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. 

Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu

Finally, the day day to visit Machu Picchu arrived.

There may be several ways to go to Machu Picchu but the standard way is to take a bus from Cusco to Ollantaytambo (some 44 miles away), then the train to Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu Pueblo), and finally a bus up to Machu Picchu. We took a tour that brought us to Pisaq and Valle Sagrado before arriving to Ollantaytambo.

A view of the Sacred Valley

Ollantaytambo was another Inca’s ceremonial center. The design of the city, the wonderful terracing of the mountain slopes, and the construction details, make it as spectacular as Machu Picchu. 

The suffix “tambo” indicates a place to rest and resupply. In this case, Ollantaytambo was also used as a granary for travelers passing by. The old constructions are still there, on the most aerated sides of the mountains to ascertain that whatever they stored will remain fresh.

Unfortunately, due to astuteness that characterizes me, I forgot to bring the camera up the slopes so I couldn’t record what I saw in this fantastic place. Luckily, for those that might be interested, the internet has plenty of information and pictures describing the place.

MACHU PICCHU

Machu Picchu was build as a resort for the emperors trying to wet away from Cusco’s cold and rain. It is located at a much lower altitude, almost 8000 feet compared with Cusco’s 11200 feet. The city is surrounded by high mountains, inaccessible on three sides due to steep cliffs, and with ample space to sustain a population between 600 and 800 people with the production out of the terraced slopes.

The first thing that impacted us was the magnificent scenery. Huge and wild green mountains surround the entire place, and a multitude of swallows bringing a smile to everyone:

Apart from the incredible mountain setting and design of the city, I was attracted by the construction details. The basic material used for construction of the walls were rocks found at the same location, while all the houses had thatched roofs using local reeds. However, there were at least three construction categories, depending on the status or the purpose of each construction. 

The buildings designed for the emperor or ceremonial purposes show a complete mastery and control of the techniques needed to adapt the rocks to their needs. They knew how to cut the rocks in whatever angle or curve was needed to make perfect assemblages of those huge blocks:

They differed from the construction used for general purpose buildings. For those constructions the rocks were selected for the best fit and glued together with a sort of concrete made of sand, clay and straw:

The walls included some spigots used to tie the beams supporting the roofs:

There is so much already written about Machu Picchu that it will be redundant trying to explain all my impressions of the place. Now we are ready to continue our visit to Perú, even when the next step will be a tiresome trip from Cusco to Nazca with an overnight stop at Abancay. The road is long and difficult but we have rested enough to make the best of it.

By the way, driving on mountain roads is not easy for the brakes. I found a problem with the disk brakes, probably due to excessive braking, which forced us to rework the surface of the disks and change the brake pads. From now on I will be much careful and use the engine brake when needed.

From Puno to Cusco

I expected to travel along mountains high and dry and sparsely populated, however, much to my surprise, the road from Puno to Cusco is surrounded by green mountains and valleys, heavily cultivated and with a string of little towns all along the road.

Once we entered Cusco I realized my second mistake. Instead of a little colonial town we found a big city built around the old colonial town.

The same as in all Spanish colonial towns, there is the “Plaza de Armas” surrounded by cathedrals and administrative buildings. Let’s remember that Cusco was the capital city of the Inca empire, therefore the Spanish town was built on top of the old Inca's constructions.

Cusco has many museums that document the Inca's period as well as the Spanish conquest, the colonial period, the independence from Spain, and the new republic. We really enjoyed the degree of craftsmanship and the quality of the art artifacts left by incas and pre-incas’ cultures. A few examples:

El descabezado

Cuencos en forma de búho y escalonados al estilo Inca

Bastones de mando hechos de madera con figuras talladas de animales

Mi favorito: con pocas lineas lograron una figura abstracta estilizada 

With the Peruvian people, we, Argentinians, have not only a common history but also a common present. We share the same corrupted political system, an equally corrupt ruling class, equivalent popular struggles for the dignity of the people, the same need for work, liberty and equality. On the day of our arrival we saw a demonstration in front of the City Hall by unemployed construction workers. There were about 30 workers and 30 heavily armed police agents, men and women with tear gas, automatic weapons and dogs to contain a peaceful protest. The workers only asked for work but the police was ready for the worst.

Driving through Latin America we see the number of good and bad things that we have in common with our latinamerican brothers.

Puno, Perú

Puno is a city on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the largest lake in South America and the highest navigable in the world, at 12,500 feet.

Puno is an international tourist destination, probably by the same people that also come to visit Cusco and Machu Pichu. It has a few museums, many hotels, and plenty of trips to different parts of the lake. The street traffic is as crazy as all over Perú and takes a lot of skills to drive through the city. Very popular is the local version of the auto rickshaw:

Being so close to the lake we were anxious to take the tour of the lake and the islands. First we landed on the floating island of the Uro people. This people inhabited the shores of the lake until the arrival of the Incas. At this point they decided to build islands using the reeds growing on the shores. That allowed them to put some distance with the unwelcome visitors.

With time they started the reeds not only to build the floating islands but also to build boats and houses.

Today these people lives out of tourism, and they have well prepared shows to keep the tourists interested.

Our next stop was in the Taquile Island. This is a real island inhabited by some 2500 people. 

They live out of agriculture and a little out of the tourists. They grow all sort of vegetables like corn, different varieties of potatoes and wheat and complement their food with fish and some chicken. The island is very clean and they make full use of the available land by terracing the slopes of the hills.

Life is hard in the island. They struggle to make the most out of limited resources but maintain strict ethics to preserve their life style. As an example, they forbid the tourist from giving tips to the local kids, otherwise they will skip school trying to collect more tips.

It looks like a paradise, however I don’t know whether I would like living in such a remote place.

From Potosí (Bolivia) to Puno (Perú)

From Potosí we drove to Oruro. It is not a long trip and the road is excellent, but there are so many mountains and curves that it took us some 8 hours-drive. Unfortunately Oruro is such a bad place that we stayed just one night and run away.

From Oruro we targeted La Paz, where we planned to spend a couple of days. However, we were affected by the altitude and didn’t like the La Paz traffic at all, so we decided to keep moving north and cross to Perú at Desaguadero. The border crossing has two aspects. On one hand the work of the officials in charge of immigration and customs on both sides of the border, is excellent, fast and professional. The bad aspect of the crossing is the multitude of people that crowded the streets. There was a feria a few meters from the border on the Bolivian side but we couldn’t proceed because the police cordoned the streets to protect the feria. Finally we risked a bit through the crowd and crossed to Perú.

Roads in Perú are no as good as in Bolivia. A shocking detail: if there is a pot hole, they cover it with rocks, come as big as 18 or 20 inches diameter. If we are not aware and hit them we can destroy the front of the car. One never know what is worst, whether to hit a pot hole or a rock.

Our next stop was Puno, on the shores of lake Titicaca. It is a tourist destination, well kept and with several things to see. That will be the subject of my next post.

Andean flicker (colaptes rupicola) on Tiwanaku ruins (West of La Paz)