Camanchaca’s frontier

Peace in blue and sand

Camanchaca, the sea fog that covers from the Chilean North coast to the Peruvian South coast, is said that comes from the Aymara word for obscurity. Could be but I don’t find much sense in it, because sure it reduces the visibility but is far from be obscurity. The light is diffuse, not inexistent.

In the photograph the camanchaca is far away, seen in middle of the road that connects Moquegua city close to the highlands with Ilo city in the coast. I wonder if I could walk in the desert, even in winter it has to be a feat to me because I’m not used to the humidity; besides the desert with its vast surfaces is the ideal place for the Air Force so always there is the danger of military equipment there.

Highway to Moquegua

seen in a dream

 

Yesterday I had a dream: I was travelling and we (suddenly my travel was a shared travel) arrived to a hotel room, there were three girls in the bed to us the three travelers. Sadly the girls found me boring so they opted to ignore me. I think in the freedom to choose with whom we are going to be so I decided to do other things. In the end, meanwhile the other two partners and the girls were in the bed talking naked, one of the girls said me in an angry tone that I had several cameras. I saw the table and to my shame I had three cameras…

So my conclusion is that I’ve to invert more in women than cameras, hahaha, just kidding. In the real life I travel alone, if I meet girls it’s also alone because I prefer that way. And I use just a digital camera and twice in the year a film camera, oh, I forget the cell phone camera. But the dream is dead right: I am dedicating so much time to a hobby as photography and life has more things to discover. So I’m going to post other things as tales, essays, reviews, etcetera.

Today mi post is about the highway to Moquegua seen from the window of a bus. I enjoyed taking the images and I hope you can find one of your joy anonymous reader ;-)

tres

Déjà vu (metallic)

huellas

a shadow passes

Kamanchaca

Camanchaca is the word we use in the south of Peru to refer to the sea fog. I suppose it’s a Spanish corruption from the original word, I understand from the aymara word Kamanchaca, I don’t care, it’s a bigger significance that saying just sea fog. It carries thousands of years of maritime history.

When the son of an Inca (that later was himself an Inca but you have to remember that to be emperor in the Inca Empire it wasn’t enough to have the blood but also the chosen had to be capable and the best leader) travelled to the Antarctic, or perhaps to another travel to the Polynesia, it’s said that probably he took the ships from this place because in the stories there is mention to the phenomenon of the camanchaca.

Enough of history, let’s go to the pics :P

Sol

a highway to sun

Poetic Quest

Prehistoric garden (remains)

I would like to think, to design, and to built something so simple. The strongest message is the one that stands by itself without ornaments. Now, what is the message of this age is, in my opinion, communication.

Camancha is the word for the sea fog.

Mars

 

I had old comics and science fiction tales that spoke of a certain future where we would be travelling to the space with the same difficulty than one take a plane to go to another city.

I read them in the eighties and those years the terrorism had almost destroyed the country, in some way the state was concentrate just to parts of the capital city, so we, frontier’s people, lived in an anarchy, with no much tv, and when we had tv we hadn’t electric energy lol. Thus, although those stories were wrote in sixties to my childhood they feel enough futuristic.

So I tend to think these years, with a mini-computer in my pocket with touch screen and portable tv; a laptop where I can write (I don’t use a noisy typewriter anymore) and design buildings with complex systems; and cameras that can follow my fantasies where a film camera would be something so expensive to shot just 36 exposures; and well, so many things, we are not yet in Mars nor travelling to Alpha Centauri in an intergalactic bus to see the cousins on weekend, but anyway I am still thinking these times not as the present but the future.

Fortunately the predictions about fashion were wrong!!, I prefer a plain t-shirt, a pair of mocs and a simple and classic jeans to a plastic costume with colorful boots (but I could use a cape:D)

PostData: I took the photograph between the cities of Moquegua and Ilo, the phenomenon of mist coming from the sea is called camanchaca.