Let me paint your face while you are sleeping there ;-).
adobe
In Home
Adobe homes with ichu roofs. I’d love to live there, the only downside are the bathrooms, there are quite simple and to me that’s the most important part to live healthy. I can live without electric light (I’ve lived without electric light at the light of candles) but water and a good bathroom is essential to forget that life can be tough sometimes.
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A place online to purchase Marumi filters from a kind friend in ebay
This photograph was possible to my polarizer, an excellent Marumi DHG Super polarizer, it laughed about dust or rain and with a microfiber it was easy to wipe any sporadic dirt. Sadly I learned that I’m not still a careful person so I lost it in my last travel with a pair more of filters. Fortunately a few days ago I received the replacement: a Marumi Exus circular polarizer, I did some tests with it and it’s astonishing, there is almost no loss of light, I cannot notice the use of the filter in the exposure but I have to careful see the rendering of reflections, that means that in dawn or dusk the camera is going to work, when using the polarizer, without the need to turn up the iso or using the widest aperture.
I’m glad to say a big thanks to the seller with the best prices in Marumi filters: Milen from Bulgary, he sent me that filter and other more to my home in Peru with responsibility and quite comfortable prices, as a disclaimer it’s just my experience as somebody that has to buy from internet because it seems there is nothing in my country, it’s not a sponsored post XD. Besides I think if you read this across a google search you’re searching Marumi filters at good prices, or if you’re a visitor friend then I’m glad to share with you my experience about sellers you can trust in ebay.
You can find to Milen here: milenius.valchev Thanks!
Pusi: memories of Inca empire, fine marble, blue sky and a red apple
red sun in marble cliff
Pusi is a district and a little city with fields in the Peruvian highlands at 3835 m. of altitude (15 852 ft.) bordering the lake Titicaca. I took a little bus from my city, Juliaca, to Huancané city for a pair of dollars and there I waited an hour to Pusi. My goal was to ask about prices about the marble. In Huancané I saw a delicious red apple (my favorite fruit) and I thought it would do a great contrast against the white marble and besides it could taste yummy, both of them proven true :P
(This visit happened in August of the last year, during our winter before the rains; and yes, I know the name sounds similar to another word in English slang :D)
Walking the town and eating like an Incan gentleman
tired tree leaning in roof
The little city is quite peaceful, they seem to be always under a blue sky and an intense sun of midday.
dancers in the floor
The city hall in little towns usually are horrible buildings that doesn’t harmonize with the old places where they are located, even more are cold buildings because they use big crystals without systems of thermic control in places where usually the temperatures are low. Fortunately the Pusi city hall has a modern design but it’s not aggressive to the city, even more the design looks smaller than it really is. What it was closed so I couldn’t get data to where I should go.
solid and crystalline
It was time to lunch so I went to a little restaurant in the plaza. But it had a characteristic: it’s traditional so not just the food is like thousands of years ago but the way of eat is also like in pre-Hispanic times:
as thousand of years ago
The restaurant is a place of adobe with water in the door to wash your hands. It serves food made with native fishes of the lake, I asked one I love and that we call “ispi” (it tastes similar to fried chicken and it´s pronounced is-p) with yellow potato (what we call “papa” pronounced pah-pah) and chuño (it’s a freeze-dried potato processed to last stored several months or years, it’s pronounced more or less chuh-nyo) The traditional way to eat is with carefully with fingers, then the importance to wash your pawns, I mean your hands XD. The Inca or Emperor and the nobility or powerful had old ladies that give them the food; I remember my grandmother feeding me that way when I was four of five years old. It’s something that has to be doing with delicacy. That’s the reason because there aren’t cutlery.
now the soup!
After that I follow with the soup. The correct way is to grab with clean fingers the base of the dish and rotate it but that’s with a traditional design. In this case with the plastic one I just grabbed it with my fingers and taste it with calm, as in any place you have to care to don’t make sounds but be polite. I didn’t take a photo of the restaurant because some peasants had drop papers to clean their fingers in the floor and, I hope to don’t sound derogatory, but that’s a problem with peasants and cities: they are quite clean in their homes but they don’t understand that the city is like a bigger home of the community so they think in it like a “place outside the home” so they can let garbage there and there. That don’t make me feel angry but a bit sad. Otherwise it was a good time to eat like in old times, these days this way to eat and try is barely reserved to the traditional parties.
Something peculiar is that we eat without see the other people eating, for that reason when I travel to the more westerner cities in the coast I usually don’t accept invitations to lunch because I’m afraid to be seen eating, it’s almost like a taboo, in our parties we are in line with our eyes in the dish.
I was again with energies and happy so I walked a few kilometers towards the quarry.
Walking a landscape of infinites yellows and blues
future home
To the quarry there are two ways, the one used by the cars and the one used by the shepherds. I walked the latter.
Curviline
boats waiting for a lake
The tale of the tree pigs and their fellow sheeps
two heads
ichu (portrait)
pig with collar
golden punk
green carpet for a family
unlimited fields
strong sun in the town
one survivor
The photograph bellow made think in the adobe house I lived when I was a babe. Although we lived in a city the adobe house had those windows and the calamine roof that was so noisy with the hail, in general it wasn’t comfortable, quite dark because the adobe needs another structures to allow bigger windows.
living as years ago
things in the sky
inmensidad
A white castle of a marble quarry
Shadow in marble of a Hypercubus
Pusi is home of the marble with highest quality in Peru, it’s exported to countries like USA or Japan. It’s private so I’m posting a few ones. I was to gather information and corresponded the gesture with and equivalent gesture as our old civilization makes from thousand of years ago. If you are interested in it I can give your information.
a place to close your eyes
the quarry
marble banishing into white birds
And that was all. I took another car to Juliaca city and ate that extraordinary apple.
Male cube singing a serenade for his lady in her terrace
Cotahuasi: night and afternoon moments
nocturnal landscape
Cotahuasi (pronounced more or less “ko-tah-wa-see”) is La Union Province’s Capital city in Arequipa region in the Perú southwest, the name probably means “Gathering of houses” in quechua, when Spanish came several names were modified, I m not sure if it could be the gathering of houses, not in a country with cities since at least five thousand years old, and I don’t think it refers to Houses as royal houses, if not the neighbourhood would be populated by Atreides, Harkonnens, Bourbons, Starks, Targaryens, etcetera, LOL. Actually there is no much wealthy for a lack of communication I think, the highway is tough and to come from Arequipa City takes several hours in a road without asphalt in great part of the route. But Cotahuasi wasn’t my goal, I’d to travel to Huaynacotas but if you want to go to any to the cities near the Cotahuasi Canyon the main or one entrances is across Cotahuasi City.
I was just a few moments before dawn and before the sunset to take cars, but I took anyway photographs. I don’t believe so much in the rules that say you that you cannot photograph in certain moments because one have to just search blue and golden hours. I’m not a photographer so I guess I can permit me some licenses ;-)
Greek Cotahuasi
house in a corner
blue window blue door
forgotten street
I had to wait a bus to Huaynacotas, my last photo was in broad dawn:
cross the door
And that was the night kingdom upon Cotahuasi. I had to see a project in Huaynacotas, and after that present a report in Arequipa City, to do that I needed to go back to Cotahuasi City to take the bus. I was there in the afternoon. Bought a bus ticket and I had time to walk a bit before the bus were in the Terminal.
I don’t like street photographers
little world
lone horse
Lone horse
king tree
give me your hand
my old corner
tañe la campana en el solitario solar
big landscape
Yellow Rocket to the Moon
car collector
bell
In Cotahuasi Canyon all roads lead to Cotahuasi City.
The Art of Adobe
Yes, it’s a wall, a wall among thousand similar in Perú. But also is a symbol and a message.
That way is a constructive system created before the Spaniards invasion, and although in those times the art of construction has better technic and science (the earthquakes wipe everything except the old buildings, the rain reduce to dust the adobe except the old ones, the time eat every human signal except the old palaces) we still have our architectonic traditions.
The idea is pretty simple: A wall has a rock foundation, this foundation support the visible wall and this wall has a top. This top is built with triangles, the most stable architectonic shape. A triangle is a symbol of imperishable will, it allow to gain ventilation if it’s in an interior, it’s related too to the sacred triangles if it’s in buildings, it’s symmetric and can create a feel of care and civilization.
It seems rustic because it’s but in palaces is fine too. In the old times the expression was important and rustic or delicate it has to convey the idea of the designer. Not in vain architects had a distinctive symbol in their clothes to be known as ones.
The message is We are here and we are still we.
Seat down and feel free to see ;-)
Huaynacotas
a lady and the infinite
Some night a colleague called me. Apparently he needed to travel to Cotahuasi Canyon, to an obscure city called Huaynacotas to take some measures from a project but the journey last fifteen hours and to come back it’s needed at least two days. So he offered me to go with everything paid. I said oki doki so I took a bus to a city I’ve never heard before.
A road half ended, a super violent movie, and several hours after I arrived to the capital city, Cotahuasi, and I had to wait one hour more before another bus took me to Huaynacotas. There are buses just very early before the sunrise and in the afternoon to take the last buses to Arequipa from Cotahuasi. So I was prepared to stay between one or even five days.
But the mayor wasn’t in town (he was a day of distance in car) so I hadn’t nobody to take me to the distant places to measure. I went to the city hall to study the documents and used the few hours before go to the buses to take some photographs. I am not tourist, nor photographer, but I think there are some things that shouldn’t be forgotten, so I share some of them.
The morning was cold, but with the course of the day there was a sunny day.
arch in blue
S
Every town has moved from it’s original place, this is because the mess Spaniards caused when they invaded the Empire. The original place was probably in the ruins upside, it’s in the red top:
red ruins facing the blue gate
a typical day under the church
flock of clouds
let’s talk
tree preparing to colonize
Arequipa Avenue
free the colors!
don’t forget me
Fashion Red
I noticed a tendency in women dresses to use red or fuchsia tones. In Perú you can guess the precedence of a women from the colors or designs they have in their vestment. Of course that doesn’t apply to Peruvian western women because with their clothing you cannot guess their city but their shopping center ; – )
relief
Midday in Midgarden
Messiah
sylvester and fiery
door essential
Garden from dreams
breeze
erosion by blue
A polarizer it’s indispensable for everything that has light reflected as leaves, and with the harsh midday light it can be the difference between a shot that represent what we see against a chaos of white glints. But I reduced the intense blue it give to the atmosphere because that’s very dark compared with the natural midday blue.
Prayer
Duality
dancers in the top of the burning hill
Bitter fruits
Flower Constellation
As eternal proof to the person who sent me that I was there and not in an Arequipa hotel with alcohol, drugs and girls I took a selfie with my original hat from La Paz ;-), although I’d carried my light hat to hot weather because the temperature was a bit oppressive, this because it’s just to 2700 meters above the sea level (my own city is a thousand meters higher), and the day before I cut my cheek with the razor blade so I guess I arrived to Huaynacotas made a completely mess, lol.
regards
old road
Oasis
High Parliament of Trees
Serene march
Sinuous path
Hungry ground for clouds
let’s work the infinite
Cyclop with Chinese hat
red lips of Snow White
red walker in a sunny day
That was Huaynacotas, a place were women love red in their clothes, the houses are made of adobe, where there is a red watcher that speaks of ancient times, where everyday you see mountains, forests, roads that need days to go to anywhere and where your life is longer because one day there is like a week in a big city. It would be nice to be more time to understand it better. I’m aymara and found another from my kin there, a gentle woman that came from a city near my own city; Huaynacotas is actually a quechua town so in a certain way it’s like travel to a familiar realm but with those little differences that for be so similar are at the same time so big. I found kind people, I hope they are doing well.
You can’t play
Near the Cotahuasi Canyon (one of the deepest on the planet) there are little cities. This is a piece from one called Huaynacotas.
The time is slow and the distances can be measured by days. There is no much to do so you can do a lot of things. I took a great amount of photographs (and I always shoot the minimum, just what I don’t want to forget) in just a few hours. I couldn’t be there much time because to be one hour more would meant to be a day more. A day I didn’t, well, it was for a work, fortunately my work is my pleasure too ;).
Later, in twenty hours maybe, I’ll post a longer post about Huaynacotas.
Yellow Rocket to the Moon
Let’s build a yellow rocket, darling; and let’s go to a perfect blue moon; let’s do a country seen just in dreams; let’s forget everyday to come back to love again.
(Just thinking in grandfather and grandmother)
Qhapaq 