>> Hunter Hoover: Get. We gotta do something more. We can't. We can't sell crap forever, right, guys? Like, right? Welcome back to privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded from my home bathroom. I'm your host, Hunter Hoover, and I love bathrooms. Welcome back. Uh, welcome back, privy video viewers. Uh, I guess if you do it twice, it's a thing. I don't know. Maybe it's a thing. Maybe we got a thing going here. Um, I have to tell you, number one, I need to lead, uh, with a joke,
because. So I work with teens, and one of the things that I do each week is I tell my teens a bad joke from a joke book. And this evening, I pulled a joke that I thought was very good, and I was told that I am a crotchety, old, out of touch man. That's not what any of them said. That's just how I. That, you know, you can kind of get a feel for it. Um, but the joke was, what does a rain cloud or. Gosh. Oh, I blew it. Oh. Uh, gosh, what does a cloud wear under his raincoat? Oh,
I saved it. We're back. Thunderwear. Get it? Cause it's like underwear, but because he's a cloud, it's thunderwear. So that was the joke. And because underwear are loosely related, not too loose. You're going to be dropping trowel, um, to what we do here in the bathroom space. If you're new to the show, we don't do this very often, but if you're new to the show, I'd be interested at why you're jumping in on episode 130 ish or whatever. But
who knows? Maybe you are a fan of Aaron or one of our many other guests. Maybe you, like many people, found us because at one point, I talked about skibity toilet, and apparently that episode has been clicked on. That's all I'm gonna say. Um, it's a regret. I learned a lot. I'm still learning a lot, but my time with skibity toilet was frustrating, and I'm still recovering in many ways. We need to talk about something, and, kids, maybe just take a lap, because this one's gonna be a little bit.
No, it's not, like, bad. You know, we always try to keep it family friendly or as family friendly as we can keep a, uh, podcast about bathrooms. But the reality is, is sometimes you stumble. Kids, just let me just talk to the parent. Let me talk to mom and dad here for a second. You know what I'm saying? I, um, know, here's what I'm gonna say, I know that as soon as I said, kids don't listen, that every kid was like, I will do anything in my power to hear what he says.
So here's the deal, and I'm going to tell you a little story. I've been trying to keep the. The bathroom check ins to a minimum, because I realize I. Not everybody wants to hear about, like, what I'm doing on the daily, because what I'm doing is pretty significant. But not everybody wants to hear that. And I know that's hard to believe, but I get it. But this week, my kids are in t ball and coach pitch baseball, um, um, here in our town. And I stopped off. Oh, my gosh. I went,
and I'll just paint the picture. So my wife was cold, and so I went to the car to get her, like, a chair and a blanket or something. I don't remember the circumstances, but the point is, is I had to make a mid t ball run to the car. And on my way to the car, I'm walking past the porta potties, and I've already. I've already passed the event horizon of, like, being near the porta potties when I hear this lady open the porta potty door and go, oh, my
gosh. And all I could think in my brain, the entire walk to the car was, when I go back, I have to see it. I have to. I will do it. So, sure enough, I get the chair and the stuff, and I'm walking back, and I walk up to the porta pipe. I've got my phone out, ready to fire. Um, I'm always ready to fire. Uh, and I'm walking up to the thing, and I just open the stall door, and the guy standing next to me, he keys in that. I've opened it. He's like,
oh, oh, that one's bad. You're not going to want to use it. And I'm like, oh, really? Oh, my gosh. And then I walk away, and he realizes that I essentially walked up to this porta potty, pulled the door open, and snapped a picture of the absolute disaster. Hellscape. That was a strawberry smoothie that went reverso on someone. The biggest problem here is the person did not get the porta potty lid open before that went reverso. So naturally, it went everywhere. So welcome to privy.
I'm glad you're here, kids. Welcome back. All we did was talked about vegetables. We talked about fruit. It's not wrong. We did, um, this week in honor of Cinco de Mayo. Last year, in honor of Cinco de Mayo, we talked about the history of Cinco de Mayo, and we talked about the ancient incan, or I think it was incan or aztec bathrooms. Um, and it's a little bit on the nose. I. You know, Cinco de Mayo is one of those. Those. Those celebrations. I don't
know. That's kind of weird for America to even be a part of. Like, it's kind of like a mexican thing, and. I don't know. But. But in honor of Cinco de Mayo, we're going to be a bit too on the nose again, and we're gonna be. We're stretching this one. It's, like, stretched farther than stretch Armstrong out here. Oh, it's mayan. We learned about mayan restrooms last year,
but it's pretty neat what we learned about. And we're going to be looking at a somewhat related part of the world in that the Spanish came in and, you know, got their hand on the ball in many ways, but it's. It's really only related in that they share some language and history with one another. You know
what? This year, in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, which is, of course, Spanish for tacos, in May, we're going to be looking at the weird little section of south american history in a number of complex, which became known as the Guano wars in South America. In the land of Peru, in the southern part of Peru, along the Pacific Ocean, in the little coastal area, there is a strip of land that is home to the Chincha
culture. Chincha are native Peruvians. That is where the present day city of Chincha Alta hails its name from. I'm also going to say, hi, I'm Hunter. Um, I regularly pronounce some crap wrong, and this episode is going to be one of those episodes where I'm definitely going to pronounce some things wrong. And you just got to bear with me. Just suffer along with me. I'm struggling. That's it right there. That's it right there. I know. You know, the orange
vanilla is just a delight to my soul. It's very, very good. But the Chincha people are an ethnic group of the Quechas. Quet. Quechuas. Quechuas. Quechuas. Quechuas. Quechuas. People, indigenous South Americans. Essentially what we got going on here. The Chincha people were at their peak from the year 900 to 1400 ad, and that is when they settled in this lower left portion of Peru. As a culture, the chincha were a ruthless people. They worshipped a jaguar God a. Ah. Jaguar.
Um, and they themselves believed that they, as a people, descended from the jaguar. They were also fairly advanced. Though many of the spanish reports and historical writings, uh, reported about the people, didn't paint them as that advanced. They were pretty advanced as a people. Like, and that's because, like, as these Spanish are writing, you can't have the people that you eventually. Spoiler alert here. Eradicate. Whoops. Spain. Dang it. Spain.
Look what you did. But you can't make the people that you kind of destroyed their. You can't make them look good. So you kind of, when you write about them, you kind of diminish some of the things. But like the Chincha people, they were skilled at maritime travel and seafaring and maritime trade along their. Their region in the local Pacific. They were skilled in agriculture. More on that in a moment. That's why we're here.
Uh, they likely had a pretty, pretty well used and commonplace money system that was likely used outside of their area and often held a high value in coffer. So do the people ripping out catalytic converters out here today, you know? Hey. Oh, look at that. Come full circle. The Chincha people were hugely influential to the region. And in Peru, the Chincha people are what? The chinchilla is named after the Chinchilla, literally meaning the little chincha. They're native to Peru. I didn't
know that. That's where they come from. These little freaky guys come from down yonder, not down under. Down yonder. Down under is Australia, and down yonder is South America. And that's the best way you can remember that the Chincha were robust and this robust, the. This robust tivity. What's the. What's the ad? What's the. What's the term for when. I guess it is just robust robustiveness. But as it was noted, this peaked in the hundreds ad. In the 15 hundreds, something went wrong.
Things started to fall apart, and they started to decline. And that's because in the 15 hundreds, the Chincha people met a somewhat unforgiving force, the spanish conquistadors. And with them, they brought along all just. It's a tale as old as time. Disease and plague were rife. This encounter with the spanish conquistadors in the 15 hundreds would be the first of many conflicts between Spain and the people of South
America. And by the mid 15 hundreds, the Chincha people's decline was imminent, as the spanish settlers seemed to be there to stay. Now, we need to back up a little bit. As was noted, the Chincha people were prominent in agriculture. One thing which has become synonymous with the Chincha people, especially as it relates to their ongoing struggle against the spanish people in the area, is guano. Now, guano to the layman is bat, or bird poop. Poo. And this poo is often very, very
rich in nutrients. And the Chincha people knew it. They regularly fertilize their field with dead birds and very often bird poop. In fact, these practices spread to other peoples throughout the region, and it became very widely known and widely held as a practice. That is what the Chincha people and the Chincha culture kind of offered in their world. One of the biggest concentrations of these guano deposits were on the Chincha islands off the coast of Peru. Now, these islands, they're not
very big. I think the biggest one is like a, ah, kilometer and a half, like, long. They're not big islands, they're small. But these islands were originally the home of the Chincha people. But as they grew in population in the outset of their existence, they began to inhabit the mainland of Peru. The largest of these islands, Isla Chincha Notre, as well as the other isla chinchas, uh, there's three of them. The chincha, the chincha, and the Santa Macintia, um, are made
up of mostly granite cliffs. So it's like, it's like these granite cliff sides. And these granite cliff sides are home to what I like to call flip jillion seabirds. Like, all these various type of sea seafaring and sea traveling bird make their nests in the crags and cliffs of the Chincha islands. There are countless seabirds, including gulls and cramorants and the
like. Now, here's a fact I know all too well, and I know this fact all too well because there is some idiot bird on the side of my house that has decided to chaz himself right down the side of my house. And it's just high enough up where it's kind of a pain in the butt to deal with. And it's just high enough up and on the wrong side of the house to where, like, spraying it down is kind of a challenge. And the rain doesn't hit that. And it's like, idiot birds.
I'm reading a series of books to my son that I grew up with, the guardians of Ghul, if you're a fan, shout out, gahoole. Um, but, like, they call all the birds and aren't owls wet poopers? And it kind of seems like, yeah, they can't. But, like, when my dude splatter cams, the side of my house on the, on the daily, it's like, yeah, I kind of get the derogatory term. You're flipping loser, you dumb bird. Quit pooping on the side of my
house. But to the chincha people, bringing it all back here, bringing it all back, these poop deposits that were everywhere on the island, because that's what the island's covered in, is birds and bird crap. These were important for fertilizing. In the coming 300 plus years, south Americans, the incan people, and the peruvian people in general would struggle against the spanish conquistadors of the
area. And while spanish control and influence in the area varied throughout the years, in time, by 1821, Peru was granted independence. The trouble is, is Spain didn't really acknowledge that independence very well. While they had been independent for some time, and trying to stabilize this would take somewhere around 50 years to do so. And it should be noted the Spaniards were not done. Uh, they had some bird craft that they wanted. In 1864, the
Spanish were back. Under the guise of protecting basque immigrants to the area. They were determined to reestablish dominance in previously held colonies. They're coming to undo and make what is theirs what they believe is theirs. Here we go. The Guano wars of the Chincha Islands were a key part of this conflict against Spain and the people of South America.
In short, there was a conflict at the Tilambo hacienda, which led the Spanish to raising a blockade on the Chincha islands, thus cutting off much, if not all, of the peruvian access to the Chincha islands, which is where the huge guano deposits were. Now, the Peruvians needed the very important poop iguano. El poop iguano, um, because it was key to exports, trade, and agriculture. To give you an idea of the significance of the guano situation. How important is this poop?
You know, I'm saying, I think about that a lot. Like, when I drop it, when I. When I drop a grumpy and I grow and I drop some grumpies, I often think to myself, how important is that one? Like, in the grand scheme of things, is that the one that's gonna change at all? You know what I'm saying? Maybe you don't know what I'm saying. I don't even know if I know what I'm saying anyway. But the spanish act of taking the islands in this way is said to have impeded about 60%
Peru's trade. Now, when you are a country and you're gaining independence, you're gonna want to diversify your portfolio now, when your portfolio is 60% shipping crap and getting crap, selling it to other places, like, I'm not saying it's a bad thing because it's a good thing. Like, you. You gotta. You gotta shake what God gave you. You know what I'm saying? But, like, get. We gotta do something more. We can't. We can't sell crap forever, right, guys? Like, right?
But. But this impeded, like, 60% of Peru's trade during this time. Spain also launched campaigns against Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador. These conflicts included spanish ironclads. These were giant, big, steam powered warships. And it commemorated the first time for one of these ironclads to circumnavigate the globe. That was during the Chincha island wars. The Guano wars was the first time spanish ironclads circumnavigated the globe.
While much of the Guana wars, thus named for how they started, was fought in the 1860s, peace treaties to officially end these struggles were not signed until the seventies and eighties. However, the damages to nitrate deposits, that's what makes the guano poopies really good, is the nitrates. Much of what had been depleted greatly by the late 1880s, like, the whole poopy, ship it out situation, was greatly diminished. And they also had to pay for the conflicts that they had engaged in.
And so to pay off these debts and to connect our discussion here about the guano wars in commemoration of Cinco de Mayo, which is like mexican independence, but it's, you know, it's a stretch, um, to connect our discussion of the guano wars to our time discussing fertilizer. The answer to the question is, uh, of how did peruvian bird crap end up in european soil for the fertilization of european crops? The answer is the peruvian corporation, which had its headquarters in London, England.
The peruvian corporation controlled the railroads in Peru, and it would take over 66 years, they're going to take over the situation in Peru, and they would mine and export 3 million tons of guano to the US and Europe, and they would pay over 2.5 million euro
in their time. So over the course of 66 years, the peruvian corporation, headquartered in London, paid Peru 2.5 million euro, uh, at their time, which is a lot of money to export this guano for the furthering and bettering of european soil and the further development of fertilizers used today. I should say the peruvian people hated this deal, but it paid the
bills. Today, there are ongoing endeavors to restore and preserve the guano deposits and other natural resources and animals on and around the Chincha islands. But all of this, the conflict, the Chincha island wars, the Guano wars, the Chincha island guano deposits did a lot by way of expanding and bettering fertilizer in the US and Europe. And I would say, why wouldn't it have helped? The fertilizing things in Peru today? Guano deposits are up.
They've increased again. But it should also be noted that with the further development of fertilizers around the world, Peru does little to export this poop. They, um, still do some, but not to as great a degree in all the spanish, in the peruvian conflicts, in the Chincha island wars and the Guano wars was long, and it kind of stunk. Happy Cinco de Mayo. This brings us to the end of another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for being here. Thank, um, you for
joining us. I hope you're enjoying the video. If you do go over to the YouTube, subscribe, leave us a comment and say, hey, keep the video coming. Uh, it's a little extra work, but, um, as podcasts trend that way, we want to try some new things. See, um, what we do trying new things. I told you guys I'd always keep learning. Um, follow the show. You can follow privy. It's rivycast. You can follow me. I'm Hunter. I'm owlett. Seven. Go, uh, follow us on those things. We would love that. Send us an
email privycastmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. Episode suggestions? Ideas? Comments? Concerns? Feedback? Uh, as always, we would love for you to leave us a rating and review. The five star options are preferred. You can go to Apple podcasts or Spotify to leave us a rating and review. Um, and when you do that, as a thank you for leaving us a rating and review, we always give a dollar for every rating left to the Wounded
warriors project and living Waters International. And for those written reviews, we'll bump that up to a couple bucks for each one of those. And that's just to say thank you for leaving us a rating review. We're going to give some money back to wooded warriors and living water as a reminder to keep pooping in the free world. That free world was not always free, and that not everybody has clean water, and we're working for cleaner water. For all this has been another
episode of Privy. Thank you, Kevin and Pontington, for the use of your music. Thank you, as always, for being here and listening. Happy Cinco de Mayo. Own your stank. And now, as always, don't forget to flash.