Chavin de Huantar
by Scott Kloos...everything has to be sifted through our human form. When we have no form, then nothing has form and yet everything is present.
-Don Juan Matus quoted in Carlos Castaneda, The Second Ring of Power
-Don Juan Matus quoted in Carlos Castaneda, The Second Ring of Power
The bus climbs up through small villages with terraced garden plots and wilder more green and flowery vegetation than around Huaraz. A group of eaglettes sit by the side of road. A falcon flies by. We reach the top of the pass at 4500 m (15,000 ft.) where the Tunel de Cahuish, a very rough circular hole cut through solid rock, leads us through to the eastern slopes of the Andes. There is barely enough room for the bus to slide through. As we emerge a huge statue of Christ holds up his right hand in silent greeting. I turn to the woman next to me and say, Nacimos otra vez (We are born again.) She laughs.
The unimproved road dives down rapidly in a series of very intense switchbacks. Two of the curves have names: Salvate si puedes (save yourself if you can) and curva del diablo (devil's curve.) I thank Jesus that the driver is not Guatemalan. Even so I feel nauseous. I grab the bottle of dried ginger from my Herbal Travel Kit. The nausea quickly dissipates.
At the beginning of the ruin trail there are many plants: valerian, verbena, horehound, nettles and others I have never met but they all greet me as a long lost friend somehow familiar and really coming to life as I sit with them to have lunch.
Chavin (1200 BCE-200 CE) was the first major temple-building culture in South America and the first united and widespread cultural movement in terms of sacred architecture and the forms and symbolic imagery used on the pottery throughout much of Andean and coastal Peru. It was a religious cult that spread from this area in the central mountains. Its rise coincided with the ritual use of hallucinogens.*
The culture at Chavin that left these ruins was at the height of its power in 300 BCE. The Plaza Hundida (Sunken Plaza) is a U-shaped ceremonial courtyard laid out perfectly to the cardinal points where thousands gathered to worship the mountain deities of the area. Here once stood the Tello Obelisk (now in a museum in Lima) next to an altar in the shape of a jaguar adorned with a representation of the Orion constellation. Still here, but inaccessible, is a stone relief of a shaman holding a piece of San Pedro cactus, a ritual hallucinogen still in use today.
Behind the plaza are passages leading to underground labyrinths served by clever ventilation shafts. In one stands the Lanzon a 4 m (13 ft.) high pendulum of stone etched with a fierce jaguar-headed deity baring great fangs. Wild serpent hair springs from its head. This mammoth stone is set in a very narrow corridor where it must have been so unbelievably impressive in its ritual context; much as it is for me now! I leave an offering of coca leaves at the base and continue on.
Niches in the walls that once held statues and idols are empty. All but one of the Cabeza Clavos, the gargoyles that lined the outside walls of the temples, have been removed to a room near the entrance of the ruins complex where there are also many other stone figures and another Lanzon type statue. I am completely alone except for the caretaker who weeds around the temples and has let me into the locked Galeria del Lanzon.
I share some coca leaves with him. He takes a leaf and says,
-this is you, he puts another smaller leaf inside the first and says, this is your woman. He looks at me slyly and laughs putting the wad into this mouth.
It is 4:30 pm. I have a ticket for the 5 pm bus but get on the about-to-depart 4pm bus. Halfway back up the mountain of switchbacks we are stopped at a roadblock. The road ahead is being repaired and will be blocked until 6. I get off the bus and piss. A horny dog repeatedly attempts to mount a baby pig. Another dog ferociously bares its teeth and runs at passersby nipping at their heels. Two serious little men of 7 or 8 years, wearing homemade feedbag backpacks and beat up felt hats that cover the dark round eyes of their dirty faces that never seem to have smiled, slowly walk up to me and in low voices barely above a whisper demand money.
-Dame platita. Regalame.
I give them a ball of roasted quinoa and honey, telling them to share. They carry it off and sit down on a dirt embankment and systematically and joylessly pass it back and forth until is gone. Traffic begins to flow. My bus is pinned in. I watch the 5 pm bus go by. My attempt to beat time has failed.
*paraphrased from The Rough Guide to Peru
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