Peru Part 1, Down the Pacific Coast

The first thing I have to say about Peru is that I was shocked that the whole west coast is a desert, and often a desolate one at that….sand dunes, strong winds blowing the sand around, sometimes no vegetation AT ALL! It´s funny how you think of a place as green and lush when you don´t know it and then surprise!!! It´s not what you thought. Anyway, we decided to stop at places along the coast since we were on our way to Lima and we had enough time.

Stacy and I are both ¨beach¨ people, so we tried to pick beach towns. Our first stay was with a lovely couple, Vicky and Joe Vargas, who are the parents of a friend of Stacy´s in San Diego. Stacy had never met Vicky or Joe, but you would have thought that they had known each other forever! Such a gracious, lovely couple. We stayed with them in their beautiful oceanfront home for three nights and joked on the day we were leaving (and Joe said, ¨you can stay longer if you want¨), that they better not say that or we just might stay forever. That´s how comfortable it was. Not only that, but they lived a good drive from the bus station in Chiclayo and our bus was late and their car broke down, but with their son-in-law´s help, they picked up up at about 11 pm and even had dinner for us when we got back!!!! They toured us around Chiclayo, showing us the regular market and the witchcraft market (yes, I bought some more supplies....potions and things....hahaha) and dined with us at a beautiful Peruvian restaurant where we had our first Pisco Sour, Chicha Morado and other food I can´t even remember the name of, but you´ll see in in the photos. We spent a day at the beach, Joe figured out a way to get Stacy´s suitcase fixed GOOD AS NEW and we had a brilliant night learning a Peruvian card game, I think it was called Baranco. We played as partners and Vicky and I had an early lead, then Joe and Stacy started catching up. Vicky brought out her ¨magic bells¨to twirl over my head so we would win, but alas, Stacy had some awesome beginner´s luck and they won. All in fun. Thanks so much to Vicky and Joe for being such lovely hosts. We only hope we can each repay the visit in some way (don´t forget your open invitation to Nicaragua!).

From there we decided to go to another beach, this one on the surf circuit. It´s called Huanchaco and it´s a touristy place with lots of people to watch and lots of food to try. Candied apples (when is the last time you had that?), orange wheat and honey cakes, fresh strawberries with condensed cream, fried lima beans, tamales with chicken and raisins, you name it, we ate it! I´m not sure how many days we stayed there, but I remember great breakfasts, riding in a boat that was made of reed (see photos), and laying out on the beach one entire day on chairs under an umbrella just reading and watching people go by. Nice feeling, even if we are on a vacation. We usually never have time to just sit on the beach all day. We visited a famous ruin near Huanchaco called Chan Chan. Talk about fake! I don´t know how many of you know this, but many of the ancient sites are being ¨rebuilt.¨ In other words, they start with the ruins and then put them back the way they must have looked when they were whole! To me, this totally defeats the purpose! In Belize they use some kind of putty made of fiber glass, mud and cement. In Chan Chan they used mud to make the same bricks that were originally used. When they are finished, they will no longer be ruins, but a new place that looked like Chan Chan once looked. What do you think of that? I don´t like it. (See our photos of Chan Chan).

Next we went to a place that was NOT in our book and NOT on our map named Barranca. Why? Strange thing. In 2002 I was still living in Canandaigua, New York and I read a news report on a new ancient site that was discovered in Peru called Caral. I decided that WHEN I visited Peru to see Machu Pichu I MUST see Caral. Caral is 5000 years old! It is the third oldest civilization discovered on earth. The existence of Caral changes the way we must think about how we all got here, since until now, no one thought there were civilizations this big in the western hemisphere. So it is a really significant site. It is set in the desert, between high sand mountains, with a solitary river running alongside. It is so new that they are still excavating but I have to say it is the most ecologically-thinking, preservation-thinking ruin site I have ever seen! Hooray to the Peruvians! Everything built to support it (bathrooms, shops, restaurant) is build from natural materials, you are not allowed to walk ON any of the pyramids, but you can get close and take good pictures. We spent the entire day there, walked a lot, thought that the ruins were fabulous. It definitely is off the beaten path, but worth seeing.

The town that we stayed in to be near Caral is called Barranca. When we arrived there, the bus just dropped us off in the street because this town wasn´t on their route, they were just taking us to be nice and would get in trouble if the police saw them in town. So we got off in a hurry, grabbed a moto-taxi (we have lots of pictures of those funny little customized taxis) and told him to take us to the beach. We stayed in a nice hotel right on the beach. The beach was gorgeous and reminded us a lot of San Juan del Sur, where I live. It was a bay, it had a Christ statue on one of the cliffs overlooking the bay, had a lot of seafood restaurants lining the beach street and five (yes five!) discos! It was Saturday night so you know where we were headed. We danced up a storm at a couple of the local clubs and got back to the hotel late.

Next day, we decided to go and see a few ¨minor ruins¨ around Barranca. We took a bus out to the first one. They dropped us off, but we didn´t see anything. After asking a few people directions, we walked through the hot, sunny desert to find two monoliths in the sand. That was it...two monoliths and nothing more! No explanation, no nothing. In fact, the sign said that this was an ¨ïntangible ruin.¨ I guess that means that they found those two things there, but they had no clue why they were there. Well, we couldn´t figure it out either. Then we went to the second place our our map and walked around and around and around in this dusty, tiny, dismal little town. Again, after asking questions, we were directed to a pile of rocks. Yes, just a pile of rocks. We laughed again. The third place we went to involved a ride and then a walk down a lonely pathway in the country. When we arrived at the place, there was nothing there!!! Nothing...except a cool, falling-apart bridge that we just felt we had to climb. The bridge crossed a big flowing river and we must like to climb, because the materials weren´t great. The ladder to get up was rickety, the bridge itself had no guardrails and was very skinny, made up of wooden slats and pieces of metal strategically placed so you wouldn´t fall in. There were holes in this construction everywhere. We kept asking ourselves if we were crazy. I say yes! But, we crossed the crazy bridge over the river and neither of us fell in. We were a little disconcerted when a man dressed all in black with black cowboy hat and all crossed the river close by on a black horse (it looked like something out of a Western....the evil guy coming to start trouble) but he didn´t say a word or even come near us. We were more surprised by the two men who came to the bridge to cross it to go to work and carried their bicycles on their backs! If they could do that, we surely could walk across it. And we did! Yes, it was dangerous and yes we were crazy (see the pictures).

Went our for another crazy night of dancing in Barranca.

A couple of days later, we left and took our last bus to Lima, where the Peru Part 2 adventure begins. Click here to see the photos associated with this post.