What we did so far

It took us some 4000 miles to get to Nazca. We started in Esquel (Argentina) crossed to Osorno (Chile), then north to Concepción, Santiago, Copiapó, Antofagasta, San Pedro de Atacama, and then crossed back to Argentina through Paso de Jama. This put us in Purmamarca, then north again to La Quiaca, from where we crossed into Villazón, Bolivia.

In Bolivia we visited Potosí, Sucre, Oruro, La Paz, Tiwanaku, and finally the border crossing point at Desaguadero. Once in Perú we drove to Puno, Cusco, Abancay, Nazca, Huacho (north of Lima), and Trujillo.

A previous leg took us from Abancay to Nazca. 

Cusco - Abancay - Nazca

According to the reports in the web the road was extremely difficult, some comparing it to crossing five times Paso de Jama. It was a gross exaggeration. The road is tiresome because of the gazillion curves and mountains that we had to transverse, but it is not as demanding as presented. In fact, it is very interesting.

Much of the road goes through green mountains showing the usual hard work of the farmers working every single place up the slopes. Typically the road goes along some valley where one may see many rivers carrying water from up the mountains. The top of the mountain chains show some high pampas with plenty of llamas, vicuñas, alpacas, sheep and cows. Those animals adapted very well to life at high altitude, and the farmers take good advantage of them.

The last quarter of the road, the westward portion approaching Nazca, shows a change in the landscape. The mountains are dry, there are no more rivers, no agriculture and no animals. However, in spite of the changes, those mountains still attracted us.

We didn’t like Nazca, in consequence we decided to keep driving north beyond Lima. 

The landscape along the Pacific coast shows a constant desert with fog coming from the see wrapping everything, so the overall visibility is quite poor. This bleak landscape is nevertheless populated by many peasants. Many of the live in very primitive houses made of “carrizos”. They make panels with local grown reeds (or canes) cut alongside, then join the panels to make a wall and attach the walls to four posts. That’s it. A few will have a roof made of the same material, in others the roof is a plastic liner, and many has no roof at all. This is extremely primitive, dating probably from Inca’s time, showing that progress never made it to many parts of Perú.

A house made of "carrizos". To be noted: the electricity line going down to the electric meter

A whole neighborhood made of "carrizos"

In order to avoid Lima’s downtown nightmare we opted to take the loop going around the city center. This wasn’t easy drive either but we managed to cross to Lima’s north side in about one and a half hours.

A word of caution:

The Panamerican highway is crossed with speed bumps every time that there is an incoming road or a crossover. Not all the speed bumps are clearly marked. It is a very silly design because it downgrades the highway to a country road level.

SOME REFLEXIONS

We drove through the Southeast and Southwest of Perú, and we cannot less than note the striking differences between both regions. The Southeast part, including the entire region from the border with Bolivia to the northwest of Cusco, has plenty of surface water. This allows the farmers to cultivate every little piece of land, including the mountain slopes to unbelievable altitudes, in many parts still using the same terracing techniques used by Inca and pre-inca cultures. Peruvian men and women are hard workers and make a living in very difficult conditions. However, even when their standard of living is generally low, they can still get busy doing what they know.

The situation is quite different on the west coastal region. There is very little surface water therefore agriculture is much limited. The harsh desert has been fractioned to private owners who can afford the needed investment to transform it into a productive land. From what I saw this terrible desert only needs a little water to become productive. The investors drill water wells to irrigate their crops, vine yards, corn, potatoes, cactuses, fruit trees, and so on. Their labor is composed of the local people that has no chances to ever drill a water well or own a piece of land. These laborers are those that live in the shacks made of carrizos.

It pains to see how the government favors the big investors instead of helping their own people. The same way that the private investors can drill water holes to irrigate their cash crops, the Peruvian government could drill the same holes and give the water to the local people so they at least can grow their food and support themselves instead of living in slums under pathetic conditions. 

We saw posted signs along the road forbidding the drilling of new water holes. This means that probably the underground aquifers are being depleted by those cash crop projects. The same situation happens in Saudi Arabia, where they used fossil water to support cash crop projects until they completely depleted the aquifers. Now Saudi Arabia has to import all their food stuff and there is no more water to support their basic needs.

Each country has different characteristics and I don’t think that Perú will fall in the same situation. However, depleting the underground water to support cash crop projects is a mistake that sooner or later will be repaid, probably with mass migrations to slums around the big cities.

Lima is a huge city and we tried to avoid the city center as much as possible. The outskirts of the city shows houses climbing up the hills in all directions.

The city of Caral represents one the oldest civilizations, with terraced buildings dating some 3000 years BCE. Caral was one of our objectives once we passed north of Lima. However, a combination of problems prevented us to fulfill our objective. The first obstacle is the 16 miles of horrendous road that takes you to the entrance of the ruins, which took us one full hour of difficult drive. Once we arrived – in a very bad mood after the road punishment – we had to walk one mile under the sun to arrive to the ticketing office. However, Caral, like all the Peruvian coast, is in the middle of sand dunes and we were already tired and gave up. Curiously, far away we saw tourist buses parked right next to the ticketing office. Our conclusion: Caral is currently organized to serve the tourism companies, and there are exempted from the walk through the sand dunes under the sun. 

Our advice: DON’T go to Caral. Perú has so many beautiful places that it is not worth wasting time with Caral.

Today we visited the Archeologic Museum in Trujillo. One of the best museums so far with plenty of artifacts, well organized, with samples of the different pre-inca cultures up to the Spanish invasion.