Remembering Pachacamac
It was so long ago, Jorge was using actual film. He shot these three images in succession.
It was 2008 or so, and Jorge, Sam and I went to the ruins of Pachacamac, on the coast of Peru, not far from Lima. It is an ancient fortress site that pre-dates the Incas, and as you can tell from these photos, it is very, very dusty.
That’s Sam on the left, me in the middle, wearing my mother’s scarf. A Peruvian hairless dog was walking around in a yellow t-shirt.
As you walk from one ruins to the next, you stumble on bits of broken preColombian pottery, but you cannot pick them up or keep them. That’s against the law.
“Why?” asked Sam.
“Everything here is part of Peru’s cultural heritage,” we said.
He didn’t believe us.
He picked up an orange shard in the dirt, and a policeman ran down from a lookout and pointed a rifle at him.
Sam put the piece back on the ground.
Barbara
I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.
