Matthew & Jen's World Trip: Peru

Picture of the Sun God (Huaca de la Luna)

We crossed the border into Peru as the sun set. The border crossing was straightforward and uneventful and about 3-4 hours later we found ourselves in the city of Piura. After 13 hours of bus rides that day, we were keen to rest up before pressing on and found ourselves a rather basic place to stay across the road from most of the bus terminals.

Peru has a much more lively feeling to it than Ecuador. There is a real hustle and bustle to the cities with many more cars prevalent (albeit largely very small cars like Daihatsu Charade’s). Everyone is busy honking their horns, either at you (to ask you if you want a ride) or as they approach an intersection to warn other vehicles of their presence.

Everyone also seemed to have a reversing jingle (rather than warning bell) equipped in their vehicle. All this meant for an incredible amount of traffic noise which seemed to persist right throughout the evening - I swear, even at 2 or 3 am (when even Rio was dead!) there were cars honking or playing their ridiculous reversing jingles! And, as we had reached sea level the night was too warm for the windows to be shut...

Waking up the next day we had thought to catch a direct bus to Lima. Reaching the bus station we learned the hard way that in Peru, it is necessary to book in advance. All of the bus companies were full, so the best we could do was Trujillo, about half way between Piura and Lima.

The bus ride to Trujillo was great - we were back aboard the double decker luxury that we had experienced in Argentina, with big wide chairs, meals bought to your seat, and english movies to watch.

What we hadn’t quite appreciated was how much of Peru is covered in desert - something like half the country is desert (everything west of the Andes).

Huaca de la Luna (layers of carved images, each level has a different image)

Trujillo had never really been on our itinerary, but turned out to be a pleasant surprise. With only a day there, we happily filled in our time visiting a pre-incan ruin of a pyramid and temple (the Huaca de la Luna). We spent about 45 minutes visiting an ultra-modern and highly enjoyable museum to learn about the Moche people and the sacrifices that took place at the temple. The temple itself had had no restoration work done on it, but was in pretty amazing condition. Painted walls still clearly depicted images of the sun god and carvings on the side of the temple showed images from victorious soldiers leading captured slaves, the spider decapitator and much more. From the Huaca de la Luna we proceeded to an ancient city, Chan Chan. The restored palace of Chan Chan that we visited was massive in itself, but was nothing compared to the surrounding evidence of the city that once existed in the area. Chan Chan was in various states of restoration. There were massive squares were ceremonies took place, rooms upon rooms and even an elaborate tomb for the king.

Huaca de la Luna ruins

Actor posing for photos at Chan Chan

Chan Chan

Largely unrestored ruins of Chan Chan (much of the surrounding countryside looks like this)

A (shorter than expected) overnight bus trip to Lima had us arriving in the capital at about 6am. Luckily we found a nearby hotel that would let us check in early, so after an hour or two of rest we made our way into the city centre. Lima had a great feeling about it. The city felt well organised, with a very wide motorway system linking the suburbs with priority bus only lanes in the middle. The streets were clean, the buildings new and boasting modern architectural designs.

Huaca Pucllana (Miraflores)

Being a Sunday, there was plenty going on in the city centre. Most of it seemed to focus on a parade (many people in vibrantly colourful clothes parading up and down the streets). We never quite worked out what it was for, but it may have had something to do with the beginning of bull fighting season. Unfortunately the bull fights don’t start until November so we won’t be seeing any whilst we are in Peru...

The other central point of interest seemed to be a food festival, or bread baking festival. A queue of people, stretching to maybe a kilometre, were patiently waiting to - well what seemed to us - learn about bread baking and maybe sample some bread?? Our spanish is by no means good enough for us to work out what was going on, but it was exciting just to be around it!

We spent the better part of half the day walking around the city centre, taking in the palace, the major cathedral, the streets and party atmosphere before making our way back to the hotel.

The following day in Lima we decided to explore the coastal tourist-y area of Miraflores. Beginning with a tour around a recently discovered pyramid in the middle of the suburbs (Huaca Pucllana), something like 10 metres high, and covering perhaps a few acres. The pyramid is a hypnotic collaboration of millions of bricks, similar in size to the modern house brick, which had all being made by hand.

From Huaca Pucllana we walked to the coast and down the steep cliff to watch paragliders, surfers, and a pretty wooden pier with an expensive restaurant at the end. Our final activity in Lima was by far our favourite. We journeyed back into the city centre to visit the Parque de Reservas - a massive collection of various water fountains. Arriving in the late afternoon we had the opportunity to visit the fountains both in daylight and once again when it was dark and the fountains were illuminated by coloured lights. The park was great, a real family attraction - especially for the cities residents - with everything from traditional fountains, to fountains the moved in sync to music blared over loudspeakers (even better at night), to fountains that you could walk through, to a fountain where the idea was to navigate into the middle and back out again without getting wet - everyone seemed to be failing miserably at this - a change of clothes is necessary if you want to try!

Huaca Pucllana is right bang smack in the middle of a residential suburb (surrounded by apartment buildings)

Lima coastline

Pretty jetty to an expensive restaurant

We couldn't resist taking the kiddy train at the Water Fountain Park

The kiddy train

One of the larger fountains

The water tunnel (floor may be slippery when wet)

I couldn't reach the top, in case you are wondering...

Fountain synchronised to music

Everyone was soaking wet - and it was pretty cool once the sun had set...

An early start the next day had us on a ~8 hour bus trip through the Peruvian desert and along the Pacific Coast arriving in Nazca in the mid-afternoon. Accommodation seems to be especially negotiable in the off-season and we’ve managed to find ourselves a very comfortable room in a modern small hotel, with good access to wifi and our own private bathroom for about US$15 / night.

Booking our bus tickets in Lima, we have spent 3 nights in Nazca (so we could avail ourselves of discounted bus tickets). With the benefit of hindsight this is probably a little more time than is needed, but nevertheless has given us an opportunity to relax and catch up on things without running around madly doing the tourist thing.

Nazca is most famous for the Nazca lines which were constructed by the people who lived here between 100BC and 700AD. We took a small plane over the lines on our second day in Nazca. A picture perfect day with clear blue skies made it just ideal. The lines were great. There are something like 2,000 lines, most of which just go straight, for many kilometres through the desert. The lines often originate from a central point and seem to cross each other haphazardly. In addition to the 2,000 straight lines, there are some 500 massive triangles or trapezoids. The triangles and trapezoids are substantially larger than the animal, insect and other shapes for which Nazca is perhaps best recognised. Of course, viewing the animal, insect , humanoid and other images from the plane was great. They are all easy to see and impressive to behold, especially when considering that the Nazca wouldn’t really have been able to appreciate what the images looked like when they were making them.

In addition to the Nazca lines, Nazca also boasts the worlds highest sand dune (over 2,000 metres above sea level), an amazing cemetery (Chauchilla) which we visited earlier today (tombs of mummies and some of their belongings have been reconstructed to demonstrate their burial position), circular aqueducts and more ruins.

...as I am writing this, and for the second night in a row, there is a parade taking place outside. Complete with marching band and truck driven floats. Tonight one of the floats hosts the smurfs who are throwing candy at the nearby children and shop owners who have come out to watch. Last night was something of a Miss Peru contest with young girls with crowns and sashes and young boys in tuxedos linking arms...

At 9.30pm tonight we board our bus to Cusco and Machu Piccu.