Matarani, Peru

Our last port leaving South America was in Peru, just over the border with Chile. We had made three ports in Chile, some only for a few hours. We heard from Customs officials that Chile and Peru were having a border dispute, a few miles away and both armies were facing off with soldiers and artillery. This port stop was for cargo to carry back to the US, lead ore. Its a heavy cargo so a small pile in the bottom of a couple of cargo holds was a shipload. I stayed on after we unloaded in Tacoma to clean the holds and found out that it was more than just a greasy, dark sand as it burned my skin when we were hosing down.

The ship looked small as we climbed up out of the port to the bus stop, going to town. There was one dock, a very small harbor surrounded by cliffs, and the Pacific Ocean beyond that. The loading equipment clanged and banged as it delivered ore by conveyor from the mine in the side of the mountain. This was also the port where the Spanish had loaded ships with gold taken from the Inca capital of Cuzco, which is only a few miles inland but high in the Andes Mountains. When we got to the bus stop we noticed how bleak the landscape was and found out we had about an hour to wait for a bus. There were about 6 of us and we walked around, across the road, back over to the edge of the cliff above the port.

For hundreds of meters in every direction there were crumbled walls and broken pottery so we began picking up pieces of pottery and glass and wondering why there was so much. One of the workers from the port came across the road to walk with us and explained:

In the 1500's after Pizzarro had conquered the Incas and taken their Emperor captive ships started coming to collect the gold that the Spaniards were taking from the empire. Gold to an Inca was the sacred blood of their Mother Earth. So all their gods and goddesses, sacred animals, etc. anything they loved was made into gold statues. Also gold masks, jewelry, etc all had religious significance. The priests that were with the Spanish soldiers were determined to stop idol worship and almost all the gold was melted down and carried down the mountains to the ships to send back to Spain.

The town that grew up here, above the port attracted goldsmiths who made the gold into chains, crucifixes, etc. so that it would be suitable for the King, God's representative on earth. The town was rich. Ships brought the finest dishes, perfume, clothes, etc. from Europe for the Europeans who lived there. Also along for the ride were rats. After many years and a lot of dead Incas, sunken ships, broken hearts.. Bubonic plague ravaged the town, killing the inhabitants. The riches from high in the mountains slowed to a trickle and the ships quit arriving. Then over the next 400 years the houses crumbled and nothing remained but broken dishes and perfume bottles. They looked like little footballs, only dark blue.

As we were looking closer to the edge of the cliff the youngest in our group let out a scream! He had been poking around at something that looked like a barbeque pit with a corrugated iron lid. When he opened the lid he dropped it and we all went to see what he found. There was a row of skulls lined up along a wall under the lid, all looking out to sea! The Peruvian port worker explained that this was done by the Indians (Incas) from the mountains. When they realized the Spaniards had all died and no new ones were coming and that there were no more rats or plague in the town they collected a few skulls to put as a warning to any future invaders from the sea.

We left our collected pieces of pottery near the skulls and went back to the bus station to wash our hands. We didn't feel real good about taking the lead ore at that point, but went to town anyway when the bus came. In the 15 mile ride there was not one blade of grass or thorns, nothing alive. It has never rained along the coast there, all the moisture from the sea rises up into the Andes and waters the home of the Incas. Town was dusty, quiet.. kind of strange for a weekend. We bought a few souvenirs at the hardware store and got back on the bus.

Just as the bus came around the last curve in the road at the edge of town and started to climb into the bare hills I looked at the outlying neighborhood of the town. What I saw was hundreds of people walking with candles! In the dark this was an astonishing sight. I tried to ask around on the bus as to what was going on, but it was mostly Indians and they wouldn't say. Was it a Catholic holiday? A local tradition? Something to do with the skulls? The bus went back to the port and we walked back to the ship in silence.

The next day as we were finishing cargo we heard that war with Chile was over after a few artillery rounds had been fired by each side. No one was killed. The leaders of the two countries were satisfied about their borders after all. We sailed for the States with a little bit more of Mother Earth in our holds.