I’ve only just got to see how my night-time shot of the Church of San Francisco looked in last September 2019’s edition of the National Geographic Historia .. and, spread over 2 pages of a long article entitled El Oro de los Incas (The gold of the Inca), it looks good.
Cajamarca is a large historic city at about 2500 metres in the northern Andes of Peru. It’s full of beautiful colonial architecture like this church and surrounded by lush green mountains and valleys. The lifestyle and clothing for many there is still fairly traditional but it is also home to a distinguished university. An important agricultural region, it also experiences a lot of controversy as the home of a number of huge open-cast gold and copper mines – which, apart from having obvious effects on the landscape, have resulted in a lack of water-supply for the local population as the water of the region is diverted to the mines. It was the location of the famous capture and execution of the Inca Atahualpa by the conquistador Pizarro in the early 1530’s.
Overall Cajamarca, the city and the region, is a relatively safe and very beautiful part of Peru for a visit and for some landscape photography – birding photography is excellent here too. Locals in their traditional clothes can be understandably touchy about unwelcome street photography so, as always, it’s better and safer to ask before lifting the camera.
There are daily flights to Cajamarca airport from Lima – alternatively it takes about 6 or 7 hours from Trujillo by bus (night travel is recommended by bus as the road is a bit curvy and tops 3000 metres at some points which could leave you feeling a bit rough).
The Church of San Francisco is located in the main square, the Plaza de Armas of Cajamarca. My photo was taken around Christmas 2018. Long-exposure on tripod with Nikon D7100 and Sigma 10-20mm lens.
Bob Golden
