I never thought a bunch of rocks could capture my imagination so thoroughly.
As I think back over my three years on the road, biking with my husband and children from Alaska to Argentina, I never thought I would see 20,000 extraordinary rocks intricately carved by some mysterious ancient civilization. But I did. Here’s what I discovered.
All it took was one quick look inside the door of Dr. Cabrera’s Stone Museumin Ica, Peru, for me to want more. Fortunately, Dr. Cabrera’s daughter, Eugenia, willingly opened the museum to us and agreed to show us around. And what a tour it was, I hung on her every word!
The Stones
Dr. Cabrera’s Stone Museum is a small, private museum located on the Plaza de Armas in Ica, Peru, about four hours south of Lima. It was started by Dr. Javier Cabrera to safeguard the many mysterious carved rocks found in the area.
Cabrera died a few years ago and his daughter now maintains the museum, passing on some of her father’s wisdom.
It is reported that more than 50,000 carved stones have been found in the desert surrounding Ica. About 20,000 of them are in the museum.
The first thing one notices about the stones, besides the vast number of them, is that they are much more dense than normal stones. They have two layers, black basalt in the center and a shiny black andesite as an outside layer. They come in all sizes, from small enough to fit in your palm to one meter high.
