Today I had to mentally alter my mood. I felt cranky, although I figure it's due to my working everyday, and the partially hostile environment I am submerged in lately.
.
What is important to me though, is that I did manage to bring harmony to myself, by focusing on my goals. I browsed the images of the places I want to visit, or re-visit this year. I imagined making ripples in the crystal green and aquamarine waters of the Llamganuco lagoon in Huaraz, town North of Peru considered the Andean Alps, and a tourist attraction for skiers.
As pistoresque and folckoric as this region is, not everything is picture perfect though. These regions have been ravaged by violent ice avalanches which carry forth blocks of ice and large rock boulders. In the mid 1970's the worst as of yet avalanche, completely convered the town of Yungay, in the vicinity of Huaraz. This avalance convered in it's entirity the town and buried alive 23,000 people. Only the cross on the tower of the town's church was left visible, as well as the top of three palm trees, which had been located in the main plaza.
Curiously there was a circus in town that week, and most of the children of the town, and a few adults were spared being buried alive, since the circus was located atop on a hill, and those children had ample time to run uphill and be spared their lives.
.
.
Until this day there is reverence to this place, which was never been excavated and is preserved as a resting ground for all the lives lost that horrific day. Since banks and the like were also buried, there have been attempts to ram sack this area, and it is carefully patrolled against such vandalism, and would be thieves, are threatened to be shot on the spot.
.
I have not visited myself, although my cousin has, and she told me there is a solemn ambiance, with deep respect for was is considered holy ground. She said that the tradegy was evident when one glimpsed a deep crevice on the ground where one can make out the top of a school bus, or the cross of what was the Church in the main plaza. She said there is a huge mountain as background of this ghost town, which is truly formidable, and of forbidding appearance.
.
Picture of the Llamgacuno Lagoon in Huaraz, Peru
