Peru 2024 - Part 12 - Outside Arequipa

Tuesday, 1 October 2024

Today we toured two attractions near Arequipa.

Along the way, there appeared to be a glacier in the mountains, but it is really tailings from a copper mine.

From Google Maps’ satellite view. The tailings are roughly one mile across.

Ruta del Sillar

Sillar is the volcanic rock that has been used to make most of Arequipa’s buildings. It is light and easily worked. We visited one of the major quarries that now mostly exhibits large sculptures made of sillar. There were probably close to a hundred pieces, including at least three nativity sets.

Looking down the road through the quarry.

A large lion sculpture.

Standing in front of a large bull - this gives you a feel for the scale of the place.

The working part of the quarry, with Volcan Chachani in the distance.

We watched while a seasoned quarryman made a standard-sized sillar block. First he used a wedge-shaped tool to make a small hole at the cutting line for the block.

Lon tapped in a metal wedge, and the block split evenly in half. We were surprised how straight the cleavage was.

Pulling the two blocks apart.

The worker then used a metal frame to mark off the sides of the block.

Then he carefully scraped down the sides to the correct size.

The finished block. Wages for all this work are minimal. It’s a subsistence job.

As we were leaving, the worker climbed up about 20 feet and started cutting larger blocks, then tumbling them down to ground level. It looked dangerous.

A variable hawk was watching the whole time.

Quebrada de Culebrillas

Not too far away is a small, narrow canyon, the Quebrada de Culebrillas (Snake Ravine). So named not for the presence of snakes, but for pictographs on the wall.

The canyon was only about 50 feet deep, but very narrow.

The namesake snake pictograph. Other figures around the snake are visible.

An insect pictograph. (Butterfly?)

Sue near the end of the open section of the canyon.