty good doughnut.


View of Loja. But it is actually rainier than this right now.

More Kuelap

I did a big, long 5-day trek around Chachapoya, this one Zabajaba jungle-style (that is to say, it was hot, confusing, machetes were needed, and there were large birds, butterflies...no baboons with blue butts though), and ended up at this great mountaintop site, which is supposed to be the crown jewel of Amazonas´s archaeology.


Traditional Chachapoya circular houses. Pointy tops.


Overgrown walls. Gruesomely, people are buried inside.


Kuelap entrance.

(These photos aren´t mine, by the way. The digital camera was lost/stolen, so I'm working with a mechanical one now. These are stolen from the internet.)

Chachapoyas

Aerial view of Chachapoyas, a nice Andean town. Right now I'm sitting in a little internet cafe just next to that church steeple there.


Approach to Kuelap. It's a pre-Inkan fortress way, way up on a peak overlooking the Chachapoyan region. Very high. Very beautiful.

La Laguna de los Condores

This is an image of the lake that I tried to find Indiana Jones-style on a three day hike. The muddy trail just kind of peters out as you get close. I climbed a couple of nearby hills to see if I could spot it, but I couldn´t. Oh well, wasn´t meant to be.

There is a Pre-Incan mausoleum site here, built into the side of the cliff over the lake. They found a lot of mummies there about 10 years ago and it was a big deal. Here's an abstract that had me excited about it: http://www.archaeology.org/9803/abstracts/andes.html

Miguel

This pretty much sums up Miguel, who I stayed with in Trujillo the final week. He's wearing my hat.

We made it to the top!

Mountain

We went over the pass in the little notch just to the right of this peak.

Mountain flowers

Camp cook

Happy hiker

Huaraz

Blanket scarf.


Burros.


Beginning of the Santa Cruz Trek.


Huaraz in the early morning.


Hi, Greta!

Cape and Skirt