Stacks of Bones and Catholic Parades

The taxi driver told me that the historical center would be completely blocked off today for the religious parade going on. I couldn’t really understand which holiday but with the word “milagros,” my best guess was that they were celebrating Christ’s miracles. Apparently there’s a different one almost every month, I just happened on the Oct. 1^st one. We struggled through traffic until he let me off at the Plaza San Martin. From there I still had to fight through another five blocks of massive crowds, through a shopping street full of Payless and McDonald’s, to make it to Plaza Mayor.

The monastery looked grand from the outside and run-down on the inside. Seven soles got me a terrible tour guide. She could barely speak any English even though she was supposed to be giving the English tour. I probably would have been better off listening to the Spanish tour. Most of the time she interjected Spanish words anyways. At first it was just me and an older Korean couple: the woman kept jotting down dates of the monastery’s renovations. I guess it’s a kind of concrete information. Later on another group joined who were equally baffled by our guide. What I was able to decipher from our guide was this: there are still 20 Fransican monks living there and at one point in its history, there were 250. I could hear those same 20 monks playing basketball on the other side of a tall iron gate. The library houses some of the oldest books in America.  They looked deliciously dusty and leather-bound. I wish I could have flipped through some of them. Some incomprehensible information about all the various altars was imparted. But the really juicy part was the catacombs!

She led us down a dark passageway and all of a sudden, we were surrounded by bones. They were just piled into corners, every kind of limb. It seemed they were somewhat organized by length of bones or body part. They were mostly remains of families who attended the monastery’s church and monks themselves. The walls are built with lime to help sterilize germs and diseases. One passageway had stone bins of bones. The very last one held all the skulls. There must have been thousands of people down there with their bare bones exposed to the living world. At the end there was a well where skulls and other bones were arranged in a circular pattern. I was sneaking some pictures along with another tourist, but for one of them, I forgot to turn off the flash.

“NO PICTURES! I CALL THE POLICE!” our guide screamed. She threatened to confiscate our cameras and have us arrested. No such thing happened of course and she didn’t bother to delete the pictures on my camera. I was starting to be a little fond of our guide with her grandma glasses and thick-wool cardigan. She was the exact image of a sad librarian.

By the time I left the monastery, the Plaza Mayor had filled with Catholic worshippers. The changing of guards happened to be in full swing at the Parliament, the guards in blue and the band dressed in red. I could barely breathe the plaza was so full. And everyone was staring in the direction of the golden altar advancing down the street at snail’s pace. People were singing hymns. Some leaned out of windows, tossing flower petals. Those who followed behind the procession were dressed in long purple robes, the truly devout walked on their knees.

Ceramics and Sacrifices at Museo Larco Lima

Lima was a bright, exciting blur. A tour guide yelled at me, threatening to call the police and confiscate my camera. I gawked at pre-Columbian ceramics depicting the entire spectrum of sex acts. Got caught in a crowd of Catholic worshipers in the Plaza Mayor, some following the Christ procession on their knees and in purple robes. I feel like a lone adventurer vine-swinging through the city.

First stop was the Museo Larco. Larco was a millionaire’s son with an affinity to pre-Columbian archaelogy. More than just a rich boy though, he went on to discover several civilizations dated before the Incas, including the Moches. The museum used to be his mansion: a beautiful sprawling white building draped in bright flowers and languid vines. I accidentally stumbled on the erotic exhibit before finding the real entrance. I decided to leave the erotic exhibit for last so that I could build up my maturity level :) One of the first rooms is the immaculate storage area of the museum’s entire archive of ceramics. The main exhibit astounded me with its sensible curating and ultra-professional presentation. It outlined the many overlapping civilizations of Peru over the last 2000 years. The Moches I found out created ceramics with true likenesses of their leaders, unlike other groups. Their empire collapsed though thanks to El Nino in the 1600s. Not only did it drown their irrigation system but the population lost faith in the religious and political leaders who were supposed to be preventing all this with their ceremonies and sacrifices. And many sacrifices there were, they usually picked the strongest human specimens for the honor. Warriors would battle to be sacrificed. I wondered if any of them threw the game to avoid the “honor.”

Blunt knives were on display as representations of the blood-letting. They would drain the sacrifices’ blood into ceremonial cups, unclear if the priests drank it. Shiny things are always attractive so I moved on to the gold exhibit. Silver buttons, giant earrings that required piercings the size of a child’s fist, gold breast-plates, headdresses and the ancient version of Flava Fav’s gold grills lined the museum walls. I thought I had seen enough but then there was Larco’s erotic exhibit, which must be the most extensive collection of pre-Columbian porn in the world! There was a quote on the wall from Larco justifying that he wanted to study how they sexual lives related to society and religious ceremonies so he was only seeing it from the archaeologist’s perspective. Right.

Every variation of sexual acts was depicted many times over in these ceramic jugs. Some just used the shape of genitals as convenient models for spouts or openings. As I learned, everything we’re doing now has been done since the dawn of time. We humans really aren’t that creative! I had a quick lunch in their garden restaurant, which just like the museum, was an elegant white draped in vines. And I was off to the Monastery of San Francisco in the historical center of Lima.

Where the Grass is Greener: Day 6

Dublin, Google and Dublin

Our last full day in green green Ireland! We had to make the most of it. Trinity College was the closest walk from our hotel and so our first stop. A bespectacled college student in Harry Potter black robes gave us the tour. Oscar Wilde studied here and undoubtedly charmed and flamed his way through the school. The student seemed nervous but still churned out dates and facts as if she had been cramming for an exam. The college was built on monastic grounds as a Protestant university by Queen Elizabeth’s decree to counteract the Irish Catholic influence. I found interesting that the largest tree on campus, a sprawling long-armed thing, had successfully absorbed the overflowing water in the soil that was causing so much damaged to the buildings. The tree also fed off of the monastic cemeteries.

After the tour we were finally able to see the Book of Kells. This Celtic illuminated book and others in the collection were fascinating. The intricate details and minute flourishes of creativity within the confines of rigid Christianity made these cow skin pages so magical. The exhibit was very crowded so we didn’t have much time to deepen our understanding. Upstairs from the books was the Long Room, an old-style library containing mostly medical texts. Many of these less valuable but fascinating books were on display. The detailed drawings of human organs and blood systems were impressive especially since they must have been individually sketched with the limitations of printing presses... More>>

Where the Grass is Greener: Day 5

Galway and Newgrange

The sky was drizzling and threatening to worsen when we got to Newgrange. Our tour guide had a giant umbrella and was wonderfully authoritative. She told us of how it was constructed during the Neolitic Age, was overgrown with fields before it was rediscovered, possibly looted and definitely graffitied. She told us of the controversial way the tomb was reconstructed with the white quartz stones surrounding its base. The architect at the time reverse engineered the wall based on where those stones fell but others argued that these stones were in reality a pathway and did not belong to the tomb’s walls at all. No wonder it looked so bright and new for being built 5,000 years ago! Without any written history, it’s impossible to know anything for certain. The spiral patterns, the boulders circling the tomb: all are open to interpretation. In the surrounding farms, we could detect the grassy heads of other mounds. One farm grew its crops all around this mound. I can’t understand why it wasn’t excavated as well. I suppose to the farmer, prehistoric tombs have no value compared to food on the table... More>>

Where the Grass is Greener: Day 4

The Aran Islands

The “Happy Hooker” was sailing smoothly. M was in an even cheerier mood that morning as he proudly announced that he was successful in his farm-animal-petting crusade. A donkey and a cow in one of the neighboring farms next to our bed and breakfast were very accommodating. The weather wasn’t as sunny as M though and for the first day since our trip, the skies were stubbornly gray. The wind reminded us of the stinging treachery of the sea. A few unfortunate girls on the boat wore flip flops and miniskirts.

Before long, the Aran Islands came into view. Inisheer is one of the smaller islands and it looked like a collage of grassy fields, unforgiving rocks and occasional wooden houses. I could not imagine living here in winter when the sea would offer no escape. As we boarded off the boat, men in horse carriages tried to cajole us into a tour. We opted for renting bicycles instead. The road started out smooth though a little hilly. We stopped at a church ruin encircled by a not so ancient cemetery. All of the tombstones had imposing Celtic heads and tall grass almost matched their height. Strangely enough, the church was several feet lower than the cemetery as if embedded into the ground. I suppose they must have unearthed it at some point and the local residents began burying their loved ones around the ruins.  It was a small church with a modest altar and the engravings of a Jesus-like figure suggested the medieval age. A little black bird paused on one of the crumbling walls, holding a squirming worm in its beak. I’m sure it was utterly indifferent to all churches, histories and gods...More>>

Where the Grass is Greener: Day 3

The Cliffs of Moher

The Cliffs of Moher were more breathtaking than I ever expected. From the overpriced parking lot to the tourist center built into the top of the cliffs, I had no premonition of the beauty we were about to experience. Once we walked up to the fence made of large stone slabs, I wanted to cross those man-made limits just to get closer. They are truly majestic. Layers of stone from every age of humanity stacked and stacked atop a crisp blue sea. White stone, gray stone, brown stone all building a more majestic castle than any I have ever seen. Tufts of sweeping green grass added to the spectacular sight and birds circled the unreachable cliffs. The sheer verticality of these cliffs meant that birds were the only ones who had the freedom to inhabit them. It must be an aviary heaven, free from clumsy-pawed predators. There are albatrosses there, and puffins and seals and countless other creatures.

We abandoned the marked path for a less official one and only found deeper beauties. The way the cliffs curved it’s as if someone took a great big ice cream scoop and scooped these stones out, only leaving white, frothy ribbons from breaking waves. The grass was so dense and soft it could have been a beautiful monster’s coat of fur. We perched in a cozy opening of the cliffs and dangled our feet over the edge. The thrills were the bright and scintillating kind. The danger was so drenched by the beauty of it all, it hardly felt like danger at all. Peril might as well have been a sparkly purple dress to slip in and twirl in. We could not take our eyes off the view before us. We sat, his arms around me, feeling the extremities of what it is to be young and alive... More >>

Where the Grass is Greener: Day 2

Kenmare, Ring of Kerry

After a night’s sleep that felt deeper than a black hole, we got dressed hurriedly in time for breakfast. Our hostess brought out the infamous Irish breakfast, a plate of every kind of animal, meat and delicious fat. The slices of bacon were Canadian-style: thick and salty ham. The sausages were juicy. My favorites were the fried medallions of pudding: one was grayish and full of pork and cereal, the other was dark and made of blood. She said that she made the pudding herself. The whole plate was set off by charred pieces of tomato and potato. This would be the first of many devastating breakfasts.

As we set off towards Kenmare, the sky was rainless and the roads were narrow. Disobeying trees and bushes lined the slim strips of cement and I stifled a gasp every time a bus came careening from the opposite direction. I squealed over quant little houses with brightly painted doors and window frames, some rose red, others royal blue. M relished the driving and would bark out orders at me to take pictures of the scenery.

By the time we had dropped off our things at the Abbeycourt bed & breakfast, the afternoon was already nearing evening so we decided to have a quick picnic inside an abandoned church next door. The gray stone walls were overtaken by vines and its floor was now a bed of weeds, yellow buttercups and wild bushes. We perched ourselves on one of the windows, feet dangling, gazing over the cemetery and fields in the distance. Our sandwiches had too much mustard, the wind was whipping and a drizzle started to descend, but nothing could have been more magical than that picnic in the ruins. I thought of the people who used to come here every Sunday and the priest who thumped his sermons. As the drizzle started resembling rain, we ran back to the car and went on to the Ring of Kerry... More >>