Sent Wednesday, May 30, 2000
Adventure Journal Peru
Hello Adventurers,
The following is part of a message I sent to David Breashears (the famous
director of the Everest IMAX movie and two-time Everest summiter who has
recently been trekking in Nepal with my business partner, Pemba Dorjee
Sherpa):
Hello David,
. . . I just returned from Peru. You must make an IMAX movie about this
place. There is so much fascinating and mysterious material waiting for film
throughout that country. I imagine an IMAX screen walking through the
corridors of the ancient Incan ruins and looking out the stone windows onto
vistas of Andean Mountains.
I imagine the Amazon Rain Forest and rivers filling the screen with all
shades of green, neon blue butterflies and more leaf shapes than one can
imagine. Vines and birds and sloth high in the tree tops. And footage along
the canopy walk, narrow swinging walkways hanging among the tallest branches
100 feet off the ground. The theater echoes with exotic birds, then chaotic
insects fill the air and the frogs take over singing to each other in the
calm river at dusk.
I see aerial photography from the Cessna airplane looking down onto the Nasca
Land Drawings: ancient lines as big as roads forming pictures of spiders,
monkeys, birds -- etched into the desert floor in grand scale, images viewed
only from an airplane -- created two thousand years ago long before there
were airplanes!
And the Incan streets of Cusco, similar in some ways to Kathmandu. And the
famous Incan ruins of Machu Picchu look good at any angle. The Andean music
fills the theater as the camera explores the site. I hear high note pan
flutes and four-foot flutes for low notes, two guitars and a single drum beat
shakes the seat. One band brought tears to my eyes. Their music was so
passionate, fitting the Indian culture, the landscape, the mystery, the turns
in the Inca trail, the stonework. The music takes over like hunger before a
meal.
I see llamas with big ears, long necks and an ability to spit.
Then along the coast there are sand dunes rolling for miles with an oasis
tucked inside, palm trees surround a lagoon where a mermaid lives! And a few
miles south where it never rains, an ancient cemetery stirs up mental drama
of the past. These mummies sit in their tombs. Waiting. They have never
been to museums. Everywhere I look, human bones and broken pottery litter
the sand -- a giant puzzle of an ancient culture. Shattered. No time or
money can put it back together.
Islands in the rough sea made of rock where birds, penguins(!) and sea lions
roar and swim in the surf and crowd over the rocks. Most beautiful! The
caves the rock creates are enticing. The waves are crashing twenty, thirty
feet in the air. I want an IMAX camera. My little Sony video recorder
(along with my inability to hold it still) doesn't begin to do the place
justice.
Nothing beats traveling.
I am adding Peru to my list of travel adventures. Of Global Interest will
take you there! Peru slide show coming soon to a living room near you.
The following is from the HimalayaNet #82 May 2001 newsletter:
DAVID BREASHEARS REMEMBERS EVEREST DISASTER
Despite an ill-fated effort to avoid being "Everest-centric" a number of
readers sent us the link to the David Breashears report on National Public
Radio about returning to Nepal for the five year anniversary of the
worst-ever climbing disaster on Mount Everest. The report is quite moving.
http://www.npr.org/programs/RE/archives/010510.everest.html
(You'll need a copy of real player to listen: www.real.com)
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