Peru – Round Up
From Nazca, we headed towards the coast. On the way, we visited Ica and its splendid museum, where we saw real mummies recovered from the nearby archaeological sites and examples of elongated heads. This cranial deformation took place when the person was an infant by applying tight cloth bandages and was an indication of high status.
We met up with Ivan again on the coast at Paracas and spent a few days chilling. Just before leaving, Gerhard and Martina rolled up and we all had a nice evening out. The next day we said our “goodbyes”. Our friends were returning south whilst we were continuing north.
We next visited the interesting Inca ruins of Tambo Colorado and the “Band of Holes” craters, before heading to Lima with a few overnight stops at seaside towns along the way. In Lima we camped just below the seafront cliffs with easy access to the city. Lima’s traffic is a nightmare and on the day of our visit, demonstrations were ongoing and the police had cordoned off most of the historic centre’s main squares. Lima has a very long esplanade and we managed some long early morning walks. We also met Paddington Bear.
Just up from Lima we visited the wetlands area of El Paraiso, with its huge bird population and the pre-Inca (4000 BC) ruins at Bandurria where our guide, Michael, gave us an excellent tour in English. However, the pre-Inca ruins at Aspero were a bit of a disappointment.
We then climbed into the mountains peaking at just over 4000m over a couple of days. The scenery was gorgeous, but given we were in the rainy season, the weather was changeable. Our intended route was thwarted by bad roads and we ended up taking a high mountain pass back to the coast.
Francine, having recovered from the narrow tracks, and not having had her fill of ruins, then navigated us to the Moche (100-800 AD) ruins at Huaca de la Luna and Huaca Cao Viejo, both of which were very interesting.
From here it was then a fairly uneventful few days driving to the Ecuador border and our time in Peru was up.
Yet another fascinating place, amazing history and artefacts, and scenery of course, not sure about the cone heads though 😂
I love the statue of Paddington, that’s cute.
Looking forward to your next adventure.
Hi Francine, Dave and BB, wishing you all a very merry Christmas, has been an adventurous year, like your updates and stories, wishing you more safe adventures for 2025. cheers
Peru sounds very interesting . Enjoy your next adventure
Our own expert guide, Francine, through the ‘ruins-full’ Peru leg has given us an insight into the advanced civilisations of the pre-Incas and the Incas with their numerous ruins. Such splendid scholarly expertise, it would seem, might be less than obvious in the hot humid Equadorian climes. We await further equally enlightening observations.