Peru II: Echoes Of Distant Flutes

The following post covers the weeks leading up to Peru’s State of Emergency. The resulting lockdown will be covered in the next installment.

For five weeks we were on the move following a trail of historic sites from mountains to coast and back again. In the end I’d seen so many ruins I couldn’t remember which was where and when. It didn’t help that out of ten towns, six began with “C” while the rest sounded the same. Was it Chiclayo or Huanchaco, Chacas or Chavin, Caraz or Huaraz, Barranca or Barranco? You can see my dilemma.

I’m ashamed to admit that my main memory of beautiful Cajamarca is that the laundry there shrunk our pants. Back on the road mountain life was tough. Rural living is the same from Mexico down, births, the daily grind and deaths all taking place within a stone’s throw of passing traffic. Children played on the road, mothers breastfed in the shade of ‘Dangerous Curves Ahead’ signs and men walked sheep in need of a haircut between tarmac and mountain edge. As we descended green was replaced by brown, the river dried up and palm trees appeared. The desert coast in Northern Peru was home to the ancient Moche civilization and in Lambayeque we visited the Royal Tombs of Sipán museum. I’ve never in my life seen so much gold: headdresses, breastplates, necklaces, face masks and earrings with precious stones, and that was just for the men! The first tomb belonged to the Lord of Sipán and it’s a wonder when he was alive he didn’t sink into the sand with the weight of it all. Of course when he died he took it all with him, and a few other things too, like ceramic pots, a guard (forced to sit cross-legged in an alcove for all of eternity), three women, a soldier with amputated feet to stop him running away, a child of about 10 and a decapitated llama. It must have been good to be a Moche man. The actual tombs were at Huaca Rajada which required a drive through fields of sugar cane. It was a brown world under an overcast sky and the edges of both adobe pyramids were ribbed and rounded by centuries of sand and wind. You’d never have guessed at the riches below.

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If it wasn’t for the Lord of Sipán and his entourage, I doubt Chiclayo would be anyone’s first choice for a holiday. The streets were chaotic with most of their roads torn up and without surfaces. Bumping along on dirt alongside tuk-tuks, collectivos (minibuses) and motorbikes, we gave up trying to find a lane. It was hot and noisy and trash lined the center dividers. Waiting for the lights to turn green for a third time I watched the hardware stores and welders go about their daily business, some with life-size cardboard cutouts of pretty girls in bikinis two sizes too small. I bet the “Yo Tambien” movement is taking its time getting here too. Walking was just as hazardous as day or night everybody was out, including one lost soul strolling nonchalantly through the crowds totally naked. Nobody seemed to care.

It was more flat desert and a lot of wind on the road to Huanchaco. The town was a popular weekend spot with a long beach and lots of ceviche and Chifa restaurants. Peru has more Chinese restaurants than any country we’ve been in and Chifa (a Peruvian-style Chinese food) was a welcome change to our usual diet of chicken and rice. It was the Chinese vegetables really that attracted us. Apart from potatoes, vegetables are not served much in Latin American dishes. Twice I ordered a Vegetarian Torta only to spend most of the meal picking out pieces of cow. However, we were here to see the pre-Columbian ruins at Chan Chan and the Moche temples El Huaca del Sol y de la Luna. Unfortunately the latter required a drive through the center of Trujillo, Peru’s third largest city. For the first time our maps app failed us completely by sending us through a barrio with no paved roads, houses with collapsing roofs and an abandoned car at the entrance. It was one of the very few times I’ve said to Fran “we’re not going in there”. We eventually found our way and it was a surprise. When you think of ‘suburbia’ visions of Starbucks and endless tract homes usually come to mind. Trujillo’s backyard was a vast desert and two large, ancient pyramids.

The drive next day brought distant plumes of black smoke over the dunes. One stretch of sand was trash free, not an empty Inca Kola bottle in sight and I gave thanks to the Peruvian military for their pristine Zona Militar. In some unknown town we stopped to fuel-up with the last reserves of Equador gas. Peru’s gas prices are higher than Southern California but at least everything else is cheaper, the cheapest it’s been really since Nicaragua. We left the coast and the villages faded out to fruit stands, then they disappeared too. Entering a narrow valley hemmed in by mountains, for miles we were alone with the river. When we reached Cañón del Pato (Duck Canyon) the road narrowed and wound through the Cordillera Negra mountains. We were above the river but the canyon walls were high and tight and sculpted into beautiful textures and shapes. It was a two way road but only a single lane which caused one or two scary moments further down (Peruvian motorists don’t like to use their lights). We’d been driving a long time before we saw our first people: two women, two children and a dog, down at the water’s edge. They were standing beside two upright posts forming a triangle. Across the river another woman was fastening rope to a similar structure. She then climbed onto a piece of wood attached to a sort of pulley on a rope strung across the fast moving water. With the baby hanging off one arm and the dog dancing excitedly, the two women on our side pulled her across. Beside me Fran said: remember this because you’re never going to see that again. There was a series of tunnels blasted into the rock, some double and even triple, with a new one beginning as soon as the last one ended. I read there are 35 of them and with no lighting their interiors were velvety black. You went in just praying nobody was coming in the opposite direction. We shot through each one with Pferdi alternating between sunlight and shadow until the last bend opened up to a green valley below.

In our small, family-run hostel the father was a math teacher who taught algebra to unlucky children on their summer holidays. This took place in the covered patio where Pferdi was parked so he got an education too. Caraz is a typical Andean town with the plaza a meeting spot for the locals, a Sunday brass band and a market with a furry guinea pig death-row (dead cuy walkin’ to his final role on someone’s dinner plate). The women in their tall hats, petticoats and shawls were right out of Grimm’s fairytales and their small stature added to the impression that they came from another world. The only thing wrong with this picture is that they belonged in this world and we were the ones who didn’t. There were several beautiful lakes in the area so we hired a battered taxi to take us to the mountaintop and Laguna Piron. Up and up into the Andes on a rough dirt road, the drive took nearly 2 hours. It was an overcast day but nothing could diminish the turquoise of the lake or the drama of being overlooked by a peak called Artesonraju which claimed to be the inspiration for the Paramount Pictures mountain logo. We must have got used to being at high altitudes because the lake was at 4,200 meters and it didn’t faze us a bit.

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Passing through Carhuaz we got stuck behind a brass band and further up avoided an old dear dragging a long tree branch across the road. In the village of Shilla we were detoured because of roadworks and sent up a hill so steep that a quarter way from the top we had to turn around and go back. Fran was convinced he was going to burn the clutch out and listening to Pferdi strain and grind I was straining and grinding in the sidecar and cursing Ural for not installing a lower gear. We’d no choice but to approach the workmen and ask to drive through the construction site which they cheerfully allowed after removing several large planks of wood out of the way. Outside the village the road disappeared altogether and again I wondered how on earth Pferdi was going to survive Peru.

In Huascaran National Park we kicked Duck Canyon down to second place on the most beautiful roads list. After registering at a roadblock we entered an unspoiled world: a long, green valley, cliffs sprouting waterfalls and sharp, snowy peaks. Climbing switchbacks to the snowline we reached a tunnel at 4,736 meters, our highest point ever, tipped over the top and down the other side. Here the waterfalls came in twos and threes and aquamarine lakes shone with alpine reflections. Honestly we’d no idea Pferdi was capable of reaching such peaks but he kept puttin’ on like ‘The Little Ural That Could’ and we were proud. Peru was teaching him a thing or two.

Nestled on the other side since 1570 was the little town of Chacas. The architecture was Andean and Spanish and all the doors and balconies were carved in rich wood, the legacy of an Italian priest who’d opened a woodworking school there. We saw a massive, carved alter there destined for a church in San Diego and a stained glass window to lure the faithful into a Las Vegas chapel. From the Andean highlands to Nevada’s Sin City, the Lord does work in mysterious ways. We were the only foreigners in town and everywhere we were met with a double greeting: buenos tardes, buenos tardes. The old women lifted their big hats to us and smiled toothless grins. The cathedral dominated the grassy plaza, there was a big white Italian consulate but only 2 restaurants. The downside was a pack of feral dogs who roamed the streets and wandered in and out of buildings like they owned them. Louder and more aggressive than their Caraz cousins, there were frequent fights over the lone female who was in heat. There was no doubt who ruled the Chacas roost.

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To return to the outside world we got to drive the national park again. The downside to having such scenery in your review mirror is that everything ahead looks a little less colorful and a little less bright. One day in Huaraz we drove the most dreadful road to the Wilcahuain ruins, over an hour to do 7 km. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to take your own transport. Leaving the city we were brought through a very different kind of landscape, rolling green, stony hills and lots of sheep; Ireland on steroids. It was quite flat and there were white peaks in the distance but it still felt like being on the top of the world. In the village of Chavin de Huántar the clouds were low, the restaurants patrolled by more stray dogs and by 4 PM it was pouring rain. In contrast the following morning was green-gold under a blue sky, in the plaza I got asked my name by a toddler and we had the great pyramid mostly to ourselves. What a difference a day makes.

We nearly missed South America’s most ancient city. The ride to Caral was so hard on Pferdi we almost turned back. Outside of Barranca, the road was completely dug-up and we ploughed through thick mud followed by washboard and potholes so bad I thought I’d be carrying the sidecar mudguard round my neck going home. Abandoning a large pool of water that was too deep to cross, and beyond that a river, we drove through fields of chili peppers before finding a back entrance into the site. There were only two other visitors and in the vast expanses of sand we must have been but tiny specks to anyone looking down from outer space. Wandering among temples that have been there since 2,600 BC, it was hard to comprehend this had been a bustling city at the same time the Egyptians were building their pyramids. Standing in the heat and blinded by the glaring emptiness, I realized this place was one of the reasons I’d come on this trip. To be allowed to be a part of this, just for a little while. And long after we ourselves are dust, the hot sand will continue to blow over Caral’s temples and the echoes of its condor bone flutes will drown out any trace that we were ever there.

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