Author Archives: intothevoid

September 22, 2011

Carnivore

By intothevoid

I’ve been wanting to go to South Korea ever since I met Na Young, a Korean punk girl that attended Varning from Montreal festival last year. I actually started talking to her at the Loud House after-party, after the set of SKULL AND BONE (INEPSY’s Chany’s side project). She told me that she came directly from Seoul (South Korea capital) after having traveled 16 hours, and had to return to work in two days. I asked her how was life in South Korea, and she told me that it was all about eating and drinking. I was instantly sold!

And oooooh man, she wasn’t lying.

The first day we arrived, Na Young invited us to some beers and then to feast at a Korean BBQ. We ate and drank for 6 hours!!!! And then the next day, I had another Korean BBQ… and two more the next day! We ended up eating four BBQ’s in three days! It was insane. I don’t think I’ve eaten that much meat in my life!

Slowly barbecuing marinated pork meat

Na Young!

Myself grilling the meat!

Employee preparing our mountain of meat

Our table. Never seen so many carnivore punks together!

Here is a totally drunken video of us cooking the meat (fatty pork). Everything was cooked on charcoal, giving the meat an absolutely amazing taste:

And we had some taste of local alcoholic drinks:

Dry finish, a nice refreshing summer beer

Soju, the evilest of evil Korean drinks. A kind of rice vodka.

Next day, we went out with Jae-Ho, a local real headbanger. He brought us to another BBQ restaurant, which served us beef as well as… pork skin and cow intestines. Both were quite good, but the pork skin was absolute pure fat and kind of got nasty after a while haha

Intestines! Considered a delicacy around here

Cut intestines with pork skin

Bubbling fat on the pork skins

After the meal, we went to witness quite a rare thing in South Korea; a real underground  gig! We went to see DARGE (Japanese metal/punk), as well as some other local bands:

Myself with Jae-Ho! Jae-Ho plays in NOCTURNAL DAMNATION.

First band was a grindcore band, who’s singer started playing with some giant white transparent jump suit and corpse paint… he then took it off, all sweaty, and kept on growling the whole time. It was obviously a joke band, but they were still pretty entertaining haha

Grindcore band

Then was a Black Metal band called SKALD. They looked like cute little guys, but their music was digestible. I was expecting much worse.

Skald, South Korean Black Metal!

After this was DOKKAEBI ASSAULT, a pretty good d-beat band, but I was too busy to take photos haha. Then came DARGE, who totally ripped live!!!!!! They played for a good 40 minutes and even did an encore!

DARGE!!!!! So fucking good!!!!!

Next day, we met up with Na Young and the DARGE guys again, and went to Na Young’s brother’s restaurant, who treated us like emperors. It was unlimited meat, and we ate until we exploded.

Raw plate of beef ready to be BBQ’d

Traditional side dish: a spicy spring onion salad

Kimchi, fermented Chinese cabbage in hot peppers. One of my favourite Korean things ever.

Steaming HOT soup of tofu, onions and evil peppers. The DARGE drummer called this soup “From Hell” and it made him cry because it was so goddamn spicy hahaha

One of my favourite parts of the meal; a huuuuge steak. You cooked it lightly on both sides, and served it still bleeding. It was so tender, it actually melted in the mouth like butter. And then you dipped it in spicy sauce… arghh, it was heaven!

DARGE guitarist, Oze! Notice the drummer, Shinosake, on the left, which is still red from eating the hellishly hot soup

And then, when we were already bursting up, Na Young’s brother brought us some thinly sliced beef brisket called Chadolbagi. It’s a very expensive cut of meat, and it’s very very  Korean.

Chadolbagi meat

Check out how it melts on the grill. Imagine how it melts in your mouth!

All of us posing in front of Na Young’s brother’s restaurant.

All of us together then headed to the second and last DARGE gig at Badabie club. We could bring our own drinks, cool! First band was SCUMRAID, which was really fast and violent hardcore with a female drummer! They were really good.

Scumraid

Then was TERRORMIGHT, a bad power metal band – which I didn’t take photos of. FIND THE SPOT was next – and played kind of generic hardcore, which was followed by GUKDO and SAD LEGEND.

Find the Spot. They were pretty good.

Gukdo. Some good hardcore as well! Very energetic and violent!

Sad Legend, a melodic black metal band from the 90's. It was ok, but not really my thing too much. Kind of reminded me of MOG RUITH and SIGH.

I was playing songs in between bands to help out Na Young. It was cool to do some DJ to a Korean crowd! But actually, half the crowd was “foreigners” – guys from North America or Europe haha

Finally came DARGE, who played even better than the night before… fuelled by the crowd, they played a truly intense set that totally snapped my neck!

Raf destroying his bass… arghhh!!

Oze!!!

We then went for ANOTHER BBQ with everyone from the show! Yes, the after party was MORE MEAT!

I didn't take that photo, Juyoung Lee did! Hehe!

We had to take a break for the next few days, and pretty much ate veggie meals at our hostel. Never in my life had I had such intense meat experiences hahaha!! Anyway, we spent the next few days exploring the city. Seoul is a beautiful and modern city. It’s considered a UNESCO city of design – and the downtown area is definitely one of the most “design” I’ve ever seen. Just check out that sky scraper!

Crazy wavy Seoul skyscraper

Sun coming down on downtown Seoul

Bridge over the Han river

An artificial river with light shows!

A colourful side street

We saw some pretty interesting sights during our 10-day stay, including this beautiful gift set:

50$ worth of SPAM! Who the hell would give this away? Haha

A gigantic living crab in the aquarium of a sea-food restaurant. That thing was creepy as hell. It looked like a giant spider! It was the length of an arm!

Local ladies posing with some really expensive-looking ginseng roots

We went out for tons of food of course, including the infamous BIBIMPAP – rice, raw egg, veggies and meat served in a dangerously hot stone bowl. The rice and egg cooks directly in the bowl – and becomes crunchy. Oh man, that stuff is SO good!

Bibimpap

Every meal is paired with kimchi; fermented ultra-spicy Chinese cabbage. It’s one of my favourite Korean things ever, but doesn’t agree with my stomach at all. After eating that for a week, I got an intense ring of fire hahaha!

Cabbage kimchi, with marinated radish

We also had some Korean “sushi”, which is basically marinated veggies and ham wrapped in rice and sea weed. Not very good unfortunately, but ok for a quick meal:

Kimpap

We also spent time with Craig, a Canadian metalhead from Prince Edward Island, whom we met at the second DARGE gig. He brought us to eat Ginseng Boiled Chicken soup (ABSOLUTELY KILLER!) at a traditional restaurant, and then we went listening to metal at his place:

Craig with the CD of his old band, UIGG.

Our restaurant table

The soup, still heavily boiling at our table. There was a whole chicken in there, which was stuffed with rice!

Seoul is surrounded by gigantic mountains and beautiful natural parks. We decided to go hiking to discover Korean nature. We didn’t really know what we were doing, so we just took the subway, got off, and followed two Korean guys who were also going hiking at the Bukhansan National park. They hike every Tuesday, so they knew some really good trails. We thus hiked the tallest mountain in Seoul, Baegundae, at 836 meters! I didn’t even know I was able to do that!! Haha! It was quite abrupt and took about two hours to climb, thanks to nice windy weather.

François on the trail

There were some colourful temples along the way

A sign, halfway through the hike

Myself! Good thing the trees were there or else I would be falling HAHAHA!

A beautiful view of Seoul nearly at the top

Some parts were too abrupt and needed some cables!

Victory Snickers bar at the top of the mountain! Notice the bite marks haha I could barely wait for the picture.

Panoramic view of the nearby mountains! We had a picnic there. It was the most epic picnic ever. On the right, in the very distance, you can see North Korea.

My legs were killing me for two days after that, but it was totally worth it. There were tons more hiking trails, I wish I stayed there longer to explore more the area!

On Thursday 22nd, we visited Seoul’s biggest imperial palace, Gyeongbokgung, which has been constructed in 1394 and reconstructed in 1867 (it was almost destroyed by Japanese military and later by the government).  The whole area was huge! They were tons of colourful smaller buildings, and a nice big park.

The Gwanghwamun gate

The changing of the guards. Check out those flags! So colourful!

A beautiful swamp located in the garden

One of the gates, leading to the main palace

The interior of the palace was what impressed me the most. I’ve never seen such details and colors in a building before! Check out those ceilings, man!!

Palace ceiling

Another angle

So many details and beautiful patterns!

You could see inside some of the imperial rooms:

The emperor’s chair

The emperor’s dining table

And around the palace were some relocated traditional Korean-style houses:

Hanok house!

We then had our “last” restaurant meal, at a place nearby. I shouldn’t have eaten more spicy stuff, but it was there, and I couldn’t resist… haha, so I got stomach burns all day, but it was worth it!:

Bulgogi - sautéed thinly sliced beef marinated in soy sauce

Our table! François had ordered a bibimpap, but it turned out to be spicy octopus bibimpap, which was spread out on the table, ready to be mixed in the big bowl at the back

Anyway, we had one hell of a killer time in Seoul, and it was mainly because of our friends. So, thanks to everyone we met – Na Young, Jae-Ho, Raf, Oze, Sun and others… you guys were AWESOME!!!!!! See you one day in Montreal!

We still have a day left in Seoul, which we will use for relaxing before we head out to Beijing, China – and we will be staying in China for a month. Now, this will be quite a challenge because they control the Internet there and I’m not sure how I will be able to update the blog, but I think I’ll manage. Anyway, if you don’t hear from us for a while, you’ll know why!

4 Comments | posted in South Korea

September 17, 2011

Bombshell Rock

By intothevoid

We arrived in Hiroshima on Friday September 9th, by local trains as always. The distance was surprisingly much shorter than expected, and so we traveled for only 3½ hours! On the train there was the funniest sign ever:

Some kind of sign telling people to remove backpacks inside the train not to bother other people. The big square at the back of the middle guy is not a window, but his own backpack!!! Hahaha! Hope those piercing eyes gave him a lesson.

Arriving in Hiroshima, I already had some sort of creepy feeling crawling in my skin… everything was beautiful  and new-looking; I couldn’t help myself thinking how weird it was to walk in streets where 65 years before, everything had been wiped out in a matter of seconds…

Anyway, on the first night, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice hot bowl of ramen, the last one of our Japan trip. I got one that was kimchi (Korean spicy pickled cabbage) flavoured – since we are going to South Korea next. It was delicious – and hot as hell!

SO yummy! There were huge pieces of kimchi thrown straight in there. Hell yes!

The following afternoon, we went to visit the Shukkein garden, which dates from the 1650’s. It was nice looking, but I much preferred the one at the Hikone castle. Here are a few photos anyway:

The garden with loads of concrete bridges

Tiny tree growing on big rock

One of the concrete bridges from far. You can see big apartment buildings over the garden, which kind of kills its relaxing atmosphere

And then, on the way out we saw a bitter preview of what we were going to see the following day. Total atomic destruction:

The garden after the atomic bomb. Notice how only the concrete bridge is still standing up! It was at 650m from the hypocentre.

Next day, we went to the memorial park, where Hiroshima downtown was located before the atomic bomb landed. Pretty much everything was wiped out and burnt/melted, except for a tiny amount of buildings, including what they call today the A-Bomb Dome:

The A-Bomb Dome, once a cultural and artistic center that was turned into an administrative building during the war. It was at around 150 meters from the hypocenter. The city of Hiroshima kept it in its original state of destruction to remember the atrocities of August 6th, 1946.

Another part of the A-Bomb Dome. The metallic black poles were recently added to support the fragile frame of the building. Obviously, all that were inside of this building when the bomb dropped, were burnt to a crisp.

A monument to the deceased in the memorial park. You can see the top of the A-Bomb Dome in the very distance. See how beautiful and green the memorial park is?

While walking around in the park, we encountered a Bouddhist fire ritual, which is usually held annually to appease the souls of the A-Bomb victims and lead them on the path to nirvana. They were beating drums and singing sutras in a hypnotic way. It kind of sounded like North American native pow wow music.

The “Agon Shu” ritual. You could write a wish as well as a prayer to the victims and throw them in the fire.

Throwing the sticks into the fire

We then visited the Peace Memorial Museum, where was presented what happened exactly during WWII and how the Americans went to bomb Japan. What I liked is that Japan didn’t hide anything – they showed that they were very cruel with other Asian countries (China, Korea), but that bombing them was totally unjustified because they were in a very weak state and pretty much ready to surrender.

They showed many artifacts and striking photos. The following might be quite shocking and not for the weak of heart…

Hiroshima downtown being targeted for the dropping of Little Boy

A model of the bomb dropping on the city of Hiroshima. The bomb exploded 650 meters up in the air.

A man’s watch, which has stopped tickling when the bomb exploded at 8:15 AM.

The A-Bomb Dome and the total destruction of the downtown area

“Once upon a summer day
In their midst, a mushroom grew
They never saw
They never, never knew
They’re walking on the street
Making shadows on the wall
They’re sitting on the steps
Melting into stone
Children of the mushroom
Aren’t we all, aren’t we all”

– Flower Travellin’ Band

Indeed, as the song says, the atomic bomb was so strong and so bright that it actually “bleached” concrete, and created shadows of the people and objects who were standing in the way. The heat of the explosion went up to 5000°C

Fused roof tiles due to the heat. Tiles melt at 1200 to 1200 degrees celcius, showing how hot the fire was!

Melted glass bottles

Fused sake cups

A kid's tricycle. The 3-year old kid was riding it during the explosion, and got insanely burnt and died shortly after.

And what totally freaked me out is the fact that the radiation actually made the skin of people who were close to the center melt!

People with melted skin (real-life reproduction)

But the heat also had bad effects on the skin, like the following poor woman’s face:

Obviously she didn't survive past a few days

The blast made everyone feeling thirsty and hot – some of them threw themselves in the river, others drank black rain, which fell 20-30 minutes after the explosion. (Heat vaporized large amounts of water from the local rivers, which is drawn up into the radioactive cloud, making that rain extremely radioactive.) This poisonous rain gave people non-stop diarrhea for 3 months, and in some cases, leukemia and other forms of cancer.

Black rain stains on a white wall

As you can see, this museum was really heavy on us both, and we were truly shocked from all the things we saw. Can’t believe that there was an OTHER bomb dropped on Nagasaki! It had the same effect as this one, killing 70 000 people on the shock, and eventually another 70 000 people from the after-effects. Damn.

To brighten up our stay in Hiroshima, we went to the Miyajima island, which has been a sacred island for centuries. We had to take the tram, and then a ferry to reach the island.

A girl sitting in the tram. Look at those ugly nerd glasses! They don't even have lenses! This is the huge trend in Japan right now. What a way to ruin your face hahaha

The ferry with beautiful mountains in the background

Miyajima has been considered a holy place since the beginning of Japanese history. In the past, women were not allowed on the island and old people were shipped elsewhere to die, so that the ritual purity of the site would not be spoiled. Nowadays, they are trying to keep it looking traditional, although we did see a few big hotels and commercial streets. Sacred deer wander freely through the streets and parks…

Myself and a cute deer!

The island is home to the Itsukushima Shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The landmark here is a gigantic ancient otorii, or dramatic gate which is classified as one of the Three Scenic Views of Japan.

The Miyajima otorii gate at high tide

And more deer were hanging around the area, obviously attracted by yummy things tourists were giving to them.

One hell of a happy deer in front of the gate!

In the past, common people were not allowed to walk on Miyajima island, so to allow pilgrims to approach, the shrine was built like a pier over the water; so it would appear to float separate from the land. It therefore existed in a liminal state between the sacred and the profane.

The floating shrine

One of the corridors

The otorii viewed from the shrine

Inside the shrine, where shinto ceremonies are held

Happy looking 9-tail lion

We then ascended the Mt Misen mountain, which is the highest of Miyajima island. It was really really challenging as the humidity and heat made us sweat like pigs. I think it was around 32 degrees out!! Anyway, it was totally worth it. Nobody was as crazy as us, so we were pretty much alone on the trail the whole time haha. It took us about two hours to ascend.

A beautiful trail on Mt Misen

On the side of the trail near the top were a bunch of small funny looking buddha figures:

Buddha!

Near the top were some really beautiful temples. You could hear some monks chanting with their strange hypnotic voice…

Temple near the top of the mountain

And finally, we arrived on the top. We rewarded ourselves with a shredded ice treat, and enjoyed the beautiful views:

Top of the mountain

View of the sea from the mountain. It was absolutely breath-taking!

We then descended the mountain, which took us only 30 minutes haha, it was much easier than going up. We pretty much ran the whole way down!!!! After this, we visited the rest of the island, and did a bit of window shopping.

A huge and tall pagoda!

A deer wanting to go inside a store hahaha

A funny drugged-out Hello Kitty stationary set

The local food specialty are oysters as well as bean-stuffed maple cakes. They were really killer – kind of tasted like a fluffy waffle with ultra-sweet beans inside of ’em:

Japanese maple leaf (momiji) cake

The inside of the cake

Another local speciality are …rice scoops! That’s right! You can buy tons of rice scoops from all the local merchants. They even have the world’s biggest rice scoop for everyone to see haha:

World's biggest rice scoop! How useless hahaha

After our big day, we needed a nice satisfying dinner, so we had Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. This time, instead of putting all the ingredients together to make some kind of pancake, it was all layered so you could taste everything separately. To be honest, I really loved the Osaka-style okonomiyaki, but my favorite was this one! It was so tasty… oh man, I am craving it this very moment. Argh!!!!

The guys making our okonomiyaki's

The incredible result...

....layers of yumminess!

After the food, we were able to witness the spectacular and famous Miyajima sunset. It really created a nice and serene atmosphere. It was beautiful!

Miyajima sunset

So, that’s pretty much the end of our trip’s Japanese leg! We really really enjoyed our stay here. I wish I had had more money to try more cuisine and buy more records, but we’ll come back one day for sure. Speaking of records, here are our final Japanese scores pics:

Vinyl scores!

CD scores! (Shown here without cases)

Oh yeah, and I had bought a yukata (informal kimono, for summer festivals and such) in Kyoto, so here is a photo of myself in it haha

Yakuza-style Annick!

We had to wake up really early to take next flight to Seoul, South Korea and we finally saw the rising sun in all of its glory… Good bye Japan, and see you some day!

The rising sun on our way to the airport

This post is dedicated to my mother, Ginette, who have been operated this morning at the hospital. On pense à toi très fort mom, et je sais que tu vas aller bien très bientôt! Bouddha me l’a promis! xxoo

2 Comments | posted in Japan

September 9, 2011

Black Fire

By intothevoid

To be ultra cheap, we traveled from Tokyo to Kyoto using a special train pass called “Seishun 18”, which caters to college students on vacation that want to travel for less. The tickets are effective during Japan’s three major school holiday periods, and are offered for 145$ for 5 days (used randomly during a specific time period). The catch is that we can’t use bullet trains or any form of rapid trains, so we have to stick to making transfers on different local trains that stop at every station. It thus took us 9 hours to get to Kyoto, instead of 2 hours on the bullet train (costing 170$ per person!), but it was a very comfortable ride.

Seishun 18 ticket with three days used

Kyoto
August 8th

We arrived pretty late to our hostel and we were showed to a total Japanese style room, with futons placed on tatami floors. We slept like babies haha, they were surprisingly comfortable! I much prefer those to cheap and totally used western mattresses with springs sticking out of them.

So, speaking about Kyoto… Located in the Kansai region, it is the seventh largest city in Japan and has 1/4th of its national treasures, featuring countless shrines and temples, and seventeen sites recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. Japan’s oldest traditions, such as the tea ceremony, flower arranging, and geisha schooling also originated in the city. Its architecture is a mix of old and new; you can easily see temples neighbouring gigantic buildings or shopping centers.

Some old building with modern development around it

Funny modern engrish advertisement found in a shop

We had a really cool toilet in our hostel, and I had to take a video of it. Check out the technology! And I didn’t even mention that you could adjust the water pressure and angle of the cleaning jets!

Our hostel was located near Gion, which is the very famous neighbourhood where you can find geishas and maikos (geishas in training). The street itself is really nice and old-style looking, but the rain probably scared them (and potential clients!) away:

Gion street view at night

And during the day. Always raining!

Japanese bath house entrance. Went there again hahaha

Unfortunately, we soon learned that a typhoon was coming our way (hence the rain), so we had to limit our sight-seeing to only a few places before the city is completely devoured by heavy wind and rain. We decided to go to a tea ceremony and visit the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine.

The Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine (a total tongue twister to pronounce) was started in the 700’s-800’s, and mostly serves for worshipping Inari, the patron of business.

Entrance temple

Large sized Japanese school girls at the temple haha

Some water for purifying the hands, face and body. People drank from that stuff.

Worship altar

The overall sounds were really cool. Surrounded by nature, you could hear cicadas – but also Shinto priests reciting prayers and people ringing bells in hope of their wishes being realized (the “Black Metal” style distortion is actually the sound of the cicadas):
http://annick.blackwidowpromotions.net/intothevoid/temple.mp3

Here, Inari is considered to be the fox god living on the mountain where the shrine is built. He is not only the patron of business, but is also the protector of rice, cereals, prostitutes and firemen. He is also worshiped for fertility. Alas, Inari is also capable of bewitching or possessing people by taking the shape of Buddhist monks or hot chicks!!!

The evil looking Inari fox!

Since centuries, Japanese businesses have been donating burnt-orange-colored toriis, which are some kind of portal gates. Their cost varies between 5000$ and 13000$, and they are supposed to attract wealth.

Toriis leading to the main shrine

Entrance to another torii tunnel

Often, businesses will have their business name carved onto those toriis. We even found a tattoo parlor!!!

You can walk up to 4km through those toriis, and “tunnels” are separated by smaller smiles for personal worship.

Offers to Inari, including rice crackers, rice and sake

Old man worshipping Inari

People praying

It was very humid and hot, and I kept on being bitten by evil Japanese mosquitoes, so we didn’t do the whole 4km walk up to the mountain. It was still a really nice experience. I wish we could have visited more things in Kyoto, but the weather was just terrible!

So yeah, as an avid tea drinker (tea drinker and hell raiser!), I’ve been wanting to experience the ways of tea in Japan for a long time. Usually, these things cost around 30-40$ and are very formal (you gotta know a bunch of rules and formal Japanese sentences/words etc) but luckily one of our hostel workers found us an ultra-cheap tea ceremony experience. So, for 6$ each, we not only got to experience the ceremony – but we got to make our own tea too!!

You start by eating a Japanese “sweet”, a little dessert usually made of sweet bean paste covered with some jelly stuff. Those sweets usually reflect the seasons – this one is for summer, representing a pure lake with leaves flowing.

Modern tea-pot heater. Traditionally, the tea pot heats up with charcoal.

The tea ceremony is not just about drinking tea, it’s almost like a martial art… you got to connect with the spirit of the tea. You appreciate your host, and your host shows you respect. You worship the tea bowl (really!), and thank the gods for the matcha  tea you’re about to drink. Matcha is a fine ground, powdered, high quality green tea and not the same as tea powder or green tea powder. It is usually very expensive and is highly antioxidant (up to 137 times greater than the amount from green teas!!!).

Our host showing us how to prepare matcha tea, using a whisk.

Usually, matcha tea is very bitter – but when you eat something very sweet before, the taste is much much smoother!

My own matcha tea! See how it has nice cafe-latte style bubbles? This is how real matcha is supposed to look like.

Posing with the tea mistress!

It was a total ritual, and we really enjoyed it! But unfortunately, we were already caught in the start of the typhoon, which broke one of our umbrellas on the way back home hahaha

François holding on!

The weather channel announced very heavy winds for the next day – so we pretty much stayed at home and rested haha

Solar winds are blowing. Neutron star controlling! ...In fact, turns out the wind wasn’t that bad on the actual day, but it was still not a very good time to go out.

To comfort ourselves during the storm, we bought some cheap 250 yen (about 3$) bento boxes. They were yummy as hell.

Yakiniku (sautéed meat), with rice (topped with pickled plum to represent the flag of japan), and some pickled things.

More bento! Notice how everything is deep fried. Everything cheap is deep fried, making eating healthy very hard when you’re broke!

Hoshikawa
September 4th

From Kyoto station, we took a bus to Yokkaichi (big town in the department of Mie), and then a few trains to finally arrive in Hoshikawa:

Mie bus! Only 50$ for a return ticket, compared to 121$ using the bullet train. Oh yeah!

Inside the bus with the Japanese countryside

A view of an over-flooded river (due to the typhoon!) from a train window. Turns out 36 people (mostly old folks) died in that typhoon in a region closer to the sea!

So you wonder, why Hoshikawa? What the hell is so special there? Well, it is the village of my good friend Masaki Tachi, also known as Gezol from SABBAT/METALUCIFER. I started writing him when I was 18 year old, and featured SABBAT in my first ever issue of MORBID TALES fanzine. Never have I thought that one day I would visit the address that I would write on envelopes!!

Gezol is not only a great musician and vocalist, but he is also a master hairdresser. He’s been in the business for 12 years, and owns his own hair salon called “Merci”. A long-time dream of mine was to get my hair cut by his own heavy metal master hands… a dream that got finally realized!

Merci hair salon

Getting my hair washed by Gezol’s assistant

Gezol demonstrating his masterful hair cutting skills

Getting a Japanese perm

Waiting!

The result!!!! A totally trendy girly Japanese hair style! Hahaha

After that, we went to eat some udon noodles in a nearby restaurant. Mine was served in a soy sauce broth with a half cooked egg and a strange paste of Japanese potatoe (which had the constituency of snot!!!). The thing on the right side is a rice triangle covered with sweet fried tofu. Really yummy.

Udon noodles! I love Japanese noodles. There are sooo many different types!

In the evening, we went back to Gezol’s place and watched metal videos all night; SATAN, SORTILÈGE and RAINBOW live gigs. Gezol’s living room was the most metal living space I’ve seen, with LPs hanging on the walls, old posters on the ceiling, a beer fridge and a gigantic, absolutely maniacal record collection.

Gezol – notice the killer SABBAT EP’s on the top of the photo!

Ceiling covered with posters

Watching KIT live bootlegs

Beerway to heaven

Arghhhh!!!!!!!

The next day we woke up in the morning to go to Hikone castle. Japanese ROAD TRIP!!!! Blasting our way through the Japanese country side, we arrived at the castle in the early afternoon.

ROAD TRIP!!! ...in Gezol’s evil car!! Hahaha

Japanese cemetery and country side

Some kind of farming facility on the way to Hikone castle

Of course, we had to eat something so we stopped at a highway-side truck stop restaurant. They are far from what we are used to in America…

You choose what you want to eat on a big machine, then you bring the coupon to the restaurant desk

Tuna sashimi (raw fish)! François’ plate

Donkatsu, battered and fried pork covered with an omelette, served on top of yummy rice and paired with a nice little soy soup and some pickled veggies.

They had the funniest “how-to” icons in the restaurant’s western-style toilets!

HAHAHAHA!!!

They even had a fake flushing sound button on the toilets, I suppose to hide embarrassing farts or diarrhea

You can even adjust the sound, depending on the sonic level of the disaster!!

So anyway, back to Hikone castle. We first visited the museum, which was located in the administrative building, Omote Gotten.

The inside of the building, with traditional tatami floors and sliding doors.

A small garden

Zen garden – see how the rocks have a wavy shape? It represents a river with small waves

After the museum, we went to the castle itself:

This small fortified structure called “yagura”, is actually a corridor bridge which can be demolished in emergencies. It leads to the castle.

Hikone castle, myself and Gezol! The angle is weird and the castle looks tiny, but it is actually really huge (three stories tall).

The Hikone castle is a stunning 400 year old structure. It has been valued at 350 000 kokus (one koku – the amount of rice to feed one person for one year!) Its first lord was Ii Naomasa in 1601 and last, Ii Naonori in 1860. It is considered a national treasure.

The Hikone castle looks beautiful but it is actually quite deadly. There are tons of holes from the inside for shooting from rifles without being seen from the outside, as well as hidden hiding places:

Some of the castle tower’s 75 shooting holes (these ones can be seen, but normally they are covered with plaster so they can be broken in case of emergencies)

Hiding place, leading to a hidden room. This one could fit 5 people.

View of Japan’s biggest lake from the top of the castle

Located on the castle grounds is “genkyu-en”, an old Japanese garden, built by Naoki (fourth lord of the clan). There are ponds, nine bridges, and tons of trees. Really nice place! The cicadas were singing really loudly.

Myself and François on one of the bridges

ARGHHHHHHHH!!!

Some little houses that look like they are floating. Notice the castle in the background!

Weird crooked trees

Myself and François again

Afterwards, we went to eat dinner in a food court. I had some fried noodles with octopus “balls”, which I ordered from this place:

They gave me this thing to call me when the food was ready. WTF!

The meal. It was yummy as hell.

Inside the balls!

And for dessert….

Blue (remone??) flavoured shaved ice topped with ice cream. Lovely.

Matcha flavoured shaved ice topped with whipped cream!

Some kind of round croissant thing called “shiro noir”, which you poured some maple syrup onto.

Obsessed by shaved ice!!!!!!!!!!

We also visited some kind of joke store which had INCA COLA!

Inca Cola in Japan??? Wow! You've got to be shitting me!

Some really really creepy toys

Even creepier things.

So that’s pretty much it for our small stop in Hoshikawa! We had a real good time. Thanks a million for everything Gezol!!!!!!!

We woke up pretty early the next day to travel to Osaka. We had to take the bus back to Kyoto, and then take the train to Osaka. We had to eat lunch, so we bought some sushi:

Yummy assortment of sushi for around 7$. Not bad for Japan!

And we saw some really expensive fruit in the grocery store:

About 110$ for 6 peaches...

100$ for a melon!

Osaka
September 6th

Arrived in Osaka, we went to do our groceries in a 100-yen shop. We only had a microwave and hot water available in the hotel, so we took some cheap-ass already prepared food for the new few days:

Instant ramen, microwaveable rice, curry sauce, meat balls in sauce, beefsteak in sauce, onigiri, Chinese dumplings, canned fish, veggies, corn soup, bread, marmalade and 100% pure orange juice! The things you can find in those shops are mind blowing!

The following day was our intense record shopping day. Tokyo and Osaka are THE two best cities for metal record hunting in Japan.

We started at the legendary Rock Stakk records. Owned by Miki, a totally maniacal Japanese headbanger, Rock Stakk has been opened for 5 years now. It’s going very strong as there were almost always people when we were there! The store was full of killer metal, and it took us at least 3 hours to go through it all. They had vinyls, CD’s, VHS tapes, shirts, DVD’s, patches and pins. I scored the classic Heavy Metal Force iii compilation LP (CASBAH, JURASSIC JADE, SABER TIGER, X, etc…) and… a Japanese version of JUDAS PRIEST’s Turbo. Yes, a guilty pleasure!

Outside Rock Stakk. It was hard as hell to find, but totally worth it!

Vinyls, DVD’s, CD’s...

More CD’s!

Check out the rarities! ELIXIR, ATTENTAT ROCK, CHARGER and SABBAT 7”’s!

The VHS section!

Tape section. You could find old original demo tapes (including a SABBAT one!), some ancient releases (think brand new, un-opened 80’s SACRiFICE, CANDLEMASS and DARKTHRONE tapes...) Really killer section.

MIKI!!!!!!!!

We then went to King Kong Stones records, where Jacky War works. They had mostly punk LPs, but we scored FLOWER TRAVELLIN’ BAND’s Satori there!

LP section

They also had tons of other music styles

New arrival CD’s

With Jacky!

We then had a small snack. Some of those killer octopus balls once again! This time, with bonito (fish) flakes:

Almighty octopus balls!

Next shop on the list was Time Bomb records. They have a very good punk section, as well as alot of extreme metal (black, death, thrash) CD’s and LP’s:

Time Bomb records outside sign

Black Metal CD section

Vinyl section

After was S.A. Music, a small metal-only shop with very good NWOBHM, Doom and Black metal sections. They had a small second-hand LP section that had some really crazy rarities!

Inside the store

Patches

Cathedral signatures!

Finally, we went to the last shop, Wild One, which was recommended to us by Jacky. I never heard of this one before, and honestly was quite surprised! They specialized in metal, heavy rock, prog and rock – carrying extremely hard-to-find LP’s, 7”’s, CD’s and boxsets. They had a really incredible NWOBHM selection as well as some hard to find French Metal and Italian Metal (PAUL CHAIN’s Ash MLP!!!) Of course, the prices were really out of range for us (they had eBay prices). And unfortunately the guy didn’t want us taking photos of the inside of the store, but I still snagged that one:

Wild One record shop. Not to be missed on your metal hunting trip to Osaka!!!

Around the place, we found some funny business signs:

A massage service offered by women dressed in school girl uniforms

Deadly Italian dining!

To reward ourselves after a day of hunting, we met up with Miki of Rock Stakk and went to eat the local speciality, okonomiyaki.

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese-style pizza. The “crust” is made by a mix of cabbage, batter, eggs and green onions and other things (mine had meat)

You top it with whatever you want. My toppings were bbq sauce, mayonnaise, spicy mustard, bonito flakes and green onion flakes. YUMMY!

Eating the Okonomiyaki.

We then went to a cool tiny bar called “CRUNCH”, which is owned by a guitar collecting trannie metalhead. She said she owns 40 guitars, 5 of them were in the tiny bar!

Bar owner, and bar. The place was FULL of CD’s and DVD’s... it was really intense!

Miki playing with one of the guitars

The three of us!

François with bunny ears

The next day, we went to do some karaoke with our friend Sylvain, who is a Quebecer metalhead whom I knew from my days as a Katacombes DJ. He lives an hour away, and he showed us the way of metal karaoke:

Walking around in Osaka’s Tombori neighbourhood

Our group at the karaoke place

So, we had unlimited beer for one hour, and sang songs from Judas Priest, Rainbow, Thin Lizzy, Metallica, Accept, The Ramones, and Motörhead. It was amazing!!!!

François singing some Rainbow

Singing ACCEPT’s Fast as a Shark!!!!!!!

JUDAS PRIEST’s Exciter!!!!!!!

They even had NAPALM DEATH’s “You Suffer” in karaoke… hahahahaha!!!! They repeated the song three times but I missed the first one haha, it was too fast!

So, that was our trip to the Kansai region of Japan! Next is Hiroshima, where we will stay for 5 days, and surely see some atrocities… catch you latör!

2 Comments | posted in Japan

August 31, 2011

War Metal War!

By intothevoid

On August 23rd, we were brought to the Lima airport by Marcos, who waited with us until he couldn’t stay anymore. It was nice to see a familiar face before our long flight to Tokyo!! Thanks for all, Marcos!!!! Our first flight left at 2AM with the Chilean company LAN, which had movies we could choose from, food in porcelain, real utensils as well as free booze! The flight took around 9 hours. Unfortunately, the second flight from San Francisco on United Airlines was total economy; it had no leg space, no movies, nothing, for 11 ½ hours. They fed us, of course, but it wasn’t super luxurious or anything like the other one, haha. The plane itself was super huge though, I think they call it a Boeing 747.

Inside our plane to Tokyo

We arrived in Tokyo 24 hours later, on August 25th, 2PM local time. We pretty much skipped half a day, but slept a big majority of the time in the plane so we arrived in mint condition. But now, we had to figure out the local trains and subway to get to our hostel. Check out the nightmare we had to face:

Tokyo subway station map. We actually got a bit lost but found our way back in no time. We eventually figured it out - it is easier than it looks!

The first time we wanted to do was get a nice hot bowl of noodle soup, which we did! I got some beef soba with a half-cooked egg, and François got some cold soba noodles with tempura stuff:

My bowl of soup

François’ food

Although everything was salty as hell, the food was to die for! It had so much flavor and everything! I had high expectations for my first true Japanese meal and was very much satisfied.

In the late evening, I went to a Sento (public bath house with spring water). That experience was quite strange at first because as you know, you have to be completely naked and freshly washed/dried in order to bathe! I went with another girl from our hostel who knew the bath house etiquette. I got used to it after a while (although a lot of people were staring – I was the only white person in the place) and it ended up being really cool! Inside there were three baths – one really hot, one really cold and another hot one with Jacuzzi style water massages. I left with really beautiful skin because of all the minerals of the water! Sorry, no pictures for that one hahaha!

Anyway, our hostel was located in Asakusa, a Tokyo neighborhood famous for its traditional “Edo” (old name for Tokyo) style streets and temples. Walking around there was like being in a samurai movie; the restaurant and shop signs are written in calligraphy and everything looks so ancient! We were right next to a very famous temple called “Sensoji temple”. It is apparently the oldest in Japan, dating from the year 628.

Kaminarimon gate with a huge lantern

Main temple (doors closed)

Impressive 5 story pagoda

Charms to be bought for luck or other wishes

Myself in front of the Kaminarimon gate

People writing wishes on charms

Funny racoon dog gods, which had their own temple dedicated to them (they are the gods of entertainment)

The temple dedicated to the racoon dogs. The “swastika”is a Buddhist symbol and represents dharma or balance. It can mean love and mercy or strength and intelligence.

The Asakusa neighbourhood also featured the Asahi brewery, which is shaped like a beer glass with foam. Beside it is a weird sperm-like golden thingie.

Famous Asakusa landscape

On Saturday, there was a fireworks festival in Asakusa that attracts annually around one million people to the area. Excitement was in the air – and we walked around to see what’s going on!

Sensoji temple with gates opened and tons of Japanese tourists and festival goers

Incense burning for purification

Another very pointy looking temple

The local food specialty is the rice cake, cooked in front of you to be as fresh as possible.

A man flipping hot rice cakes

The result

And there was a bunch of other food sellers on site

Man cooking fish with hot stones

Two women in yukata (informal kimono), walking around the temple area

Yasuyuki (ABIGAIL/BARBATOS/TIGER JUNKIES) came to meet us to start some record hunting. We took a photo in front of the temple gate:

Myself and Yasuyuki! Arghhh!!!

First shop we went to was Record Boy. Located in the district of Suginami, it was really hard to find due to being completely hidden and without an outside sign (it costs too much apparently). On top of that, there was a summer festival going on in the area, which limited our access to streets.

Some ladies with kimonos and tacos on their head, taking part in the festival

We finally found the shop, and it turned out to be absolutely killer as expected! had a very good variety of GOOD metal and punk CD’s and LP’s from all over the world, as well as some patches and shirts. I bought tons of Japanese metal re-issues there. Their “rare” vinyl section was more than tempting, with unbelievably killer albums but I knew I had to keep my money for other things.

Myself and Satoru (the record shop owner) with the Record Boy sign

The inside of Record Boy

The punk wall

Some classic BM items

After this, we went to Nat records/WAREHOUSE – which are located in Shinjuku. They are two stores that are joined together, and cater different musical genres. Nat records is more metal/punk and Warehouse is psychedelic, proto-metal and everything else… so the two really complete each other.

Inside Nat records. You see here some new and used punk and metal vinyls.

The excellent re-issue of PAUL CHAIN’s Detaching from Satan

Our very own album! Killer!

After this, we went on to the Shinjuku branch of Disc Union. They are a chain of record stores scattered all around Tokyo. This particular one had 3 floors; one floor with used metal CD’s and vinyls, another with new metal CD’s and vinyls, and the last floor sells punk/crust/hardcore stuff.

Walking around in Shinjuku. This is what my idea of Tokyo was!!

The sign of Disc Union

The used metal section of Shinjuku Disc Union. It was fucking intense man, it took me an hour just to go through one fourth of the floor! Unfortunately, all I wanted to buy was way over my budget.

A classic 80’s Japanese metal compilation vinyl. I wish I could have bought it, but it was at 100$!

Some used CD’s... all originals of course!

Check out the size of this Diamond Head section!!!!

VENOM/EXODUS/SLAYER combat tour tape, probably the most legendary of all metal VHS! Sold for 120$...

The “new” metal floor

They even had a WINO section!

Honestly, in Japan, if you are looking for an album, you will find it – but you will need to pay the price if it is rare (that’s the down side of it!). I never saw such a variety in my life!! Apparently, Osaka record shops are even crazier… so I guess my wallet will suffer very much in the next few weeks haha

We visited the streets of Shinjuku with Yasuyuki; he brought us to the famous red-light district. I thought it was going to be super dirty and chaotic, but it was really orderly – like most Japanese things are!

Kabukicho street. You see here signs for restaurants, porn shops, bars with half naked girls dressed in army suits, karaokes, love hotels and “snacks” (bars ran by the yakuza, with escorts costs an arm and a leg!)

We were hungry as hell after our long day of record hunting! We went to eat ramen, and tested all their varieties:

RAMEN NEVER DIES!!!!!!!!

Miso ramen

Yasuyuki loudly slurping the noodles (that’s how you do it in Japan – the louder the better!)

Soya ramen

They included some yummy fresh tofu with the soup

After this, we went to Tokyo’s only metal bar, “Godz”. We stayed there for one beer only, as they played shit music (at least we requested some Angel Witch and Candlemass!) and the beer was way too expensive (8$ a beer for like 300ml). Screw that! So we bought a last one in the department store and drank it in the metro on our way back. Did I mention that it was totally legal to drink in the streets, subway AND stores there?

Tokyo subway party

When we came back home to Asakusa, the fireworks were finished so people were going back home. The subway exit was absolutely crowded but the policemen took care of discipline and everything went very nicely.

People making out on the bridge on our way back home

Some kids lighting fire crackers in a back street

The next day, François and myself went to visit the Yanaka Cemetery in Ueno, the Onshi park and its temples. Seriously, there are temples everywhere we walk, but these ones were located near a pond, so we wanted to check them out.

François with some gate thingies, doing a typical Japanese pose

Some lotus flowers growing in the pond

A dog with sunglasses!!!!!! Sunglasses!!!

A Buddha with a bib. I really don’t know why he’s wearing that!

A really cute tiny temple

Some really ancient stone lanterns

A temple on the way to the cemetery

The cemetery was located in a large garden, with tons of loud crickets and beautiful green trees. Unfortunately, it was also filled with mosquitos so I got eaten alive. I must have gotten 15 bites, which grew each to a diameter of 4 inches (I got an allergic reaction – my body doesn’t know these moquitos yet so it reacts strongly!). In any case, it was kind of worth it to see the cool Japanese tombs and hang out with ghosts:

A tomb with some beautiful evil-looking calligraphy

More Japanese tombs. Don’t they look really different from the ones we are used to?

Some tombs affected by the earthquake

Some gigantic stone with cool calligraphy. Look at the characters on top – they look like alien writing or something

We then came back home, had supper, then met my friend Mirai (SIGH/CUTTHROAT) for a little drinking session at a traditional Japanese bar (Isakaya):

VOÏVOD worship with Mirai!

The Isakaya

That evening was really fun – you could order beers from a computer screen and the host would bring them directly to your table. Also, did I mention that Japanese beer was amazing? They served Kirin the whole evening, and it was such a feast!

Oh yeah, on the way back home, we noticed a beer vending machine on the street! How cool is that?

Asahi beer vending machine!

Our final day in Tokyo started at 5:30 in the morning. We wanted to visit its famous Tsukiji market – biggest and busiest wholesale fish/seafood market in the world, moving 700,000 metric tons of fish per year!!! Unfortunately we weren’t free to walk around too much or to buy fish directly from the sellers, but that wasn’t our goal anyway… we wanted to try the world’s freshest tuna sushi, at a famous shop called Daiwa Sushi! The Tuna is fished at 3AM – 50km from Tokyo’s shore, brought here at 5PM, then the best Tuna fishes are auctioned around 6:20 and we are able to eat it at 7AM. So, that’s what we did!

Market workers, bringing boxes of fish around

Daiwa sushi, located in the Tsukiji market

Our table at the sushi bar

The sushi chefs

We ordered two medium-fat tuna nigiri sushis each (the best and most prized parts of the tuna). “Chutoro yottsu nigiri kudasai!” With our fingers, we took them and flipped them upside down in our mouth, so the fish touches the tongue.

Our breakfast sushis

The fish was really tasty, and melted in the mouth like butter. By far the best tuna sushi I’ve ever had in the past!!! Unfortunately, two wasn’t enough to really have the full experience (I would have loved to eat a lot of it to really explore the taste!) but we stopped at two each. It’s a really good thing that we did, because the bill turned out to be 40$!!!!! We didn’t see the menu, and we knew it was going to be pricey, but not that pricey! We are always trying to save money, eating 2$ lunches and all, and here we are – eating two bites each for 20 times the price. Haha. Ahh well, it was still a very exciting experience.

So we explored the area a bit… there were merchants everywhere selling sushi preparation material, seafood, veggies, tea and other stuff.

Okra veggies. These ones were placed so perfectly!

Sushi knives

Fish byproducts, cooled down with dry ice!

Sea creatures (the crabs on the left were alive)

Dried squid

Japanese style meat. These cuts come from the south.

More meat. Look at that awesome texture!

For lunch, we had to be cheap-asses again (especially after the wallet disaster of this morning!) so we feasted on convenient store snacks:

Some kind of triangular gigantic sushi with cooked fish in the middle. Really yummy. I think they are called “onigiri”

Two cheap mochi-type desserts. The outside is sticky rice, and the inside is sweet bean paste. The green one is tea-flavored.

When you bite into it! They were so good!!!!!!!!

After lunch, I had a nap in the park, Japanese style. Going to bed at midnight after a night of drinking and waking up at 5:30 for two days in a row is hard – especially that I’m still recovering from the 14-hour time difference with Lima!

Park nap

We wanted to visit the Imperial palace, but unfortunately it was closed to public on that day… but at least we could still see the famous main gate stone bridge. It was really beautiful, total postcard scenery!

Nijubashi bridge

Myself in front of the bridge

In the afternoon, we met up again with Yasuyuki, and went to another part of Tokyo called Shibuya. I think they have the biggest metro station in Japan! The area outside of it was like New York’s time square, but much more Japanese:

Shibuya!

We went to our last Tokyo record shop, the Disc Union Shibuya branch. It’s hard to believe, but it was actually better than the other one in Shinjuku!!! What made it so great is that they had 50% sales and cheaper prices. I bought quite a few sweet rare LP’s and a Japanese metal comp from the 80’s (on CD). They had of course alot of collector’s items, like this Heavy Metal Super Star ABIGAIL “Live in Osaka” boxset:

Yasuyuki posing with the weird lingerie boxset

Some CD’s inside the store

Vinyl scores in Tokyo

CD scores

While walking around, we saw a very strange thing… a gigantic truck advertising phone sex!

If it wasn’t for Yasu, we wouldn’t have known what all this was about haha

We then visited Meiji Jingu, a shrine in Shibuya, which featured a nice long walk in the forest (!!!). It was hot as hell so we decided to bring some beers with us again… hahaha

Yummy Asahi beer cans!

François and myself in front of a wooden gate

Some sake barrels at the entrance of the temple hahaha

We bought a wooden plate (plate for making wishes, and hung on the temple grounds) and made our own special wish:

Asking buddha for more beer!!! Haha

Yasuyuki with myself, again!

Afterwards, we walked to Harajuku, which is a shopping neighbourhood for young Japanese people

Famous street of Harajuku

Funny sign on a store... what does it mean?? Haha

We then had to part with Yasuyuki to go meet up some friends so we took the subway, and experienced a real Japanese rush hour!!

It still wasn’t enough to receive the “white glove” treatment (staff stuffing people into the train cars)

We met with Yukino, Yuno, Kanae and her fiancé. I met Yukino and Kanae about 10 years ago in Canada when I was doing volunteering one summer, and we kept in touch since. We went to another Isakaya, and had one hell of a gigantic feast!!! We had edamame, sashimi, teppenyaki, fried cheese, cheese balls with salmon eggs, bibimbap, curry with cheese, fried gyoza and a nice salad. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery power so I couldn’t take photos at all of this extremely amazing gastronomic event. NOOOO!!!!! But Yukino and Kanae lent me their iphone so I could still take a few photos:

Yukino, Kanae and her fiancé. Check out the table - we had so much good food arghhhh

After the supper, we went to one of those “purikura” machines, which is like a photo sticker booth. A really popular totally Japanese thing that has been going on for more than 10 years:

This one purikura machine made our eyes look bigger than usual! This photo is already a classic hahahaha

Overall, our stay in Tokyo was really short, but it was so filled up that we feel like we stayed here for a good two weeks haha. We really loved that city, but it was one hell of a challenge to be careful with money. We discovered a few tricks (buying food at 100 yen shops, walking instead of taking the metro, buying beers in the convenience stores), which we will now use in the rest of Japan… hehe

We are in Kyoto now, and then going to Mie and Osaka. More news in a week!

8 Comments | posted in Japan

August 25, 2011

Friends of Hell

By intothevoid

In the last three weeks we stayed in Lima, taking care of traveling paperwork and research, as well as waiting for our Chinese Visa – which thankfully arrived one day before our departure!

Obviously, we were very active in other ways – we didn’t stay locked in our home for the whole rest of the stay. One thing we wanted to do is visit pretty much all the metal shops we could find in Lima. The obvious place is Galerias Brasil (Av Brasil 1275, Jesus Maria neighbourhood), which everyone recommended me before coming to Lima. It is a two floor commercial center with many stalls selling anything from really nice quality bootleg shirts to fanzines, original CD’s, bootleg CD-R’s, tapes, vinyls (used and new), spiked bracelets and patches. Honestly, it was a cool place but perhaps there were too many bootlegs to my taste. There were two cool shops here for record shoppers; Moving Sounds (which had a nice selection of South American Proto metal and a nice used vinyl section at extremely high prices) and Pentagram records, which is a local underground metal label.

Pentagram records owners, also members of HADEZ

The exterior of the shop with some nice shirts

Another cool place for records in Lima is the Quilca street, located in the very center. Jesus Mario Profanador Records (Jr. Quica 336) is one of the oldest record shops here, and has probably one of the best selection. The owner played on ANAL VOMIT demos and has been around in the metal scene since the very early 80’s. The store is super tiny but it has a nice variety; you can find recent extreme UG metal vinyls and CD’s, but also classic original NWOBHM/Heavy/Death vinyls like some SATAN, CELTIC FROST, MORBID ANGEL LP’s at more than reasonable prices (at least for us, foreigners)!!

Jesus Mario Profanador records interior

Jesus Mario Profanador records interior (more UG section)

The best thing about this place are the South American versions of known albums (ACCEPT, PRIEST, MAIDEN), with everything translated in Spanish! Check out this gem:

Balls to the Walls cover (notice they added the ACCEPT logo on the sleeve)

The song titles translated in Spanish. “Contra la pared” means “Against the wall”... I guess they couldn’t grasp the poetic meaning of “Balls to the Walls” hahaha

Unfortunately I couldn’t buy any as I was really tight on space, but they are still there if anyone is interested haha. And they are like 10$ each!

Another interesting place on the same street is the Quilca Shopping Center (Jr. Quilca 257) which had a cool shop selling only original CD’s from Peruvian bands.

JR Records – National rock

They also had a few others selling strange bootleg shirts, patches, and some bootlegs.

We also went to a few gigs. First one was our first (and last!) South American punk gig at Nuclear Bar; which featured some D-Beat, Crust and Hardcore bands – as well as ELECTROZOMBIES from Chile (a cool band mixing doom, crust with death metal!) Outside of the venue I had a huge surprise – a friend of mine from Montreal was there!!! In fact, that very friend helped me to plan my trip at the very beginning, and we were supposed to meet sometime in South America (we were traveling there at the same time) but our itineraries never matched so we gave up on it haha… and we met at the same gig here!

Karine and myself! Karine has also been traveling all over South America for months

Necromongo, a hardcore band featuring Marcos from Reino. These guys had so much energy live!!

Electrozombies. They played more of a punk set, but it was really good – much better than the recordings I heard. They played a Venom “Countess Bathory” cover, but super slow. It was a great set really!

The next day, at a strange venue (Socialist Party meeting place??), we witnessed once again ELECTROZOMBIES, but this time with Reino Ermitaño and Caballo de Plomo. The place was weird as hell but the ambiance was festive and the sound was actually really good!

Flyer of the gig on the closed entrance door

Caballo de Plomo – during their set, the light went off and it was really cool! People lit their lighters, tried as best as they can to light them with their cameras... haha

The crowd of the place halfway through the show

Reino, which played a bone chilling set!

Julio and Eloy of Reino Ermitaño

Electrozombies! The power cut off entirely after perhaps 20 minutes of them playing. Sucks to be coming all the way here from Chile and then shit like this happening haha

I recorded a full Reino Ermitaño song so you guys can see the genius of this band! Honestly, these guys are SO GOOD and original!

A few days later, we hung out with a French couple that we had met earlier in our trip in Cordoba, Argentina. They were in Lima for only a few days so we went to the center together and tried some local goodies. There’s a park that turns into foodie heaven in the evening… over there, we tried Picarones for the first time. They are some kind of yummy Peruvian donuts made with squash purée and served with some sweet syrup. The stand we went to in particular is very famous apparently:

Picarones Leonor. We had to wait 30 minutes to get our picarones!

The woman totally changed since they took a photo of her for her sign huh? Haha

The plate of golden picarones. They were worth 30 minutes of waiting.

We also tried some other sweets, like “Leche Asada”, which is the Peruvian version of crème brûlée. In fact, instead of being cream – they use milk. Now that was really really killer! I got totally addicted and had a few more after this hehe

Leche asada

We had some coriander tamales and some mazamorra morada + arroz con leche (again!) but no photos, sorry!

OK I admit, this month we really went crazy with food; everything is so delicious and fresh here, we wanted to taste as much Peruvian cuisine as possible… and besides, cuisine is culture! So what better way to discover Peru than by the fork? Haha

We went to a famous (and overpriced) place in Miraflores called Manolo’s. Kids often go there for their birthdays as they offer gigantic cups of ice cream with sparkling stick thingies. They had the craziest sandwiches I have seen so far:

Manolo’s sandwiches. You need like 3 mouths to eat one of those!

I had another Suspiro de Limeña there. That stuff is just amazing; it tastes like liquid sucre à la crème topped with super thick meringue. Yummy!!!!!!

Suspiro de Limeña

A cute dog sleeping in the Miraflores street, with a weird satisfied smile

There’s one thing we wanted to try before Peru, and that was its jungle food. We thus went with Tania and Julio at a typical jungle restaurant, Encanto del Amazonas. It was really good stuff, and tasted very different from other things we tried in Peru!

Tacacho con cecina. Tacacho is the green plantain ball filled with fried pork (left) and cecina is the smoked pork slice on the right. It was quite greasy I admit haha

Mix “sexy” plate with Juane de Arroz c/Pollo, Chorizo, Tacacho and Cecina. Juane de arroz is that gigantic rice ball thing, which usually comes wrapped in a banana leaf... that was the best thing of the meal I think!

Patacones, green plantain fried, smashed and refried. Ok, that too was amazing!

We then went to a land that Tania’s family owns – just to get out of the city for a little bit, and see the sun!

Rizzla, Tania and Julio’s super cute dog taking a siesta on Tania’s leg in the car

Over there we saw a very strange VOÏVOD style spider with lots of spikes and a hard shell. I tried taking an artistic photo of it… in reality, it was super small (perhaps around half a centimetre):

KORGÜLL THE SPIDER!

Rizzla again. She’s just too cute! She was totally happy to be in nature like that!

Close to that land of Tania’s there are local ruins, which we visited.

Tijerales sign with Julio

These ruins were from the Lima civilization, but what’s cool about them is that they are totally unknown. A search on the web will reveal absolutely nothing about this place! And it’s huge too!!

Tijerales homes, made of dried mud and totally destroyed over time

A “bookcase” style bricked wall

More ruins

Tania overlooking Tijerales

François in front of a crumbling wall

What made us really freak out about this place is the fact that there are still artefacts laying on the ground. Julio thought it was part of a cemetery – since you saw mostly bones, fragments of pottery, textiles and HAIR! And all that stuff dating 500-1000 years old. Really cool! Apparently there are tons of ruins like this all over Peru.

Dried human bones

Bones, hair, textiles

Textile with an interesting pattern

It was definitely something to walk around scattered dried human remains.

Last Monday we received our passports/Chinese Visa, and to celebrate, Marcos invited us to one hell of a killer gourmet restaurant in Miraflores, called Alfresco. Honestly, this place was just mouth orgasm after mouth orgasm! It was overwhelming, like the feeling of getting a huge package of killer metal albums through the mail, you know?

The meal started with an intense Pisco Sour. Drinking half of it made me already quite tipsy haha

As recommended by Marcos, we started with a ceviche Alfresco... which is extremely fresh raw flounder fish cooked in a sauce of rocoto pepper and lime, and served with a caramelized sweet potato. Best ceviche I’ve tried, hands down. This almost brought tears to my eyes! I wish I could have some now! I know I will never be able to have this again outside of Peru, but if one of you go to Lima, you have to try this one in particular.

Grilled octopus with lyon potatoes in onion comfit. I never liked octopus because of its rubbery taste, but that’s because I never had it cooked correctly. This one was braised to perfection. It was so good!!!!! I now can say that I am a total octopus fan haha

Details of the octopus. Such a colourful dish!

We then had some conchitas al parmesan; cheese covered scallopsThey were good, but perhaps they had too much cheese – it was a bit high on salt.

Tiradito – strands of fresh fish covered with a lime/coriander sauce, parmesan cheese and crispy octopus flakes. This looks like nothing but it was my second favourite dish of the meal. It was SO GOOD!!!!

Nikita ceviche – Tuna and salmon ceviche in sesame/lime juice. That one was a fusion of Japanese and Peruvian cuisine, and was super good, kind of like a cross between a ceviche and sushi.

Lightly seared salmon on mushroom raviolis, and served with lavender emulsion! WOW! This was totally killer. First time I have salmon so fresh that it was not cooked in the middle. It was absolutely delicious!

White fish with a cheesy prawn sauce. I don’t remember the name of this fish, but it was really nice and creamy.

Potpourri of desserts. From back to front: Tres Leches cake (three milks cake), crema volteada (flan), pie de Maracuya (passionfruit mousse pie), Chocolate brownie, and Suspiro de Limeña (see above).

After this, we were all ready to burst haha, it was such a feast! Thanks a million Marcos for bringing us there, wow, we owe you big time!

The next day (last day in Lima!) we went to cook some Poutine at Tania and Julio’s place. We had my parents send us Poutine sauce from Canada with our passports haha, so we could stop our cravings and share our own gastronomy (!) with our Peruvian buddies. We used organic potatoes and fresh Andean cheese, which to our horror DID NOT MELT! So our Poutine wasn’t a huge success, but it was still a good idea of the dish:

Peruvian style poutine

On their side, they made some Peruvian dishes we hadn’t tried yet:

Layered rice with egg (I totally forgot the name of this dish!)

Rocoto rellenos; stuffed rocoto peppers – a famous dish from Arequipa. These little hot-as-hell peppers were absolutely delicious! They were stuffed with juicy minced meat, cheese and hard boiled eggs. Thanks alot for this killer meal guys, now I have tasted everything I wanted to try in Peru!!! (Or almost, hahaha!!!)

In the evening, we took some last photos of our temporary Peruvian family, with whom we stayed for 1 ½ months:

François, myself with Manchita, Andres and Bati

Manchita, the best dog we’ve met in Peru! Such a cute personality. We’ll totally miss her!

Causa Limeña, my last ever Peruvian meal, offered by Bati. First layer of mashed potatoes-yellow pepper-oil-salt-pepper-lime, second layer of mashed avocado with lime juice, third layer of canned tuna with lime juice-salt-pepper, fourth layer of thinly sliced hard boiled eggs, and last layer of the same mashed potato mixture. The tuna can be replaced by cooked chicken.

Right now, we just arrived in Tokyo!!!! We are dead tired and need to rest after our 24 hours of flights!!! All we have planned now is to get some nice homemade Ramen noodles and sleep until the next day haha. Talk soon! Arghhhhhhh!!!!!

This post is dedicated to my good friend Terry Jones of Pagan Altar who was in the hospital for a while, and is about to get operated. Best of luck to you and support to the members of your band and family!!!

6 Comments | posted in Peru

August 2, 2011

Heading Out to the Highway

By intothevoid

Our friends from Doom Metal/Heavy Rock band Reino Ermitaño; Julio (Ñaka) and Tania, invited François and myself to a small 4-day vacation tour to the North-Center of Peru. The goal of this vacation was to visit lesser known archaeological sites as well as try local cuisine. With Julio as our official guide (that’s what he does for living), we visited tons of interesting ruins, the sea side, a unique fog forest and some kickass sand dunes – all of that with an nice soundtrack of heavy rock and doom metal:

Roadtrip!!

Norcentral peruano car playlist:
Judas Priest – Unleashed in the East
Trouble – Trouble
Witchfinder General – Death Penalty
The Obsessed – The Church Within
Spirit Caravan – The Last Embrace Disc 1
Jerusalem – Jerusalem
Pappo’s Blues – Volumen 3
Color Humano – Color Humano
Cream/Jimi Hendrix compilation
Mazo – Mentenegra
Angeles del Infierno compilation
Ramones compilation
AC/DC – High Voltage
Reino Ermitaño – Veneration del Fuego
…and more!

We traveled a few hours until we reached the Sacred City of Caral, at 200km from Lima. The Sacred City is a large and well-studied site of the Norte Chico civilization (30th century BC to 18th century BC). What’s truly interesting about this place in particular is that it is the most ancient city of ALL Americas, with its 5000+ years old age! It was already a thriving metropolis at the time the pyramids of Egypt were being built! This was only discovered very recently. Due to this, all guides and history books had to be adjusted… crazy!

The Norte Chico civilization lacked ceramics and almost no art was discovered. They created monumental architecture, including large mounds/pyramids and circular plazas, and they were a peaceful society, as no trace of warfare has been found in the Sacred City of Caral.

Remains of the Caral pyramids in the arid Supe Valley

The ruins themselves were built differently than anything we’ve seen so far. They are made in a very primitive way, and the stonework doesn’t look as impressive as what we have seen in Inca structures. Of course, this is tremendously interesting anyway due to its antiquity and HUGENESS! The site was almost as big as Teotihuacan, in Mexico!

The first thing we visited was the Altar de Fuego, a fire altar, which they used for ritual ceremonies. Under it we could find a ventilation system which was built in order for the fire to be kept alive by the strong wind of the region. (You know, like when you blow on embers to start a fire). These guys were smart!

Altar de Fuego

One of the pyramids from up-close

Ancient civilizations had a habit of covering up completely their structures with sand or other material before they abandoned it. This would prevent other societies taking over and using the structures for worshiping of other religions and so. Before being discovered, the Sacred City of Caral looked like just a bunch of hills built of sand which seemed to be naturally part of the landscape:

Imagine those pyramids if they would be covered with sand; it'd be just other mountains in the background. No wonder they stayed hidden for thousands of years!

A half-buried pyramid

La Huanca pyramid, one of the major structures of the site

In front of this pyramid you can see a hieroglyph of a spiral carved on a stone, which inspired the new logotype of Peru. Check it out:

The infamous spiral stone

The new Peru logotype

This civilization ate some seafood/fish (we are at 25 km from the sea) but mostly squash, beans, lucuma, guava, pacay, and sweet potatoes.

Another view of the pyramid

There were all sorts of really cool artifacts on the site, like the following:

A long and thin rock, which was believed to be a sun dial (solar clock)

Not just a stone with holes; the holes here are the perfect replica of the stars. When filled with rain water, they become star mirrors!

A circular plaza, typical for this civilization. In this one, more than 60 bone flutes were found. I guess they loved to party!

The entire tour took 2 hours, and was really interesting! After that, we went to Barranca to eat some famous local food…

Some scenery from the countryside on the way to lunch

Another beautiful countryside scenery

So we went to a restaurant called Tato, a very famous place that is located straight on the seaside of Barranca. They specialize in a dish called “Tacu Tacu”; a fusion of Peruvian and Afro-American cuisine (African people were brought here for slavework centuries ago). Beans, rice and yellow pepper “tortilla” served on top of eggs and fish/sea-food with fried plantains. It sounds weird, I know, but it’s really tasty! It was originally a way of cooking leftovers, but it became a traditional dish:

Tacu tacu de pescado

And since we were located right next to the sea, François ordered a ceviche:

Ceviche with corn corb, sweet potatoe, yellow potatoe and cancho (fried corn).

Thanks to Tania’s father for inviting us to this meal, we really appreciated it!!! It was absolutely delicious!

After this, back in the car; we still needed to drive a few hours more towards the north to our next destination. Along the way, we saw some really really fantastic dunes so we had to stop:

The roadtrip car

François doing like in Judas Priest's "Heading Out to the Highway" video clip

Sand dunes!

Julio shooting from trenches

François and myself being very excited on the dunes!

An epic photo of Julio, "Desert Rock" style

The sun setting on the sand dunes

We drove for a few hours more, and arrived in the night at the Tortugas bay beach, where we found a hotel room. It was very rustic and the electricity of the entire city shut down at 11:30 at night! The stars were absolutely beautiful; we saw dozens of shooting stars. Also, for dinner that night, we had “baby bread”, which Julio sliced up with pleasure:

Baby bread, pan de wawa or something? I forgot the name haha

The Tortugas bay in the morning. Our hotel was right next to this beautiful beach! Apparently there were gigantic sea turtles on that beach, a long time ago. There aren't any now unfortunately.

The next morning we went to visit the ruins of the Sechin temple. Built in the archaic period (1600 BC), they were some of the coolest I’ve seen! The site is located in Ancash province of Casma and 5 km from the city of the same name. The weather is hot, dry and with little rainfall annually and the sea is about 10 km away.

But before we arrived on the site, we encountered a fruit seller which had some strange locally grown fruits, like the following:

Totally don't remember the name of this fruit, but it was very hard on the outside, kind of like a coconut

Peeling the skin revealed hard flesh with a soft sweet exotic taste

To make it even more Peruvian, typical pre-Inca hairless dogs were hanging out on the site. They were really bad-ass looking. Never saw dogs like this in real life before…

Filth hounds of hades! According to an old myth, the dogs are so hot that you can have them rest on your stomach to cure stomach pains haha

We then went to a cool little museum, which had some awesome ancient artifacts from the region:

Mummified tattooed hands. Tattoos were usually reserved for high members of the society like leaders and warriors.

Some remains of textiles

Awesome mummy. Never get tired of seeing those!

And then we saw some bone flutes; similar to what they found in Caral:

Bone flutes

These flutes made me think of this classic Morbid Angel artwork:

Leading the Rats!

The Temple of Sechin is a small one, but had a unique facade built with stone slab engraved with warriors in procession and decapitated bodies.

The front facade and the entrance to the Temple

What looks like hair or water is actually blood flowing from the body parts. Awesome!

The closed eyes signifies death. All the heads are decapitated here... notice the blood flowing from one of the eyes!

An awesome warrior with rows of decapitated heads

This temple was made with stone and clay (adobe), like most other structures from the same time.

Cut off limbs. Check out the bones sticking out from the arms...

Human guts!

Super cool warrior with trophy heads on the left. The weird squares are spinal cords, according to Julio.

ARRRRGHHH

There was a mirador (a little mountain with a nice view) that we could climb to see the ruins a bit better:

The temple from the top. It was used for religious ceremonies.

A view of the beautiful fertile valley from the top

After this, we needed lunch – so we drove to the port of Casma in search for ultra-fresh seafood. It was really sunny and warm; it was nice seeing the sun again! Lima is always full of fog and grey; I am becoming white again haha

François on the seaside

A close view of the port with sea birds (gulls and more giant birds)

Workers preparing fish for export

Fish heads anyone?

A family on the seaside

So we found an open restaurant, which only served fried fish – but caught only an hour or so ago. Julio had bought some fresh fish, which we brought to the lady cook to make some ceviche. Here’s what it looked like!

Ceviche of tiny fish

My plate! This fish was called "coco" and it tasted very very yummy and fresh!

Miaooow!

We asked the lady what else she had, and she said she could make ceviche de pato (duck with some kind of sauce) and guinea pig (cuy). I’ve been meaning to try cuy for a long time, so I ordered a plate for the following day.

The cuy awaiting for its destiny! Photo taken at the back of the restaurant.

The next day, we went to the beach, François and Julio swam a bit, and then we came back to the restaurant. Our food was ready in a few minutes:

Cuy! Amcash highland-style, with its potatoes. Notice the whiskers, still there! The red sauce is hot peppers mixed with garlic. To be honest, I could barely taste the meat because there was barely any. It was like eating frog legs or something! The taste was similar to the dark parts of chicken.

Cuy remains. I know, this is pretty disturbing to me too, even though I ate it.

Some mazamorra morada (purple corn pudding) for dessert in a Casma cafe.

On this fourth and last day, we went to the most recent ruins of this trip; the fortress of Paramonga. It is actually a temple, but when the Spanish saw it, they thought it was a fortress due to having towers on each side of the structure. Built in 1200 by the Chimú people, Paramonga was an important religious center built in the shape of a llama. We thought it was really strange because it seemed almost exactly like a medieval castle… and it was built around the same time too!

The Paramonga fortress

The entire fortress was colored in red, and according to some Spanish chronicler, the walls were painted with many ferocious animals and birds. Nowadays we can only see a little bit of paint left:

Wall of Paramonga

The bricks were made of adobe, thus they are very soft. I can't believe they have survived for so long!

François standing beside the "puma's head" (on the left)

Unfortunately, the stupid people that visit this place did alot of damage by carving their names on the wall. I mean, what the hell? They are destroying their own history! The names were everywhere…

Bricks damaged by name carving. By the way, this is an Inca door, like we saw in Cusco and Machu Picchu! A double frame indicated that the following room was an important one. The Inca took over this temple and built on top of it, but keeping the style of Chimu culture before them.

Tania, François and Julio doing some exploring

Some more walls of Paramonga

We then went to look for a nice lunch in some local restaurant. The specialty here is duck, so that’s what we had:

Arroz con pato; a killer leg of duck with coriander rice!

Tania's meal; seco de cordero - a very very tender sheep dish, served with beans and rice

Tania in a very very happy mood haha

We then did a bit of road again on the way back to Lima, and stopped by one of the coolest places I’ve seen in Peru so far… the fog forest of the Lachay Natural Reserve!

Just arriving there made me feel like I was in a Tim Burton movie… The area features a unique mist-fed ecosystem of wild plant and animal species which are located in the Yungas (hills between the coast and the Andes mountains). The mountains trap the fog, covering the area the majority of the year.

Arriving at the site. It felt like a forest on Halloween, or in a cemetery or something...

Evil looking trees

Creepy landscape...

A tree and a moss-covered rock

Closer look at the moss. It's so beautiful and rich looking!

Tania, François and Julio standing on a very mystical looking rock

The reserve features many trails for hikers; 20 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, etc… it’s even possible to do some camping and bbq in there!

The trail

Julio and Tania

Alternate cover for the first Black Sabbath album?

Some local vegetation

Moss/grass growing in the forest

Julio

More trees

Le cimetière des arbres

Close-up of a tree trunk

Yellow leaves against rich green vegetation

François

Leaving the park...

This was just absolutely mind blowing – the photos don’t do the place justice, it was truly a great experience to walk in this magical place! Reino Ermitaño actually did a photoshoot here for their first album; but unfortunately it was a day with not as much fog as the day we visited it:

Reino Ermitaño photoshoot in the national park

And if this wasn’t enough kickass, we finished the day by stopping at a traditional dulceria (a dessert place) in Magdalena – a suburb of Lima. Tania told me that this is the kind of place they’d bring Antony Burdain to. We ate 6 different desserts, which gave me an intense sugar rush, Cornholio style. Haven’t felt this buzzed off sugar since my young tender Halloween days as a kid!

Front: bead crums with mollasses and cheese. Left to right: Bien me sabe (almond and sweet potatoe purée), sweet bean purée (like in the middle of Japanese mochis!), manjar blanco (dulce de leche), suspiro de limena (like sucre à la crème with meringue on top!) and coconut cake.

Some of the sweets. Apparently it was quite empty because they had had tons of clients that day!

Some more stuff! I wish I could have tried everything!!!

And so the day and the mini-vacations ended… it was an absolute killer time, and I feel really grateful that we got to share it with Julio and Tania. Thank you for showing us some other faces of Peru!!!!! We will do the same when/if you come to Canada, of course!

Wooo!

5 Comments | posted in Peru

July 23, 2011

Brujas del Mar

By intothevoid

We arrived in Lima, Peru’s capital, 21 hours after leaving Cuzco. The bus ride was very difficult for the first six hours, as we were high in the mountains and taking sharp turns. I had to take two anti-nausea tablets; it was really really hard on the stomach! But that wasn’t the worst part… we were forced to watch at high volume an excruciatingly irritating Korean soap opera dubbed in Spanish called Escalera al Cielo. 15 hours of it. They stopped it at midnight and started it again at 6AM. And it made me crave kimchi on top of it. ARGHHH!!!!!!!!

We then headed to our hostel, located in Miraflores (a nice neighbourhood of Lima, located next to the seashore). Normally I don’t bother talking about our hostels because they are pretty simple and not very interesting, but this one was the worst we’ve been to EVER. The hostel is called “Mochilero’s Inn” and had reviews of 99.5% on the internet… we should have known it was a scam; there’s no way in the world this place could have scored higher than 30%. The room smelled like mildew, they were blasting music until 3AM, only two of the kitchen stoves worked, you had to wear shoes all the time because the floor was blackened with dirt (we had to wash our feet when coming out of the shower!), there was a big pile of pubes on the shower floor that stayed there for a few days, and the workers were smoking pot inside the hostel, which naturally came inside our room (our door wasn’t full – smell and sound came from underneath it). We also paid to rent for a towel, which was completely filthy. Oh yeah, one night we got locked outside for more than 30 minutes and when we checked out, they stole 15$ from us, which was a deposit we paid online to reserve the room (they never wanted to refund it). I should have taken photos of the place, it was out of this world! And it wasn’t cheap either – 20$ per night! We stayed there for 6 days, and then moved the hell out to a downtown hostel, which was 8$ per night for two. And much cleaner!

On the good side, Miraflores is a beautiful neighbourhood – and everything is close by. There are huge supermarkets, music shops and even an underground metal bar (which we still need to visit). The ocean is really beautiful… here are photos of it:

The pacific ocean by night

The pacific ocean by day

We spent the first few days of our trip taking care of some travel paperwork, eating, going to a gig (Hands of Doom/Reino Ermitaño), a Cobra rehearsal and spent the rest of the time resting in our putrid smelling room. We also went to Gallerias Brazil, which is a two-floor commercial center with about 10 rock/metal stores. It seems like alot, but they mostly carry bootlegs of CD’s, DVD’s, patches and some cool bootleg t-shirts. They of course have some original CD’s and vinyls, but mainly local stuff and a few imports. We spotted the Cauchemar/Condenados show poster at one of the stores:

Show poster at Pentagram records

Show tickets!

A really really funny Ozzy poster somewhere in Galerias Brazil

In front of Gallerias Brazil, in a small shack, we bought a nice hot quinoa/apple/cinnamon drink. It was so filling and delicious!

Quinoa drink. Miam!

Peru has many Asian restaurants, which resulted in strange mixes between Peruvian and Chinese/Japanese cuisine. Coincidently, I was craving Asian food so I took advantage of it…

This is “chifa”, a combo of Chinese and Peruvian food. Actually, we have this kind of stir fry in Canada too, but other stuff on the menu was different. The custom is to eat chifa with Inca Cola!

28$ worth of sushi. And the best damn sushi I ever ever ate in my life. We are going to Japan soon so the record will probably be beat, but ohhh... this was just absolutely mouth-wateringly delicious. I never had fish this fresh – it really makes a difference to be in a town next to the sea! The two first rolls of sushi you see on this photo are local specialities: on the left you can find deep fried sushi, and on the right; ceviche sushi! (Contains raw onion + salmon, and is topped with a corn sauce, hot peppers and some sea weed)

On Wednesday 13, our good friends from Condenados finally arrived to Lima! They were dead tired; having travelled 22 hours in a bus…

Condemned to sleep for eternity

Luckily for them (and us), Julio from Reino Ermitaño cooked us some nice typical Peruvian dish called Arroz con Pollo, which consists of pan fried chicken and a delightful veggie/coriander flavoured rice:

Julio in his doom metal kitchen

Home-made Arroz con Pollo!

Together, later on, we went to Coca Kinto bar (where our show was going to be at) for a nice Pisco Sour. I don’t know why I didn’t talk about Pisco Sour yet – it’s the best alcoholic drink of all South America!! Imagine a Key Lime Pie in a cocktail. Tiny lemons freshly squeezed, 1.5 oz of Pisco (strong grape alcohol), sugar syrup, crushed ice and raw (yes!) egg white. It’s absolutely delicious and I have been drinking many of them since I arrived in Peru:

A typical Pisco sour. You can make it with other things; Coca pisco, passionfruit juice, etc.

Matías (Condenados bassist) worshipping the mighty Pisco Sour!

Feeling crazy after the Pisco drinking session... you can also see here part of our downtown 8$ hostel room.

Lima is a really huge and chaotic city. Walking downtown on the side of the street is a nightmare… drivers here LOVE their honks. They use it to express every possible feeling. Taxis honk to you when you walk, and scream “TAXI!”… and sometimes follow you for a few seconds, trying to lure you in. The downtown part of really beautiful though, rich of old Spanish colonial architecture.

An old pointy building

A really strange sight! Police casino! WTF!

With Matías and Francisco (Condenados drummer), we went to visit the San Francisco monastery, which contains some famous catacombs:

Matías with his bellowed llama in front of the monastery

We couldn’t take photos inside, but I stayed behind during the catacombs part and was able to take some of the morbidity of the place on film:

Bone trenches, about 5 meters deep!

A beautifully morbid decoration, found inside some kind of well

Some old chandeliers in a creepy part of the catacombs

Dem bones!

Another kind of well

Chaotic pile of bones

We’ve been to Kutna Hora in Czech Republic and the Paris catacombs so we were a bit disappointed by the smallness of the Lima ones, but it was still interesting to see some in South America!

The visit made us hungry as hell (same thing happened when visiting the catacombs in Paris, don’t know why!) and so we headed to a restaurant downtown. For 2.5$, we had a really killer meal:

Papas a la Huancaina, a starter. I absolutely love those things... they are potatoes covered with a spicy sauce (yellow hot pepper/fresh cheese/ garlic) and served with a black olive and a piece of hard-boiled egg.

Seco a la Norteña, a piece of pork meat stewed in spices, with rice

Pachamanca a la Olla... the weirdest meal I’ve had so far in Peru! Plantain, potato, sweet potato, piece of chicken and huge beans, covered in a Spinach sauce. It looked like it came from a swamp or something! It was pretty good.

We were eating in restaurants all the time because we had no kitchen. We thus discovered the incredible gastronomic diversity of the city… every day we had 2$ meals and every day we were astonished by the quality of them!

Caldo de Gallina – a chicken soup, including an egg and spaghetti. This is good for hangovers!

Pollo a la Brasas – Peruvian roasted chicken. Some of the best chicken we’ve had! The spices were absolutely killer, and the chicken had juices flowing out of it when you cut out a piece. I’ve had similar chicken at “Les Deux Fours” in Montreal (a place to try if you live there!!)

Saturday 16th was the day of our gig. The venue, Coca Kinto, could hold about 100 people, and about 150 people filled it up… it was hell just trying to go take a leak haha. The place itself was kind of strange; white walls, art on the walls and the stage was directly on the floor. A weird place for a metal show, but the sound was really good! They also had the most luxurious toilets I’ve seen in a bar in South America. The man’s toilet was apparently destroyed after the gig…

A part of the decoration of the walls, a gigantic QUIPU! Quipus were used as a form of writing data in pre-Colombian Andean civilisations. Some can be seen in the “Les Cités d’Or” TV series if you remember.

First band was Madragora, which traveled 7 hours to play this gig. They play traditional heavy metal with a female singer which kind of danced like the vocalist of SANTA. They were good; but nothing original.

Madragora vocalist. Boobies anyone?

Next band was Caballo de Plomo, a sludge/stoner type of band. The members were only two, and the music sounded a bit like SLEEP. One song that lasts for a long time…

Caballo de Plomo

After came Cobra! The band plays some kind of mix between CLOVEN HOOF/SAXON/THIN LIZZY. They have an incredible stage presence, and really get the crowd going! The singer’s girlfriend was in the crowd and totally got crushed by it – which resulted in a bloody mouth. The band members are excellent musicians and their songs are catchy as hell.

Cobra vocalist!

Andres, guitarist

SOLO!

The insane crowd...

It was around 1AM when we got to hit the stage. We played our 5 songs and a MISFITS cover (London Dungeon!) which almost nobody recognized… haha! It was a good set, and I think the people really enjoyed it. I saw some people mouthing the lyrics… which was really cool in Peru!!! I don’t have any photos, but perhaps some videos will show up eventually on You Tube, as I saw a few people filming the set.

Next band was Condenados! Haven’t seen them since the Chilean tour, and as usual they crushed everything in sight. Their sound was really loud this time, and some neighbours of the bar complained… hehehe! The people reacted very well to the gig, and some said they were the best of the gig. Good for them!

Francisco, Fernando and Matías of Condenados

At 3:15 was the last band, Reino Ermitaño. I saw them the previous Saturday, and they absolutely kill live. François and myself have been big fans for years (we own all their albums, and even gave some as xmas gifts to family haha) and we were both times blown away by their set. Their riffs are pure magic, and everything is so goddamn heavy! Julio, the drummer, pounds like a madman and Tania, the vocalist, has a really psychedelic voice that gets straight to your soul. A true gem of a band.

Reino Ermitaño

Eloy, the guitarist

Marcos, bassist

The night finished at 4AM. We bought some more beer and drank in our hotel room until… well, I don’t remember! Haha! It was a great show, and I still can’t believe how many people showed up!! It will for sure be in my memory for a long, long time. Thank you Lima such killer support!!!!!

On Monday, Marcos (Reino Ermitaño bassist) called us up and asked us if we wanted to try ceviche. Of course we wanted to! I was waiting until we were in Lima – close to the sea, to try some. We went to a really killer restaurant in Barranco (a neighbourhood close to Miraflores – also on the seaside) and ate one of the most luxurious meals I’ve had so far…

Some kind of snack we had at the beginning; fried corn

A “mise en bouche”, some killer sea food bites

A Causa with olive sauce, stuffed with calmar. We had some on the Inca Trail which was stuffed with Tuna instead.

A gratineed scallop with butter and garlic. ORGASMIC when drenched in lime juice!

Fish ceviche! SO GOOD!!! It was to die for! I have been craving it since that day. It tasted absolutely fresh. To those who don’t know, ceviche is an an ancient recipe cooking fish using the juice of citrus fruits. A simple ceviche consists of extremely fresh fish (caught on the day, not served after 3PM), lime juice, salt, pepper and red onions. It’s like eating sashimi with lime. Really really good!

François’s meal; some kind of fish carpaccio with red and yellow pepper salsas. Delicious as well.

Marco’s meal; rice with seafood. I personally didn’t like it (it had too much of a “sea” smell and taste for me) but François said it was his favourite part of the meal!

As you can see, Peruvian cuisine is absolutely amazing. And on top of that, I still have TONS of things to try!!!

Later on that day, we went on to see Huaca Pucllana, some 1100+ years old ruins in Miraflores (built by the Lima culture, and used as a ceremonial place.) The place was unfortunately closed, but we could still see it from the outside… it was the first time I saw ruins like this; they were like ancient Lego pyramids of something! I will visit it at a later time and talk more about it. For now, here is a photo:

Cauchemarnados with Marcos in front of Huaca Pucllana

To top off this amazing day, we went drinking, again! This time, on the seaside in Barranco – blasting music from Marcos’ car. We made the Condenados guys try Jagermeister, which they got hooked on… maybe a bit too much haha!!

Francisco with his bottle of love

Mati!

Francisco and Matias

Francisco again haha

Thanks alot to Marcos for the amazing day… and to Julio and Tania for the Arroz con Pollo, and Mario Lachy for organizing the gig. Oh and the Cobra guys for inviting us to their rehearsal! All the guys that gave me fanzines, and Frank for buying us beer! Seriously, people here are so nice, it’s just unreal.

Now we have moved to yet another neighbourhood (we can’t always go to restaurants, I think we’d burst out of our clothes haha) so we are now in a room, which we rent from a family. We are located in Barranco near a supermarket and the main bus station – so we are quite happy!

We’ll be staying here for a month – until approximately August 20th. Then, we will begin the Asian chapter of our trip… flying from Lima to Tokyo! This month, I will be focusing my time on some projects; mainly Morbid Tales #7 and organizing the Cauchemar 2012 European tour. We’ll of course go to many shows, do some record shopping, more partying and cooking, but for now, we are taking a little rest. Hehe. Talk soon!

9 Comments | posted in Peru

July 8, 2011

Mythical & Magical

By intothevoid

Inca Trail playlist:
Bathory – Twilight of the Gods
Pagan Altar – Vol. 1
Pagan Altar – The Time Lord EP
Pagan Altar – Mythical & Magical
Judas Priest – Sin After Sin
Judas Priest – Stained Class
Judas Priest – Defenders of the Faith
Judas Priest – Turbo Lover (my dark secret haha)
High Tide – Sea Shanties
Acid – Maniac
Cathedral – The Ethereal Mirror
Saint Vitus – Children of Doom
Spirit Caravan – Last Embrace
Masters Hammer – Ritual
Black Death – Black Death
Sorcerer – Heathens from the North

****

Cuzco, July 1st. Happy Canada day! The company we booked to trek the Inca Trail/Machu Picchu with, Peru Treks, came to pick us up in a bus at our hotel at 6AM. We were to go to the beginning of the Sacred Inca Trail. It was raining pretty hard outside, and on the way, we actually saw SNOW!

Snow on the way to the Inca Trail. It’s the first time we see snow in South America, beside snow-topped mountains! Not a good sign!

Arrived to our destination, our guide made sure we have plastic rain ponchos, coca leaves and plenty of water. We were already acclimatized to the altitude, so we skipped on the coca leaves. We looked like a bunch of idiots with our colourful ponchos, but keeping dry is more important, obviously! This is what I personally looked at the very beginning hahaha:

Myself dressed and equipped for trekking in the rain! It was actually quite comfortable!

Our group. 16 trekkers, two guides and 20 porters (not seen here). We looked like a box of cupcakes haha

We started the trek at around 11AM. To reach the Inca Trail, we had to cross the Urubamba river to the other side:

The bridge of km 82.

The trail itself was pretty flat, with some ascending here and there. Already, we were seeing incredible sceneries with gigantic misty mountains and green valleys:

Beautiful valley

A little bit further and higher, you could see the Urubamba river again

Our guide told us that most Inca sites were made in the shape of sacred animals. The first one we saw, Llactapata, was apparently shaped in a Puma’s foot! He also told us that this site in particular was to guard the commercial Inca Trail (there are two trails – one Sacred and one Commercial, the later one is currently closed to the public after being destroyed by a land slide last year). It was never found by the Spaniards.

Llactapata

Ourselves with our beautiful cupcake suits

Hiking down to Llactapata

Some remaining foundations of Llactapata. These homes were in the rustic style, and were meant for the lower class.

All the tents, food, cooking equipment and some of our belongings were carried on by porters, which were absolutely impressive. They always ran (most often in sandals) in front of us to make sure everything was set up and prepared ahead of us…

A porter (on the left) and a beautiful Sacred Inca Trail scenery with misty mountains. These guys carried up to 25kg of stuff on their back!

When we arrived at our camp, a “restaurant” tent was set up and hot tea was waiting for us! What luxury huh? We were stunned by the absolutely intense food we were prepared everyday.

The table set in the restaurant tent for dinner

Some entrée the cook made for us, consisting of mashed potatoes stuffed with tuna and onions, and topped with a black olive. I don't remember the name of this dish, but it originates from Lima. It was delicious!

Various plates of delicious food served to us. The middle brown thing is Alpaca meat, served with fresh andean mint!

Garden vegetable rice, veggie salad, stuffed chicken, pork with sweet sauce... mmmm

Cake?? We were offered cake! And bananas flambéed in rum! I mean, I never expected to eat such quality food in the wild!!

The nice porters and cook. These guys were the best!

Our table set up for breakfast, on day 2

A beautiful plate of fresh fruits

PANCAKES!

My biggest discovery, food-wise on this trip! This is a breakfast food they were serving up, some sort of quinoa porridge. You just overboil the quinoa, add sugar and it makes a killer, nutritive and comforting morning drink!

Unfortunately, on the second day, our guide woke us up with bad news. Apparently, the unusual rain (it is supposed to be winter/dry season) has turned into snow on the highest point of our path, the Dead Woman’s pass (4400 meters of altitude). There were 60 cm (2 feet) of it, so it was dangerous for us to go through it. The last time it snowed was 6 years ago… Imagine the porters walking into that with their bare feet in sandals! Some other groups were walking back to the beginning, but thankfully our guide took us forward and made us do a detour through a train track. Therefore, instead of doing 11km on the second day, we hiked for 28km! But it was really easy – everything was very flat, and we got to see ruins that normally people don’t see. Beats climbing 1000 meters worth of stairs and then going down 550 meters!

So, we walked past Llactapata, crossed an eucalyptus forest and reached Qorihuayrachina and its beautiful terraces:

Qorihuayrachina and the Urubamba river

Along the way we saw many colorful flowers and incredibly green vegetation. The ecosystem was changing; we were hiking through what they call the “cloud forest” or high jungle:

Some yellow flowers.

A very colorful flower with a fly on top!

For lunch, we stopped at the ruins of Torontoy, which were again in incredible condition. They were a resting place for the Inca – who, in exchange for a night’s rest, had to give an offering (coca leaves, rocks, food, etc).

An entrance in Torontoy. Notice the big stone at the top of the doorway - it was placed there as a sign of importance.

Offering "shelves" in the walls of a temple in Torontoy

And the following we thought was really cool! This is where they put mummies of important members of their communities. The person was mummified in a fetal position and placed in the walls with several useful objects for them to use in the afterlife. They were mummified in a fetal position because they were supposed to be reborn as fetuses, obviously!

Mummy wall in Torontoy

After lunch, we still had 16 km to do. Fortunately, the rain finally stopped and we were able to remove our ponchos!

François hiking next to the train track

Some ancient staircase carved in a large rock

An orchid in the cloud forest

Urubamba rapids, in the cloud forest. Notice the strange rock formations at the back, due to erosion!

We arrived at our camp at around 5PM. Since we walked so much (48km in total), we were allowed to sleep in until 7AM the next day! Another total luxury! And the assistant guide came to wake us up with a steaming cup of tea:

Myself in the tent, half awake, with some coca tea

We ate breakfast, then quickly visited the ruins of Chachabamba since it was raining again. This place was once again a resting place for the traveling Inca. The construction of the houses made me think a little of old Canadian houses, or even houses found in Brittany (France)!

Chachabamba home

José (assistant guide), François, myself and Percy (our guide!) in the ruins of Chachabamba

After that, we proceeded to walk in the mountains. The path goes up, and the nature itself transforms into a rainforest ecosystem.

A porter with an incredible scenery once again

To enter your mountain
Go into your mountainside
To enter one’s mountainside
Will take its man

Who enters his mountain
With or without sword in hand
Who enters his mountainside
He will learn

The mountainside

A path through the rainforest

A beautiful natural rainforest waterfall

Some flower from the rainforest

Some other strange flowers

We were ascending many stairs to eventually reach our last camp, located near the ruins of Winayhuayna, in a lush mountain:

Winayhuayna in the very distance

Another ancient staircase in the rainforest

After a good 2 hours of hiking, we reached Winayhuayna – well, at least the gates of it. The view was absolutely mind blowing! I had to take a photo, which turned out to be more than epic:

Invoking the sun god Inti, in the Andes

Waiting for us was also a strange bug…

Some sort of small scarab?

After about 30 minutes more, we arrived at the living complex of the ruins. There, we found the same old Canadian style houses:

Some houses. Notice the door on the right, its opening has two rows of blocks. It means that on the other side is a temple or a very sacred place.

Some ceremonial baths that were still active!

A very happy François!

Winay Wayna living complex

Another view of Winay Wayna, with some terraces

There was an optional trail we could take to visit even more ruins. Of course, we took it – and so we ascended again many many stairs…

The view along the way

Percy, our guide

Some terraces, once again. These were build for growing food to bring to Machu Picchu.

I liked Percy's hat so much, that I had to steal it haha

Another view of the valley, near dusk.

Our camp for the night. The tents were really comfortable!

Next morning, we had to wake up at 4AM in order to walk the final two hours to Machu Picchu. We were heading to Inti Punku, the sun gate, in order to see the sun rise on the magnificient sanctuary…

Preparing ourselves to leave at the early hours of the morning

We arrived at the Sun Gate a few hours later, but we unfortunately couldn’t see the sunrise as everything was completely white with mist!!!

Us, waiting at the sun gate for the mist to clear out

After waiting for a good half hour, the mist eventually cleared out enough for us to see something…

View of Wayna Picchu, from the sun gate! This mountain is right next to Machu Picchu (which is hidden by clouds on the left). Apparently, Machu Picchu is supposed to be shaped like a condor.

After this, we did another hour of hiking (this one was probably the hardest of all the hike – it was non-stop ascending on huge rocky staircases!) and we finally reached our goal….

Machu Picchu!

Machu Picchu, surrounded by Wayna Picchu and other beautiful mountains. I left this photo in high res in case anyone wants to use it for whatever reason...

Two very happy hikers!

To view Machu Picchu like this, for the first time, shrouded in all of its mystery, was quite something. In fact, it really felt like we were on a movie set; everything looked so out of this world! We were absolutely stoked!!!

Stepping inside the sanctuary was like a dream… the ruins were still in very good condition (again, the Spaniards never found this place when they conquered Peru) and it even surpassed my expectations. The surrounding mountains made it even more magical…

Inside Machu Picchu

The temple of water, a large room with a fountain, where they worshipped water!

Committing fashion crime in Machu Picchu. I had to, I swear! My feet were covered in nasty penny-sized blisters.

The temple of the sun, located in the heart of the sanctuary. Notice the beautiful stonework, it took up to three weeks to polish each stone!

A strange fly hanging out on the ruins

A cave named "The Royal Tomb"... although no mummies were ever found there!

Some more stonework, around the temple. Everything was made so precisely...

This is how the roof was attached to the homes - using ropes

Residential complex

The royalty sector (at the right)

Another double-walled door, which warns that the other room is a sacred place.

We even saw a chinchilla on the site! It wasn’t very scared, we could go close to him and it wouldn’t move at all!

Chinchilla!

Located on the center of the sanctuary is the plaza:

Walls of the plaza. Unfortunately, water has greatly destroyed that wall over the years.

Room of the Three Windows (although you only see two!), a place dedicated to Inti, the sun god

The Intihuatana stone, which is arranged to point directly at the sun during the winter solstice. To those who remember "Les Cités d'Or", there is an episode where you see this very stone! It is also located directly in the center of magnetic fields. Apparently, if you touch the stone, you will feel some kind of strange energy. The small carving on the right points to a mountain:

One of the many sacred mountains protecting Machu Picchu

What impressed me about Machu Picchu is that the architecture is in perfect harmony with nature. Sometimes the Inca would leave rocks on purpose in honor to pachamama, or construct terraces along the curves of the mountain. 550 years later, it still looks stunning.

Rocks left on the site. They carved stones for the houses and temples from them.

A wall following the curve of the mountain. You will notice that there are often three things (three "windows/shelves" in this case). It is an important number in Incan symbology - it means the snake (underworld), puma (overworld) and condor (cosmos).

A condor shaped rock. There was another cave and some kind of secret passage underneight it.

Some homes

Rustic-style foundations

And finally, the sun came out, in order for us to fully appreciate the ruins…

Inti!

After our guide finished showing us around, I collapsed from tiredness and did a magnetic siesta on the main plaza’s park.

Siesta time

That’s it for our intense and inspiring adventure in the Andes… It was a great trip, and as you could see, seeing Machu Picchu was only the cherry on top!

Right now, we are have just arrived in Lima, having traveled 20 hours from Cuzco. The ride was comfortable, but they played a really annoying Korean tv series called “Escalera al Cielo” for 15 hours! Arghhh, pure torture!

In any case, we are getting prepared for our gig with Condenados, Reino Ermitaño and Cobra on the 16th. If you are in town, don’t miss this – it promises to be one hell of an event!

Cauchemar/Condenados en Lima!

6 Comments | posted in Peru

June 28, 2011

Blood Ritual

By intothevoid

Our 23 hour ride from Copacabana to Cuzco was extremely worth it… little did we know that the city was going to be celebrating almost non-stop for a week! Everywhere we walked, people were costumed, drinking, dancing, singing, etc… turns out that they were celebrating Cuzco’s anniversary (from what? I didn’t ask – but it was probably the independence day). The next day was a large procession with a food fair, and then started the Sun festival (Inti Raymi) – it was insane! We then went to visit Pisaq – a village located in the Sacred Valley, and its incredible ruins. We even got to do a band practice in a metal rehearsal room! So far, we are absolutely in love with Peru.

Cuzco (Qosq’o in Quechua) is the most ancient city in South America that has never ceased to be inhabited. The pre-Inca culture Killke lived here in 900, and built many structures, including the incredible Sacsayhuaman (built in 1100) fortress. The Inca then took over and largely expanded the city. In 1532, the Inca made Cuzco its capital. 19 months later, they were conquered by the Spaniards, who destroyed many Inca buildings, temples and palaces. They used the remaining walls as bases for the construction of buildings and churches. The city (at least, the very center) is thus very fascinating; everywhere you walk you see antique structures and streets… Cuzco itself is like a museum!

Cuzco, view from Sacsayhuaman. The altitude here is 3400 meters above sea level.

Most people here are living in quite modern ways, but you can still see locals dressed in vividly colored traditional clothing:

Local woman with a really cute furry llama

The streets in the old part (San Blas neighborhood) are really narrow. They were made by the Spanish, and built over important Inca foundations:

Morning milk delivery in an old Cuzco street

We were very lucky, as like I said earlier, we arrived in a time of festivities. On the 22nd of June, there was a long march that started early in the morning – which finished as a party in the late evening. It was so funny; some people were trying to dance at the end, beer in hand, and were almost collapsing of drunkenness. People were selling beer in the street for 1$ a bottle, and there were food stands everywhere!

March for Cuzco's anniversary. Notice the church in the background; it's Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus. They were asking 7$ to visit it... we said hell no!

A grandma in extremely colorful clothing

Myself with a costumed Peruvian guy! Yes, I am always wearing my Pagan Altar sweatshirt. Hahaha!

Customed people were everywhere!

Some weird costumed guys' backs. They all carried a dead baby llama...

Our lunch, tamales! Inside was a paste of corn mixed with onions, meat, tomatoes and some kind of nice spicy sauce. Yummy!

Drunken evening dancing in the Plaza de Armas

The next day, we were told there was a Procession of Saints – also known as Corpus Christi. Paired with this was a food fair, which sold the traditional Peruvian dish, cuy (guinea pig!). We went to check it out for ourselves…

San Antonio in the Corpus Christi

Some other saint. Check out the insane crowd!!

Guinea pig, tortillas and chicken

More guinea pig (cuy)! Notice the one dressed in a little dress... its hat matches the lady seller's hat! What the hell??

Today's scores! I didn't dare buy any guinea pig that was resting in the sun for a full day; I got the tortilla and some amazing corn nuts. What you see on the left is Inca Kola, a soda much loved here in Peru... in fact, its sales surpasses the sales of Coca Cola!

We met some local metalhead, and asked him about stores and bars. To our surprise, there was nothing to be excited about in Cuzco; pretty much only bootlegs were to be found, and there were only popular rock bars. He did hint us to a place called Warlock, which sold a few metal items like patches, shirts, spiked bracelets and guitars… but we were most happy to find that it was also a rehearsal space, so we got to rehearse and write new Cauchemar material!

François at the Warlock rehearsal studio

The 24th of June was the Winter Solstice/Inti Raymi/Sun Festival. It is a religious ceremony of the Inca Empire in honor of the god Inti; the sun. The last real Inti Raymi with the Inca Emperor’s presence was in 1535, but then the Spanish conquistadors and the Catholic Church banned it due to its obvious pagan roots, opposed to the Catholic faith. The ceremony was said to indicate the mythical origin of the Incas, lasting nine days of colorful dances and processions, as well as animal sacrifices to ensure a good cropping season. Since 1944, a theatrical representation of the Inti Raymi has been taking place at Sacsayhuamán, (in the Inca time, it was in the city plaza) attracting thousands.

We were told it was impossible to see the ceremony, as all the seats were sold out… but we followed the locals and climbed a hill next to Sacsayhuamán to see it from a distance. We arrived there at 8AM, but found out the ceremony was only to be at 1:30PM! We had a great place, but we had to wait in the sun all morning to be able to witness the ritual. It wasn’t too bad as we were comfortably seated in the grass, and it was definitely worth it once the ceremony started! The sacred site was beautiful, and its stonework was absolutely remarkable (and in great shape!), for being built more than 900 years ago!

The beautiful ancient stonework of Sacsayhuaman

Dancing in Sacsayhuaman, at the Inti Raymi festival

A shitty long distance digitally zoomed photo of women praising the sun. Don't they look like egyptians or something? I thought it was really cool!

I took a video of the sun worshipping women walking unto the site:

The arrival of the Inca Emperor in Sacsayhuaman. In front you see the high priests (the guys with the funny hats). Sorry for the bad quality - again, I used a digital zoom for this photo.

The beautiful site, with ceremonial fire and costumed participants

The Inka Emperor worshipped the sun, drank chicha (fermented alcoholic corn drink) in its honor, and then the high priests chose a llama, opened it, took out its heart and guts and examined it carefully… blood gushing out signified that the crops were going to be bountiful in the following year!

The great priest holding the healthy heart and guts of a llama!

I also took video of that bloody sacrifice, but you can’t see too much because I was way too far. You can still kind of figure out what happens though!

Check out the crowd, it was impossible to leave the hill to go take a leak or anything!

Dead tired, we then went back home to our hostel and took a massive siesta. A few days after, we ventured into the Sacred Valley into the town of Pisaq.

Located on the Urubamba river, the village of Pisaq is most known for its artisanal market and its killer Incan ruins, which lie atop a mountain at the entrance to the valley. They were once used as a fortress to block the access to the Sacred Valley (one of many Incan fortresses). We arrived in town very early in the morning to skip the crowds at the market, and then started the ascension to the Inca ruins around 9AM.

We had to climb a series of Incan terraces at the beginning

The village of Pisaq, from the base of the mountain

François on the left, with magnificient Inca terraces on the right. Some of these terraces are still in use today, giving the locals better crops than usual at such high altitude!

A crazy steep hill overlooking the Sacred Valley...

...and the road we had to take to get there! If you fell, you were definately dead.

Ruins of Q'allaqasa, and the mountains of the Sacred Valley

Q'allaqasa, the citadel

A cool Inca drainage system

Intihuatana! It kinda looks like the Machu Picchu doesn't it?

The temple of the Sun

Myself in an Inca doorway haha

A very mystical François

At the very top of the highest mountain! It doesn't look that crazy here, but this is after 3 hours of climbing stairs and trekking in the mountains.

More terraces and ancient paths

Such a beautiful view...

Nobody knows exactly when the original town of Pisaq was built, but it is said to have been made not before 1440. Unfortunately, Pizzaro had destroyed it in 1530.

This week, we are going to keep on exploring Cuzco and on Friday, we will be starting our trek on the Inca Trail, to finally reach Machu Picchu on July 4st. Expect news in a bit more than a week! Cheers!

5 Comments | posted in Peru

June 20, 2011

Of The Sun + Moon

By intothevoid

We caught a tourist bus at 7AM from La Paz to Copacabana. It was freezing cold in the morning… we’ve been to La Paz a month earlier, but now the winter has gotten much colder – we were shivering in our skin! Thankfully, the bus had blankets… it was well worth the 1$ more investment! After 2 hours of traveling, we reached a part of lake Titicaca (CORNHOLIO!) that we had to cross by boat. We got off the bus, took a 15-min watertaxi ride while the bus was being transported on a larger boat.

Our bus on a sketchy looking ferry

We then rode 1 hour more and then arrived in Copacabana. The town itself really doesn’t look like anything else in Bolivia; it had some kind of deserted beach resort feel. Anyway, we ate lunch and straight away took another boat on lake Titicaca to the truly mystical Island of the Sun (Isla del Sol/Isla Titicaca, located 2 hours away from the shore). By the way, Titicaca lake is 8000 km². Its hugeness is really overwhelming! It’s the biggest navigable lake in high altitude, located at 3800 meters above sea lever.

Copacabana, from the bus window

The Copacabana port

Copacabana from the Titicaca lake

Our driver. Notice his mad driving skills!

Upon our arrival, we had to climb what it seemed to be a million stone stairs to the nearest village. We were constantly out of breath and thought it was never going to end, but the view was absolutely fantastic when we finally arrived. I mean, where else in the world can you see hilly green landscapes topped with ancient irrigations and a peaceful blue lake surrounded by a gigantic row of impressive snow-topped mountains? It was absolutely surreal. I now totally understand why the Inca revered this lake and island as being sacred. On top of it, there were no cars – only a few places had electricity (it arrived in the island 10 years ago – but it is still shunned by many).

Stairs leading to the south end of the island (Yumani community)

Two donkeys peacefully eating grass. The only animals living on this island were donkeys, pigs, sheep, dogs and a few llamas (some used for sacrifices everyyear!).

We arrived on the fourth day of an annual festival, some sort of celebration to San Antonio. In fact, it was just an excuse to dance and drink… there a battle of marching bands and tons of beer drinking (and chugging!) going on. You can see in the following photo that even women were dancing with their gigantic mugs of beer.

San Antonio party

The next day, we woke up at 6:30 to experience the magical rising of the sun on the Titicaca lake. It was truly the nicest sunrise I have ever witnessed… we stayed there watching it for one hour, in the cold (it was maybe 5 °C) and it was more than worth it! We took the following photos from our hostel’s balcony:

At 6:40 - The island of the Moon is on the right.

6:50 – Notice the sunrays. I’ve never seen real sunrays before!

6:55

7:00

7:10

7:20

7:30

The community of Yumani under the warm colors of the sunrise

The mountains of Isla del Sol in the same time

We then took a boat to the north end of the island to visit its ancient trails and pre-Columbian ruins, which were a sanctuary during the Inca period (A.D. 1400 – 1532).

The north end of the island, going on the sacred trail to the ruins

We first encountered one of the most important Inca artefacts; the sacred rock from which Viracocha (the creator of the world in Inca mythology) rose. It was strangely located in the backyard of a house, which was growing corn!

The sacred rock

We then continued on the long trail to the ruins. Among the way, we saw many beautiful sights, as well as interesting mountain irrigations:

Pre-columbian irrigation systems. They put long rows of rocks in order to seal the water in, and then plant their cultivations. Most are not used anymore, but we saw some that were still active.

Ceremonial table, probably used for making important sacrifices

Chinkana, ruins of an ancient Inca temple

Moss on the ruins

Sheep hanging out in the ruins

Chinkana. This place was like a labyrinth! There were many secret and dark passages in there...

Chikana, again. It was in a remarkably good condition for such an old construction!

After visiting those overwhelming sacred sites, we walked 3 hours back to the South side of the Island. The walk was pretty rough – we sometimes had to climb 900 meters, go down, then climb again… all on an ancient Inca trail. The views were incredible… you could feel magic in the air.

On the trail back to the South

The next day, we went back to Copacabana and spent the entire day there, hoping to find a way to reach Puno (the other side of Lake Titicaca, on the Peruvian side). We asked everywhere (agencies and tourist office) if the border was opened (there is an important protestation against the opening of a gold mine – by a Canadian company!) and how was the situation in Peru Unfortunately, we learned that it was worse than ever, and that the best way to cross the border to get into Peru was to take the water road (which meant taking a small boat on the Titicaca lake for 9 hours). Ok, it didn’t sound too bad, so we booked it. It cost us 30$ each (which is ALOT for Bolivia), and we had to be at the office at 7:30 AM.

Meanwhile, we visited Copacabana’s main tourist attraction; its Basilica, home of the Virgin of Copacabana. Considered a Black Madonna (Vierge Noire), she was sculpted by the grandson of an Inca ruler in 1582. Representing the Virgin as a Nusta or Inca princess, she was attractive and became so beloved that the Aymara indigenous people replaced their cult to Pachamama (Mother Earth) by the devotion to Holy Mary Pachamama, the Mother of the Man-God. The statue itself was located in a side-chapel of the Basilica, which was lighted with a hundred candles.

Main gates to the Basilica

François with Blackie, a friendly dog which followed us during our walks in Copacabana

The entrance of the Basilica. It's absolutely huge for a 6000-population town!

The entrance to the Chapel of Candles

Getting closer to the Mary-Pachamama

Mary-Pachamama herself!

That’s all that we did in Copacabana, beside finding a new book in exchange for an old one.

The next morning, we started one hell of an adventure. We woke up very early, and went to the office, Combitours, where we had purchased the boat ticket to Puno, at the right time (7:30). Combitours opened at 8AM, and told us to go to the office of Panamericano (another tourist office). We did, and they made us enter a van, which eventually drove to the Bolivian migration office and the Peruvian immigration office. So far so good! We got our stamp to Peru, and then they told us to walk to some field a few blocks away from the offices. We arrived there to a small dock made out of stones, row boats waiting for us to transfer us to the bigger “deluxe” boats (which, the tour company promised us, was going to be equipped with comfortable bus seats). We just had to tell them we were with Panamericano when we entered the bigger boats.

The row of poor wee tourists, getting into row boats. The bigger boats are on the right in the far distance

Backpackers getting in the row boats

Things started getting sour right about now. First of all, the row boat we got into (we were about 7) was taking in water. Second of all, the lady driving the row boat asked everyone 10 bol/3 soles (about 1.25$) for the ride. Third of all, the boat almost sunk when we reached the bigger boat. Fourth of all, the bottom of my legs were completely drenched in freezing water. Fifth of all, the boats were sold out when we arrived, and were completely reserved for ticket holders of Titicaca Tours (the only reason we didn’t get kicked out was that our row boat was sinking and we refused to go back on it).

Fortunately for us, the owners of the bigger boats were money hungry so they overpacked the boats to get a bigger revenue. We were thus packed at the back of the boat like mere cattle with everyone’s luggage, breathing the intoxicating fumes of the motor. There were people that were stuck on the boat’s roof for the whole 9 hours of traveling! The air was absolutely bone chilling!

My "cattle" friends and the luggage. Yeah, it was THIS cold!!

We were actually lucky though, as I later heard stories of protesters retaining the row boats until tourists paid them a bribe, tourists having to wait another 6 hours for new bigger boats to show up, boats running out of gas, or even tour companies not bringing tourists at the Peruvian immigration office at all! What chaos!

So we arrived in Puno at around 8:30PM. The sky was dark, and we were extremely happy to finally arrive on Peruvian ground. We then went out for a nice, greasy and comforting dinner, which turned out to be a barbecue restaurant!

The sunset on Lago Titikaka. Such beautiful colors!

Our meaty feast: Beef heart (on a stick), steak, pork, chicken and three different kinds of sausages for the price of 6.66$!

Oh yeah, we forgot to mention this earlier. We got sucked into accepting fake money! The top bill is the real one, and the bottom bill is the fake one. They are almost identical, except that the bottom one has a different texture and misses a security element. 12$ down the drain...

The next day, we decided to visit the floating islands of the Uros. Located 5 km west of the Puno port, they are 58 islands made of tried totora reeds, which floats in case of attack (useful more than 500 years ago, when the Uros were enemies of the Incas – who lived really close by). The Uros were eventually conquered by the Inca Empire, to whom they had to pay taxes and do slave work. Nowadays, only 2,000 descendants of the Uros are still alive, although only a few hundred still live on the islands themselves. They lost their language 500 years ago, and now speak Aymara.

The reeds used by the Uros to make their islands

One of the floating islands. The reeds at the bottoms of the islands rot away fairly quickly, so new reeds are added to the top constantly, about every three months. The islands themselves only last 30 years!

Much of the Uros' diet revolve around reeds. When they are pulled, the white bottom is eaten for iodine.

François and myself had the chance to taste those reeds. They were really refreshing, and tasted like bland salad!

A demonstration of how the islands work. The islands are made entirely from reeds; their dense roots develop and interweave which enventually forms a natural layer about one to two meters thick that support the islands. They are anchored with ropes attached to sticks, which are driven into the bottom of the lake. Everything is then covered with dried reeds.

A home and a kitchen, on a floating island. Food is cooked with fires placed on piles of stones.

They even have small gardens! This one has/had wheat growing. Other gardens harvest quinoa.

We then took a reed boat to the capital of the islands, Hanan Pacha:

This one had a cute lama face!

Another floating island next to the "capital"

Some local woman "welcoming" us

And the following is what felt like walking on the reeds. It’s definitely a weird experience as you will see!

In the afternoon, we went to the market in Puno to buy some food for the evening, and we stumbled upon a funny thing, a quail egg seller; auto-sufficient with the quails, their eggs and hot water to boil the eggs! How great is that?? I just hope the quails are transferred to a bigger cage at night…

Quail cart

A quail!!!

In the evening, we finally took a …14 hour bus ride to Cuzco (because there are political tensions causing the normal road to be blocked). Overall, we did 23 hours of travel to get from Copacabana to Cuzco, instead of the normal 10. Incredible, huh? Anyway, we arrived this morning, and are now in a beautiful hostel, 10 minutes walk from the center! (And they offer free pancakes for breakfast. YES!) This week will be the Sun festival, which is an Inca solstice celebration – the biggest festival of the year in Cuzco. More news soon!

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