Pisco, Peru

The corruption in Latin America is legendary, but it's unreal when you actually see it in action. Less than one minute after out tour bus left the port, it was stopped on the only road leading away from the dock. Taxi drivers (unwilling to bribe the officials) had blocked the road because the port authorities would only let their buddies onto the dock to act as taxi drivers for the passengers. We were stuck there for about 20 minutes until the police showed up and straightened things out.

Things in Pisco are really bad. Between 1980 and 2000, this area saw the birth of the Shining Path terrorist movement and one look around quickly explains why this group got started. This socialist organization battled the guys in charge for two decades and thousands of innocent Peruvians were killed in atrocities committed on both sides. (There is a moving memorial to the victims of this civil war in the National Museum in Lima.) Apparently the guys in charge didn't learn a damned thing and I wouldn't be surprised if 'terrorist' activity bubbled up in this part of the world again real soon.

Here's one of the reasons why. Peru gets a lot of earthquakes. In fact our guide said that they get a couple of minor tremors each week. Because of this, the law states that the government must financially assist homeowners whenever earthquakes are greater than magnitude 8. Well, three years ago, there was a huge earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale. It totally leveled the town of Pisco and the damage was so great that it even made international headlines (like Haiti). The guys in charge didn't want to pay up, so they said that it was only a 7.8 earthquake. They then pocketed all of the international aid money that came in and made sure that not one cent reached the people in need. (No doubt, the same sort of nonsense will happen in Haiti.) When we passed through what was left of the place, it looked like the earthquake happened yesterday. Here's what the town looks like today.

Outside of town there are various bird sanctuaries, wildlife preserves, ancient Inca cities and the desert. My tour was heading out to Tambo Colorado to see the one of the ancient Inca sites.

Having studied archeology in university and visited many sites throughout the world, I was less than impressed with this place. Unless you having a burning desire to see what an Inca bathroom looks like, I would pass on visiting this place.

After exploring the site, we then stopped for lunch at the home of one of the guys in charge. He had a sweet deal going with the cruise company and lived in a nice home on a huge estate. He had hundreds of acres and exported his crops (oranges, asparagus etc) all over the world. Apparently, the earthquake had no effect on him. Here's the view from his backyard.

Here's what his neighbour's 'house' and backyard looked like. By the way, this is what 99.99% of the homes that we saw looked like.

After returning to the ship, the captain sailed past one of the famed landmarks of Peru, the Candelabra.

We were only about a hundred miles away from the famed Nazca lines, but this was as close as I was going to get to them on this trip.