Which side would you choose?
dusk
Moonrise over the city
A bridge in a sky of ice-cream
Is not this day… but it was the birthday of a friend. I remembered she liked rainbows so a time ago I shot this for her, as a way to wish you days with joy and happiness ^_^
No es este el día… pero fue el cumpleaños de una amistad de WordPress, que pasó en la compañía de su extraordinario compañero de vida y sus brillantes hijos. Recordé que le gustan los arco iris así que un tiempo atrás fotografié este para publicarlo y que sea una forma de desearle días de felicidad y alegría ^_^ Gracias por las enseñanzas en idiomas y en formas de ver la vida, Mélanie.
Con amistad : )
Tumultuous day
Once I published a fragment of this photograph of the sea in Ilo city with the colors altered; I transformed the turquoise sea into a blue icy one and the rocks in a pink from another world.
If you have curiosity the post is here.
Freeway to dusk
This hill is in middle of the road that connects the sea with the highways. Sometimes I think it’s a huaca, temples made of adobe and rocks in the coast of Peru. They are so big that they are forgotten and thought to be natural hills until somebody notices the structures in them…
The oldest (known) ones are from the city of Caral, with five thousand years of antiquity, of course there are older places but they were towns and communities, not cities as Caral itself.
Huaca or no huaca it’s a special place in the highway.
Succa Aya – Memories from the countryside
long afternoon…
In quechua language Succa Aya means “Field of Sepultures”
The pre-Inca cemeteries are memories from the past, today it’s a district of Arequipa city and the name changed to Socabaya. Today I want to show you some views of these place ;-)
A road in middle of the fields
tell me where can I go to…
I had a customer there, so I needed to go several times to see his property. There is no many people walking the road, usually just the road… I walked several times those distances filled of farms, giant towers of high voltage and plenty of solitude, with that slow time until I decided to take the public transportation to my lair in that city. This is what I used to saw:
At day…
white ashlars
The white ashlar in Arequipa has volcanic origin, it is used from to delimit the farms to built palaces and banks, actually to cover them, in a seismic place is not good idea to have massive buildings.
mathematical hill
try to cross
Some trees…
This is Halloween, this is Halloween ♪♫
at the end the light
And some horses…
Meditative Houyhnhnm (published before, shot with a defective film camera)
Head of horse
Before the night…
Another day ends in the green countryside
Socabaya or Succa Aya is relatively far from the center of the city, so to go there I needed at least one hour and half of travel for the price of, in equivalence, thirty cents of US dollars. So it was not infrequent to end in middle of the sunset, always hidden behind the hills. But it’s a quite calm place to walk, and there is no more the heat of the day…
Line of gold
2D Tower (published before)
Alone in the dusk the light starts its electrical song
The faraway lights
Beyond the farms…
light my fire
The district is bigger than the farms, there are places with houses of low and middle social-economic levels mixed with industries, so it’s not so peaceful as the farms habited by traditional families. They come usually from smaller cities and near is the penitentiary so it’s not so safe. In the public transport I’ve seen relatives of the inmates, sometimes they are dangerous too.
Cusqueña (published before, shot with a defective film camera)
Point of energy
So the landscape is a bit desolated, with stray dogs silently walking and warden dogs barking the strangers (what includes me); dust and a desert without vegetation being replaced constantly by a desert of bricks. But the sunset also comes to give a bit of color to this part of the city:
Colony in Mars
Night
The day ends and the nocturnal life starts… But usually I was already in home given my report to my customer, but I got a pair of shots ;-)
Blue night
Searching in the stars
La Paz, let’s play a melody for the night
Let’s play a melody for the night
I went some hours to La Paz, into the heart of Bolivia. I decided to be in a cheap hotel to walk a bit the city because usually I just go for a pair of hours. It was the summer of 2014, exactly in January so the heat was a bit strong, although people in the streets as the performer in the photograph was quite covered so I guess he was a foreigner, Chilean perhaps.
The photographs include views from dusk to night and a bit from the morning. I hope you find some akin to your spirit.
Modernity
Towards the south is the more contemporary architecture of La Paz. There are several Bolivians of German ancestors that enriched the culture in that place with buildings of peculiar shapes. In a certain way they are like the old Bolivians (common ancestors with us Peruvians, in fact I’m half Bolivian) in the respect to the nature and the harmony of buildings integrated to the natural environment.
big city and vast nature
Illimani’s time to rest
flame in the sky
concrete twilight
Old downtown
The old colonial downtown was under moonlight, giving the stones part of that sense of old time. I saw a lot of people waiting for public transport. I took some photographs with care to not seen because certainly I don’t look as a tourist.
I think the city looks better in comparison to my visits as a child.
Moonstone
colors at night
sad yellow lights
day of service
ha!
One for white cars and the other for colored cars
carnival of lights
A good bye in the morning
Next day I had to be in Tiwanaku, so I just walked a few hours in the early morning and said good bye to the city.
compression
Red car goes to the yellow house and yellow bus to the red house
Picturesque morning
And that was all. I saw a parade or protest, something usual when I was a kid but that surprised me this time. Me and my generation generally are apolitical due to the vast amount of people that used to search power with (bad) politics instead of real work. Actually there were so many protests years ago in La Paz that you can see that people is indifferent to them now. As a foreigner I didn’t approximate to them to investigate the reason of the parade or protest (haha, they could think I’m a Peruvian James Bond spying) so I took my backpack and went once more to the highway asphalt.
Invisible revolution
***
Notes:
In “Illimani’s time to rest” the big building is Alto Obrajes’s Olympic size swimming pool designed by Arch. Ricardo Pérez Alcalá.
In “Concrete twilight” the building is the Hotel Radisson Plaza La Paz designed by Argentinian atelier SEPRA.
The partial view of the bridge in “ha!” corresponds to Pasarela Pérez Velasco designed by Arch. Diego Marquez Burgos and Arch. José Marquez Pereira
In “Red car goes to the yellow house and yellow bus to the red house” the church is La Recoleta designed by Arch. Eulalio Morales.
Long dream
One thousand years coming back to the same warm place with the same person again.
Last thoughts of a moribund
I shot this landscape yesterday. I was actually in the ground with numb legs and arms and my head lying on a rock, a bit cold despite the summer at nearly 4000 meters or 13 000 feet of altitude. I was feeling a certain sadness because those are my lands and I’ve a great resistance, we evolved to live here; and I was there, tired and at uncertain distance to Santa Lucía city.
So I felt great relief today when I verified in google maps that actually I walked approximately 24 kilometers or 15 miles, and a part of them climbing hills in irregular ground. After that photo my members felt better and I walked some hours more until I could go in a public transport near the city. Also I get my goal to use besides digital a roll of film Portra 160 and walk the landscapes I love so much.
When kid I used to thought that dying in a place like the photograph would be nice, in silence, lucid, awake, until the stars could say you good bye and your body would be untouched by nothing, because in our culture the dead aren’t finished but just are living another life, and because that the body should be safe, but I walked again, and again, and again.
I want to believe in u(fo)
Qhapaq 