Two beings with unlimited power talk

This is a gas station in one of the highways of Juliaca towards other cities and even countries. The landscape there is so unlimited that two people alone seems to be gods deciding destinies and lives.

I had left Ilo city and I was in the highway traveling to Tacna city. There I met a girl quite beautiful, she was traveling too, it was obvious in her eyes that are the kind you find in the coast North, like a bit oriental, I don’t know, perhaps due to the dust of the sand there. Usually I don’t talk to anybody, girls or boys I already know what cames next: a monologue about who has more wins, in case of boys to feel themselves greater than Alexander and in case of girls to know if you are enough big to be a suitable partner. So I just stay there hearing in silence. But I read in her eyes that she was a different person so I smiled her and said a clear but friendly hello. She smiled too and, like only happens with people that knows that time is a luxury you cannot spend, we went to the bed (I don’t question if sex or love) It had happened a bit of time to me, and I discovered that for her too, but years are not in vain so it was nice. We played well the game to know to the other in silence, that art to break routines and make feel to the other that still there are ways to feel it like the first time and last time. I felt quite flattered because objectively she was in that moment the most gorgeous girl in Tacna. I wanted to know her a bit more so we walked around a city that we only know lightly. She had been a baby just a few months ago and to my surprise she had one year more than me, I thought she had at least six years less. I had to know better because usually girls before to be moms usually wants dangerous boys and although I do a lot of dangerous things and have a tough life due to the construction I look like an innocent boy so, except their moms, I’m invisible to them. With moms the story is different, they can see beyond prejudices I think, she confessed me that simply she felt in my eyes that she could trust me. Among so many things I discovered she was actually from  Lima, and that make me remember the last girl with I had something was from there too.

She was taking care of her amazing figure so we didn’t go to dinner; and she had to care her baby, in that moment with her sister, so I didn’t take her to try some wine, so we just drunk some energy drinks. We walked like children, laughing and talking. Despite the Saturday night with beautiful girls she drew a lot of attention, as I said I felt quite flattered. But everything has an end so I accompanied to her hotel, close to mine, and she said to me that perhaps we could have breakfast in the morning. In the moment I said yes I felt that that breakfast wouldn’t come. In the morning I tried once but I guessed that probably she was resting; moms have to care her babies day and night. After doing some shopping I traveled again.

She, like me, also travel regularly to Tacna since a few years and is amazing that we couldn’t met before due the size of the city. I wonder if some gods played with us, like pieces in a chessboard, separating us; pieces arranged to be close but never touching or really interacting. Perhaps the two ladies in the gas station al least rested that night and the next morning they were again arranging the pieces in shapes suitable for their entertainment.

Morning Pride

 

I said that today Wednesday I would post a photograph showing our ichu. Here in this part of the world still is Wednesday but in other parts it’s Thursday I think.

Instead of the green England pastures we’ve golden ones. They feed the llamas, alpacas, vicuñas and every native specie in needs of pastures, near the streams of water there are green grass but I’m not sure if is a native pasture. Ichu is also used to build roofs and bridges since thousands of years ago. The downside is that you have to renovate it every three or five years; the advantage is that every three or five years people of the block or town work together to renovate the ichu in homes in what always ends like a communal party.

I tried sometimes when child to run barefoot but its contact with the skin, or perhaps just my skin, is lightly irritant so I use at least socks. The ichu grows mainly in the Peruvian and Bolivian highlands.

Malecón Costero – Wild nature in the heart of Ilo city

millions of years ago a warmer sea and a peaceful land

Malecón Costero is a place in the shores of Pacific Ocean in Ilo city, a southern city in the Peruvian coast. Actually this wild place is in the heart of the city and it’s an urban miracle. Usually in Peru every beautiful place is ruined by mayors with beasts of concrete destroying its natural beauty. Ilo’s economy relies in artisanal fishing and the refinery of a billionaire copper mine (Peru is one of the world’s first exporters of minerals, what says that we’re also dumb because after sell the resources we buy them again in the shape of electronic devices). The mine, Southern Peru, financed an urban project and one of my masters at university designed it. Thanks to him, Arch. Edgardo Ramírez Chirinos (RIP), the heart of the city is still a place quite beautiful and at the same time a testament that we can build without destroying.

This happened one month ago in the last days of summer.

Sunset

victory of the sun

I was there barely before the twilight. I used a reverse graduated filter to get the colors of sunset but at the same time get the ground illuminated as seen by my eyes.

Ilo’s magic sun

Gulliver ship caught by Lilliputian ones

But it happened so fast. The sunset was more like a sun falling. So there was just a soft light and a last ship.

in search of a safe port

A primal world

the noise of waves crashing with sharp rocks in a primitive world

Did you know that the ocean was much warmer millions of years ago? I had that impression, that the sea was hot like a soup, and the rocks of the shores seemed like expecting in any time the rise of walking primitive fishes. Even more it looks like I imagine our planet billions of years ago, life dancing in waves and in every song its movements becoming more and more complex.

explorers of the sea

six heads awaiting the return of their gods

conquest

Conquest

Old rocks between the city and the old sea

giants closing their eyes

In other city the mayor had exploded the rocks and put another statue of one of our military heroes, harming the memory of those heroes with that barbarian act. I think that’s a tradition of the old Spaniards that came and used the rivers as sewers and built giving the back of the houses to lakes and the ocean. Of course they are not related to the modern Spaniards that built marvels in the distant Spain in this age. Fortunately the architect followed our native traditions to build harmonizing with the nature, without destroying it but using it as a friend. What you see in these pictures is a kind of main plaza but with traditional pre-hispanic concepts.

Stone dragons dreaming wooden ships

I couldn’t avoid to think in Norwegian fjords with Vikings preparing to dominate the sea. Of course I know the reality is quite different, my evocation comes from child fantasies.

a star above the stone circle of elders

A watcher, employed by the city hall, came in his bicycle and warned me that the place was dangerous at night because the junkies and they could steal my camera. I thanked him and while he was explaining me the danger I stole his wallet, lol. That last is a joke of course. I packed my camera and went to take a bus to Tacna city.

fortress awaiting

When the night came I already was travelling to another place.

A glimpse to Puerto Inglés – Ilo city

peaceful blue world

These photographs were shot one month ago in a beach in Ilo city, in the Southern coast of Peru. I know mostly the visitants to this space come from the northern hemisphere so when you was enjoying a cold winter here we had enjoying a hot summer, the last days before the autumn. Actually still the heat is a beat strong so this weekend I could get another day in the beach.

In English the name means “English Port” because that was the place where the ship of the most famous tourist ever in the history of Ilo landed: Sir Francis Drake, uh… Did I write tourist? I mean pirate, lol. But Fracis Drake didn’t harm the beach, but a few years ago a mayor do it introducing a lot of unneeded concrete in big buildings :S. Now another Francis, me, went to know the place and get a bit of sun and sea.

living in the blue

I was there in the afternoon, robbing minutes to a travel that was not meant to there. Just because I wanted to go to the beach. You could find strange that but in Peru it seems that nobody does nothing for joy (not even the artists) but it’s needed a practical reason. What proves to me that science requires creativity and art because if only reason was needed then we had great scientists.

the happy port

As you can see the beach is little, and enough deep to be like a natural pool, so there are few people (good!) because usually people goes to Pozo de Lisas (I posted about that beach before) which is fancier, with groups of music and bikini girls with model bodies. This beach instead is quieter and more popular, usually people goes with shirts and more to the beach, that’s a way you can recognize which beach is popular and which one is exclusive. But that doesn’t matter, in any of them people is happy the same.

hot afternoon

That was in top of a hill covering the little bay or port. In the North the beaches are tropical but in the South they’re in the desert. I took more pictures but not in digital but in film, so I’m scanning those. But I hope you can enjoy the place with the digital ones, the blues were quite amazing there.

just an afternoon in Ilo

And a selfie I took me there. About the scars I’d love to say that as the pirate Francis they were due to combats but the truth is that the citizen Francis made it himself in an accident with water when babe. Actually that doesn’t bothers me, but bothers me is that I need more workout :’-( XD

In the end I think that little beach was the funniest I’ve been ever.

Juliaca’s green solar

Juliaca is in the Andean Plateau. There, at 3825 mt. or 12 549 ft. of altitude, the green grass is quite expensive. So the grass in the solar to the church in the plaza is like an exception, our grass is the one called ichu and beyond spring it’s yellow (I like ichu by the way)

I went just once to that church, because it was an obligation for an activity in school, despite my protests that I’m not Catholic and just accepted when they assure me that they wouldn’t be angry for don’t make their rituals. It was quite dark and I thought in the movie Highlander, the fight in a stone tower at night where Ramírez is killed by the Kurgan. The exterior gardens are happier in my opinion.

Meeting

Silky dawn

Your lips are a blue flower made of silence.

My heart a frozen garden of broken petals.

My dreams a cold forest of imaginary dates.

My life a ghostly world absent of you.

My flesh just a slave dreaming a blue rose.

A whole twilight in the reflection

I don’t know how to drive a car. I don’t like them so much because they mean to me traffic and be prisoner of it; but I love two things: the emblems of their brands, being my favorite symbol ever the amazing (introduced in 1997) one from Mazda; and the way their reflections curve the world and blends the sky.

This particular reflection made me evoke glasses of wine in my parents home. Taste of memories.

Cross the rain

Soft rain washing La Paz city, slowing down its time. A heartbeat lasting long seconds, clinging to the existence.

Point of intensity

Under the roofs of a bright desert sun the fresh relieve of a shadow.