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The Ascent, September 14, 1996
Written and Photographed By Liesl Clark

The Ascent | Digging in Thin Air | The Mummy's Journey | Preserving the Past

Arrival in Arequipa
Today marks the beginning of an extraordinary archaeological adventure in the Cordillera mountains of Peru. As we fly over the landscape we try to pinpoint Mt. Sara Sara, our ultimate destination and home for the next month. We're arriving from points around the globe to join Dr. Johan Reinhard and his team of Peruvian archaeologists in a search for 500-year old sacrificial sites where Inca children may have been sacrificed.

aerial

If brown were your favourite color, this would be the most beautiful place on earth. Alluvial fans, or dried-up runoff stream beds, creep down the parched mountain sides like fingers reaching toward the brown earth beneath the snow clad peaks. Long dark shadows and the blue sky offer the only contrast to this brown expanse called the Cordillera Occidental, "the Western Range."

Ampato, Misti, and Hualca Hualca are the names of the sacred mountains -- indeed they are gods themselves -- which surround Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru.

We come in for landing and are met by our Expedition Manager, Matt Wells, and BBC HORIZON Producer Tim Haines. I am travelling with the film crew: cameraman Edgar Boyles, sound recordist James Brundige, and assistant cameraman Kent Harvey. It's been an all- night journey from our respective homes in the United States to this mountain city at 8,000 feet.

The search for sacrificial sites will take place where few people have been: 18,000 feet and higher, on the tops of Andean peaks. Mt. Sara Sara is 18,070 feet above sea level and by Reinhard's estimations "is, according to local legend, the second most sacred peak in the region." He believes this to be the case because of the number of people who live near Sara Sara, which sits alone in the Ayacucho Department north of Arequipa. In its relation to nearby villages, Sara Sara is the only peak that dominates its region. It provides melt-off streams that feed the local rivers, and is believed to influence the weather.

market

Before heading to Sara Sara, a 12-18 hour dusty bus ride, we have a day to buy local produce and cooking equipment for the expedition. Zoilo and Genero, our cooks and camp coordinators, head directly for the city's main market where one can buy anything from quinoa, a grain grown at high altitude, to dried frogs for frog soup. Dried llama fetuses, "used by priests as sacred offerings" says Zoilo, sit in a booth next to a vendor selling every kind of hat imaginable. Fruits in all colours and forms gleam in the shafts of sun that poke through the partially covered roof. To buy coca leaves for tea we have to go to another market that several people inform us is "very dangerous -- they will slash your backpacks with knives for what's inside." Zoilo and Genero, who are from Cuzco, heed the warnings and decide that Genero, wearing an expensive backpack, should stay with us, and Zoilo should go to the market alone, carrying nothing to entice the thieves. Coca, which in a tea has a very soothing effect on the stomach, is also a stimulant that some people chew with the mineral lime.

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