A display at the Ica Regional Museum depicts a pre-Inca doctor performing brain surgery.
Less than an hour inland from Paracas is the city of Ica, where a huge sand dune looms behind the highrises. Friends with more money than I possess recommended Las Dunas, an all-inclusive resort, but I chose to stay near the city center at La Posada del Sol, which was clean and friendly and close to the internet cafes.
Partly I decided to stay in Ica because I needed to spend a solid day at work on an assignment due that night, and I needed a solid internet connection. But partly it was because of a kind offer by Raul Pino of Pino Tours, the city’s first tour operator and a student of Maria Reiche, the amazing German mathematician who brought fame to the region with her lifelong study of the Nazca Lines.
I had met Raul’s son, also named Raul Pino, at Hotel Paracas, where he worked. When he learned that I planned to make a stop in Ica, he called his father and asked him to give me the royal treatment – and he did.
So I spent Monday with this gracious and encyclopedic gentleman, seeing the best of what Ica had to offer.
We began at the Museo Regional de Ica, a gem of a museum that’s worth a stop in Ica by itself. Here Raul walked me through the ancient history of the region, beginning with the Paracas in about 400 BC. The Paracas were known for their beautifully colored and patterned textiles, some of them painted in elaborate designs, like one with purple-red hands, and others creating deshilado patterns with carefully removed threads. Others were elaborately embroidered, like the huge tapestry of a double-headed snake. This one, unfortunately, was stolen from the museum in a robbery several years ago, along with several other spectacular tapestries, but a huge photograph of the tapestry is on display under glass, where I imagine the original piece once lay.
These long tapestries, some of which took years to decorate, were used to wrap the mummified bodies of the dead, who were first placed in fetal position and set into a basket. Layers and layers of the beautiful cloths protected the dead on their journey to the afterlife, and they were buried with everything they would need for that journey: beautifully painted clay bowls filled with food, figurines, kitchen implements for the women and weapons for the men.
An extensive collection of mummies is shocking to see – a woman who died during pregnancy is on display as she was buried, with her mummified baby carefully wrapped and placed back into the abdominal cavity. Another display of mummified heads shows the various coiffures used by the Paracas, Nazca and Inca people, including one in which the tresses extended perhaps six feet. Another included a mummified parrot who accompanied its master to the grave. Still another, which included a rehydrated mummified hand, was dedicated to the research of prehistoric diseases.
Raul told me the story of Daniel Alcides Carrion, a doctor in the 1800s who was trying to find a cure for the dreaded verruga peruana, the Peruvian wart, and injected himself with cells from this rehydrated, diseased hand. He found a cure, but died of the disease – and is considered to this day to be a martyr of Peruvian medicine.
So many wonders to peruse in this museum, and with Raul at my side, each one had a story. But it was time to move on, and the next stop was of an entirely different nature: enotourism, involving the Peruvian art of pisco-making.
El Catador, an artisanal pisco brewery, is one of several in the region that has retained the traditional methods of brewing this fine Peruvian brandy and offers tours, tastings and a restaurant featuring traditional food and music from the region.
Here I learned the difference between aromatic and non-aromatic pisco, and a mixture of the two, called “cholo” after the Peruvian word for mestizo, the blend of Spanish and indigenous blood; I tasted Perfect Love, a sweet wine that for all its delicacy seems worthy of the name; and sampled a delicious concoction comprised of pisco, cream and essence of fig called simply crema de pisco.
Back in the production area, another charming and knowledgeable guide, Jhoel, walked me through every stage of the pisco-making process, explaining the origins of this classically Peruvian drink. The sweet scent in the air came from the dry grape seeds and husks that crunched under our feet; nothing is wasted here, even the waste products or their aroma, Jhoel pointed out. “This place is a dream come true for the drunks from Ica,” he laughed, taking a deep whiff.
Back in the days of slavery here in Peru, Jhoel explained, the slaves would turn the marathon grape-smashing sessions into parties, drinking chinguerito and playing their African instruments like the cajon, a box-like drum. They would work at night, to avoid the bees that would be drawn by day to the sweet and sticky scent. The traditional process is celebrated to this day in the annual Vendimia festival on the city fairgrounds.
After hours of stomping, the juice flows into the next chamber, where it is strained and placed in elongated clay containers – called piscos – and left in the sun for two weeks. In the old days, the containers were buried in the sand; these days there are wooden stands to hold them in place.
The next stage involves pouring the fermented juice into the underground distillery, where wood-stoked fires heat it to boiling. The steam passes through a copper tube that runs through a pool of cold water, causing condensation, which is captured and separated according to grade: the cabeza, or head, which is toxic and can cause blindness – this is used for sterilizing; the cuerpo, or body, which will be bottled and sold as pure pisco; and the cola, or tail, which contains the residues.
After the tour I dined with Raul on a delicious salad of palta, Peruvian avocado, asparagus and pallares, delicious lemon-marinated lima beans. He shared a few stories of his friendship with the amazing Maria Reiche, who was called “the crazy gringa” during her younger years because she was always seen walking along the Nazca lines.
Later, of course, when her discoveries were published and drew the world to Nazca, she became a local hero.
After lunch we headed for Huacachina, an oasis amid the mountainous dunes. In the 1800s a luxurious health spa was built here, where the wealthy would come and partake of the healing properties of the lake’s sulfurous waters. Today the place is a decadent shadow of its former glory, a party spot for dreadlocked backpackers, drummers and fire-jugglers who come to sandboard, soak up the sun and ride the dunebuggies in an adrenaline-producing roller coaster ride.
I was appalled at the quantities of trash that tourists have strewn across the dunes and I gathered up a large bag of it to deliver to the owner of the tour company that rented out my buggy, along with a few suggestions for engaging people in a cleanup campaign. He laughed good-naturedly at my efforts and informed me that he’d tried, in the past, to no avail.
The real problem, he said, was the local government. “I pay a lot of tax money to those people over at the mayor’s office, and what do they do with it?” he wanted to know. “They should be doing something about this!”
So much for environmental leadership in Huacachina, I sighed. Still, there was no point in dwelling on it. A party was going on all over the oasis, and I gathered my things and went out to get some dinner and join in the fun.
Here are some images from my time in Ica and Huacachina. Warning: the mummies are not for the squeamish.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
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