Field Notes Close to home or in a far away jungle, there is always something marvelous to see.

The ticket office at Wong Department Store seemed like a good place to buy bus tickets but their prices were double what we expected and their bus didn’t go to Pisco but to nearby Paracas.  So we taxied directly to the Ormenos bus terminal and bought tickets for tomorrow morning for S/40 each.  Then it was on to El Museo de Anthropologia, Archeolgia y Historia del Peru, which pretty much covers it all.  We finally started to get a feeling for the cultures that pre-date the Incas, when they ruled and where.  Some of the displays were in English, as for the rest we had to guess a lot.  Some of the pottery was exquisite and like Pachacamac there were bits of fabric dating back centuries. 

Earlier we read The Last Days of the Incas so we knew quite a bit about the struggle between the Incas and Pissarro’s Spaniards.  We skipped to the 18^th Century fight for independence against the Spanish with San Martin and Simon Bolivar then to the near financial collapse of Peru in the early 1800s.  Salvation came with the exploitation of guano; Peru was literally saved by shit!  In fact more money was generated by guano in 30 years than by all the gold and silver mined in the three centuries before.  We also learned a political factoid:  One hundred eighteen Parliaments were presided over by 102 presidents, only 16 of whom served out their terms of office.  As frustrated as we get with our government ineffectiveness things could be much worse.

The museum also has some nice gardens and Connie, ever alert, added four new birds to go with three she saw this morning.  The count so far is twelve new species, not bad in a city of 8 million.