Author: blogministrator

The Inka Express is an extremely long bus ride – usually a 6hr drive – which takes over 9hrs, due to all the stops along the way. But time goes quickly, and it doesn’t seem to drag, as a journey, at all. Leaving Puno, barely having slept, with an altitude headache only partly dulled by 10minutes attached to the oxygen bottle before getting up, jacked up on matte de coca (coca-leaf tea) I half expected the journey to be awful. But I managed to dose during the first part of the journey, awaking to be delighted by the Pukara museum, sporting a whole collection of statuary from the ‘mother culture’ of southern Peru, who lived here around 400BCE. The catfish and the frog turned out to be particularly important animals for these people, but the puma and the snake made early appearances – they both figure heavily in later cultures – and the quality of the carving is really quite special.

Returning to the bus, I am exhausted just by this short tour around the
museum. Our next stop, at 4335m (14,200ft) above sea level, is at Abra
La Raya where the two mountain ranges the girt the Altiplano, where Lake
Titicaca rests, meet and join, and the Sacred Valley down to Cusco
begins. There are snow-capped peaks here, although my Puno guide says
they were much whiter in his youth. The smoke clouds from the 25 fires
burning in Bolivia adds a haze to the sky. The Vilcanota River that
beings in this valley eventually joins the Amazon, and flows out to the
Atlantic Ocean. By this point, my head is hurting, the ibuprofen I
took at breakfast has worn off, and I am just glad that the descent has
at last begun. Over the next 40mins we descend more than 1000m to our
buffet lunch, and the Sacred Valley proper.

Here we find our first proper Inca archaeological complex – Raqchi,
which means ‘ceramic.’ Unusually for Inca architecture, the main temple
is built half in stone, their preferred building material, and half in
adobe – the mud brick of older cultures. The entire complex, moreover,
is completely surrounded by a huge wall. The thinking is that the
Tihuanaco people who were being supplanted by the Inca here were
rebellious, and the complex had to be built quickly, and defended. In
the Temple to Wiracocha, the most important Inca god, there are, also
unusual for Inca buildings, circular columns, which used to hold up the
roof.

By the time we reach Cusco the air is just so much nearer what sea-level
dwelling folks like me are used to, and although a bit thin, (it is
still 11000ft, after all) I can think, I can move around, I have no
headache, and the constant fatigue of the last few days in Puno is
finally wearing off. It’s like getting well again after a massive
hangover. Speaking of which… a glass of wine might now be in order!

Two fascinating trips today: to the floating Uros islands, and to the Aymara/Inca fertility temple at Chucuito. The Uros islanders, although their own language is lost now, and they have absorbed some of the physical characteristics of the Aymara as well as their language, are nonetheless still distinguishable by their short, squat bodies, their barrel chests with powerful hearts and lungs, and their ‘black blood’ – in truth just a little darker, but proven to have a higher haemoglobin content than sea-level dwelling people like me – and probably you. These people have been here a very long time, and have completely adapted to this environment. The Pukara people (more on them tomorrow) were the first recognisable ‘culture’ or ‘civilisation’ here, between 200 and 600CE, and they were gradually displaced by the Tihuanaco, who were then forcibly conquered by the Aymara, who were in their turn
conquered by the Inca, and lastly, in the 1530s, by the Spanish. The
Uros Islanders, therefore, have been there a long time.

 

This was my morning trip, and on my way back I enjoyed the views of the lake, and took a little oxygen on board

The Uros Islanders – only a few hundred of them now live there on the islands still – clearly exist mainly on the income from tourists, above and beyond their traditional subsistence existence making their land, their huts, their fires, and their soup out of the reeds in the lake. My guide was very informative, but it was clear enough to the eye that much of their lives are now geared toward the tourists. It was also clear, during these years of world economic turmoil, that the tourist trade has really suffered. The two arms of the village, north and south, have been taking it in turns, this year, to receive tourists, each
morning. In a normal year, both arms receive tourists all day. So I
decided that if I was going to spend my tourist dollars on textiles and
reed figures anywhere in Peru, then it was going to be here, rather than
a shop in Lima or Cuzco. I spent about £65 and the couple were clearly
delighted – she gave me a hug and kiss in a quite spontaneous gesture.
It was somewhere between gratifying and embarrassing – still not sure
quite where. So now I have a delightful, ‘primitive’ Andean tapestry
depicting Pacha Mama and Pacha Tata (Father Earth), along with a puma, a reed boat, and the ubiquitous Tumi knife with which the sacrifices were
made. This was woven by the woman who kissed me. I also have a small
replica reed boat, made by her husband. Lastly, I have one of those big
seed pod maracas, with a scratchboard, covered with some carving, which
looks to me rather mass produced, but never mind. These items will
retain both a memory of meeting their makers, on their island, and the
sort of charitable glow to make any tourist feel his conscience is
clear.

After some soup and a midday sleep back at the hotel, my guide came to
collect me again and we set off to Chucuito, a tiny but charming village
further down the coast toward Bolivia, where there was an Aymara/Inca
fertility temple. Much of it destroyed by the Spanish, of course, who
used the phallic totems to tie their horses in the yards of their
colonial houses around the lake, until in the last decade or so the
local authorities have gradually repatriated them all and set them up
again inside the temple. There is a strange and imposing looking hotel
in front of the temple, where mystical but infertile tourists come from
all over the world to take part in ceremonies, led by the hotelier, at
the temple, apparently with some success, though my guide reckons its
all psychological. The signs of recent libations on the main phallic
altar are clear enough.

 

Both an eventful and uneventful few days. After a morning reading Mercia
Eliade’s classic text, The Sacred and the Profane, soaking up the
sunshine at Nazca, I took the long bus journey back to Lima – the bus
arrived late and made a number of unscheduled stops (including for the
driver to buy some oranges from a roadside vendor) arriving in Lima
80minutes late. My restaurant of choice was fully booked by then, and
arriving by taxi at the alternative I found it too was fully booked,
despite the Hotel receptionist shrugging that I would not need to book
there. They took pity on me though and put me on a bar stool at the
bar, where I enjoyed a fabulous meal, generosity from the talkative
barman, and a thoroughly good Saturday night out. I can thoroughly
recommend the Brujas de Cachiche to any visitor to Lima.

Sunday was then all about flying up to the mountains – an airbus from
Lima airport at lunchtime stopping over briefly at Cusco, without
disembarking, and then heading on up to Juliaca, the small city on the
plain overlooking Lake Titicaca. From the moment I got off the plane I
could tell we were very high up, and that the air was thin! Walking
suddenly became a struggle, and the effort of any exertion seriously
taxing on one’s reserves of strength. This immediate fatigue receeded
in the car, replaced by consciousness of having to breathe really
quickly – a shortness of breath one would normally associate with the
moments after major exertion, but experienced whilst sitting in the back
seat of the guide’s car. On the way to my hotel in Puno, we stopped to
visit the Silustani Tombs.

This proved to be a fascinating visit, despite the fact that I was only
capable of pigeon-toe progress with frequent rest-stops, and the fatigue
was gradually turning into a dizziness of absolute exhaustion. But the
history of this area, as my guide described it, was fascinating. The
Pucara people were the first known civilisation here, and I will see
more of them on the Inka Express bus journey to Puno later this week.
After this culture had faded, the Tihuanaco came, and populated the
area. At the height of their civilisation here, the Aymara, a warlike
people from the south and east, perhaps Argentina, conquered the area,
forcing the small remnant of surviving Tihuanaco to embark on a long
wandering in the mountains, until they settled north in the sacred
valley, and became the Inca. The Inca, of course, later reconquered
this area, along with the whole of the rest of the Andes, in the largest
empire of all pre-Columbian South America – of which more, of course,
in Cusco and Macchu Picchu. Up here in Juliaca and Puno, despite the
arrival of the Spanish conquerors, who looted the ancient sites and
brought Catholicism to the area, much of the original pre-Christian
religious practice and the two ‘nations’, Aymara and Quechua
(Inca/Tihuanaco people) survive to this day. My guide is Quechua, the
driver Aymara.


The Silustani tombs are mostly Aymara, with some later Inca tombs as
well. Alongside the tombs are three other sections of the site: the
ritual area, the workshop, storage and living area, and the quarry where
the rock was carved out of the mountainside. Like the Moche practice
in the far north, and Egyptian and other practices in other continents,
not only the Lord but his wives, boys, servants, priests – between 30
and 50 bodies – were buried in each of the tombs. All the precious
metal artefacts were looted by the Spanish, but archaeologists have
found ample evidence of human bones, ceramics and other remants to gain
understanding of these monuments.

The largest of them, an Inca one, with exquisite stone work, also had a
relief carving of a lizard on it, pointing in the direction of the
Temple of the Sun, the island on the Bolivian side of the lake where the
Inca absorbed the Tihuanaco origin myth and made it their own, with a
splendid temple.

In the ritual area, I was introduced to a very familiar stone circle.
My guide clearly had real respect for the place: he pointed out on the
horizon to south and east among the mountains where the villages of his
mother and father were located, and spoke with genuine appreciation of
the Quechua Mother Earth ‘Pacha Mama’ and Mother Waters ‘Cucha Mama’
whose spirits were in everything, in every stone. The archaic religious
mind, as described by Mercia Eliade, was here almost in its raw aspect,
for all that this son of tribal people now worked in the tourist
industry, using his excellent English. Having asked permission, I
entered the stone circle, and paid my respects to the Earth Mother of
the Mountain, here at the roof of the world, my body the tree through
which earth and sky communicate and become one, pillar of every house,
tower of every city, altar of every temple.

On the descent from the hill of the tombs, though the thin air was
really starting to get to me by now, (hence the not very good photo) my
guide showed me the guardian stone at the foot of the ancient stairway.
He asked me if I had a compass. A spiral carved on one side of the rock
zeroed in on a particular patch of the stone where the compass on my
iPhone suddenly switched to point west, instead of north, directly at
the centre of the spiral. Yes, indeed they believe there is some
lodestone or other in this rock, and yes, indeed, the Aymara clearly
knew about this. The other side of the rock sported the carved face of a
Puma, facing up to the stones.

But my reaction to the thin air was rapidly turning into full-on Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS),
or altitude sickness, and we headed on to Puno as the sun went down and
the cold wind of the mountain winter began to bring the temperature
down sharply. At the hotel I practically collapsed for an hour or two’s
nap, and then managed to pigeon-toe down to the nearest restaurant, a
couple of doors down from the hotel, for a light supper, and pigeon-toe
it back up to my room, completely exhausted, to sleep again. It was
9pm. I awoke almost hourly, drinking water, feeling exhausted, my pulse
rapid and persistent, breathing short, dizzy and suffering awful
fatigue. Finally, at about 4am, the pulse and shortness of breath had
begun to recede, to be replaced by a headache. I took some ibuprofen at
5am, and finally decided to cancel my tour to the Lake Titicaca
Islands, to stay put and get a day of complete rest. By 9am, worried
for me, the travel agency had called in CondorAssist, the medical
insurance with my fortnight’s tour, and a very nice young Quechua doctor
arrived, with a translator. It was agreed by all that it was altitude
sickness, that the worst was over, that I had done the right thing
cancelling today’s tour, and he sat me with an oxygen mask plugged into
an oxygen bottle that they keep at the hotel, for 20 minutes, which
cleared my headache!

By lunchtime I was able to take a little walk, buy some alpaca socks and
a straw sun hat, and get a bowl of Inca Soup – guinea pig and alpaca
meat and soft cheese cubes in a nourishing soup, which I ate most of
with a large glass of freshly juiced papaya. It is interesting how, up
here in the mountains, many of the local people still maintain the
traditional dress, at the same time as embracing the all-encompassing
information revolution. This excursion, however, was very tiring, and I
returned, again very slowly to the hotel, to sleep for a couple of
hours in the afternoon.

So – not only do I get air-sick on little Cessna’s doing wild
manouevres, I am among those who suffer from altitude sickness, too.

Well here’s a turn-up for the books. For the first time in my life, I have
suffered from air-sickness. I got up at 5.30am, grabbed some breakfast, got picked up at 6.15am and taken to the bus station for a 4hr 30m bus journey – again in one of the comfy airline style coaches – arriving in Ica at 11.30am, to find my Nazca trip delayed til 3pm. I could have got a later bus. Not particularly pleased, but acquiescent, I wandered about the gardens of the Las Dunas hotel, a sort of oasis in the desert here, where a big conference was taking place, and then ate a very light salad lunch in the restaurant. Finally taken to the airfield, I and four other passengers and the two pilots took off in the little Cessna at 3pm, for a 30min journey across the desert to the plain where the lines are carved into the ground, 30mins flying over them, and then the 30min return journey. The updrafts from the mountainous surroundings made conditions quite choppy on the journey out there, but nothing worse than my similar Cessna journey from Milford Sound to Queenstown in 2007. But once we got to the lines, the pilot very enthusiastically ensured both sides of the plane got a very good view of each and every one of the twelve big patterns amongst the lines, by turning steeply and sharply in both directions. By the fourth shape I was feeling very hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable, and spent the next 10mins vomiting my lunch into the plastic bag provided. Only by the last little group of shapes had I recovered sufficiently to doggedly point my camera at the ground. I closed my eyes and left my body for the trip home, feeling, as I told anyone who asked, “awful.”

So now I know: I can – and will – get air-sick, in a little Cessna doing wild manouvres. And now I am stuck in a small villa hotel in the middle of nowhere for the evening, where after a long nap recovering I am at last going to have a small dinner, and then a long sleep and lie-in, to get the bus back to Lima tomorrow lunchtime. All in all, I have to say, considering the huge discomfort incurred on the overflight itself, and the 9hrs of bus travel to get here and back, I am distinctly underwhelmed by my trip to the Nazca lines. What photos I did manage to take are not as good as the ones you see in books. One wouldn’t expect
them to be. So why be here to take them for oneself? For the experience? You can keep it.

Update 3/10/10 : “Britons killed in Peru aircrash”
==============================
So – for anyone in any doubt that this pilot was displaying typical macho bravado and not only making people feel sick but playing fast and loose with common-sense safety – here is the tragic truth. I count myself very lucky, indeed, and hope that Health & Safety crawl all over that little operation. I feel very sorry indeed for the families of those bereaved – I think it was an accident waiting to happen.

Another long day with another punishing schedule, but SO worth it. Picked up from the hotel at 7am for a 90min journey to El Brujo, to visit the very celebrated Senora de Cao – the only Moche Queen discovered so far, clearly as powerful as the Lords of Sipan in her day (c250CE) with her own pyramid with all the usual Moche accompaniments.
But El Brujo is more than just her pyramid – here, too, is Huaca Prieta, the as yet unexcavated 2500BCE pyramid of the pre-ceramic originators of the El Brujo complex, followed later by the Cupisnique, and later still by the Moche, and the Chimu, and even a Dominican Church built by the Spanish. To this day, the local ‘brujo’s, (shamen) still practice their folk magic at the Moche Huaca El Brujo (named after them) facing the Huaca de Cao, the only part of the site so far excavated, opened to the public with an impressive museum, in April 2010.

There’s been 5000 years continuous sacred occupation of this same site,
overlooking the crashing waves of the pacific. A truly stunning site,
with my first sight of how the Moche ceramic style appears in
high-relief on the walls of their temples! In this warrior culture,
where soldiers paired off for ritual battle, the loser was stripped
naked, chained, and led to the top of the pyramid to be beheaded, where
his blood would sanctify the martial rite, and be presented in the
ceremonial cup to the Lord (or in this case Lady) to be drunk in
celebration of the life-death cycle epitomised in their primary deity,
Ai-Apaec: the beheading lord of death and creation.

But I was yet in for a real treat. For our next stop was Huaca de La
Luna. Two huge pyramids with a small town in between them, one slightly
larger than the other, named by the Spanish as the Temple of the Sun,
and then looted and destroyed, the other, smaller, named Temple of the
Moon, left alone for the archaeologists to discover, as late as 1990,
that there are five temples here, one built literally on top of the
other, like the top halves of Russian dolls. It seems after about a
century a particular ruling elite would simply completely renew, burying
the previous set wholesale by building directly on top of their temple –
a new temple for the new ruling elite, but all in essentially the same
cultural style – five times over, here at Huaca de La Luna. What has
been revealed is just simply stunning! Here is taster – check out Flickr for the MANY photos I took of this site.

This entire complex was just truly stunning and left me quite
gob-smacked. My guide told me, as we stood a little away from three
suited gentlemen in heated discussion, that they were the principal
archaeologists who had discovered and were managing the excavation of
the site, debating the need for and likelihood of getting substantial
new funding to continue the work. This is already a World Memorial Fund
site, but needs more help from the EU, the US, etc etc.

Last of the day, then, after a delightful seafood lunch overlooking the
waves crashing onto the pacific shore at Huanchaco Beach, nearby, was
the rather disappointing mud walls of the Chan Chan archaeological site.
This vast Chimu city, 14km square, was simply abandoned and looted
when the Spanish arrived, and not covered up like the Moche pyramids
that preceded it. No paint survives, therefore, and the reliefs are
barely distinguishable. What is on show is reconstructed, and
unremittingly brown. Alone, on a day without the glories of the Moche,
it might have been impressive, if only for its size and extent.

And then the flight from Trujillo back to Lima, a late dinner at the
Haiti Cafe near my hotel, and a very very welcome bed, after writing
this.

Con-Air : Cameron Poe the honour-bound dominant dysfunctional male, somehow apposite here in Peru with its macho culture and all the crime and violence I have been warned about, where armed security men check bus passengers for weapons and video everyone’s face once all aboard, seated in our airline seats in this double-decker coach, watching the dubbed movie. I am grateful for the comfy seat on this 3hr drive, but listen to Anthony and the Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright, and Aqualung on shuffle on my iPhone – a much softer, more varied, more interesting selection of masculinities than those on Con-Air.

Seeing a bit more of northern Peru, from the bus, I take a few random
photos to try to capture the state of (un)development here. One thing I
will say, however, despite all the warnings, all the security, etc etc –
everyone I have met here in northern Peru has been very friendly, very
helpful, very warm. I know I’m in a bubble, chaperoned everywhere I go,
but I haven’t sensed any threat at all.

And so Trujillo! It’s a Spanish imperial town, in the centre at least,
and I am taken quickly around some of the grand houses they left behind,
and the ones built shortly after the start of the republic in the early
19th century. It is strange to see so much European architecture and
furnishings here. But what I am really looking forward to today, and
which we quickly move on to, is the Cassinelli Museum. Signor
Cassinelli, about 85yrs old now, is in the reception room, with his
young wife, when I get there, and personally greets me. He has been
buying ceramics from the haqueros (the grave robbers) for decades, and
is well known and liked for saving these ceramics for Peru, rather than
letting them go abroad where they could never be seen. The basement
where a third of the collection is on view, is under a petrol station,
and it is dearly hoped that this private collection will one day get a
better building! His son is downstairs, guarding their treasure, as my
guide and I look around. I took a LOT of photographs – all on Flickr
– but here are one or two to get a flavour. This is without doubt a
bigger and better collection than that at Larco Herrera, for all that it
is in such a tiny room in comparison.

At the end of my visit, I am honoured to have further (interpreted)
conversation with Signor Cassinelli, and even a picture with him. My
guide has made it clear to him how very much I was looking forward to
seeing his collection, and how with how much delight I have enjoyed it.
He, in return, is honoured to have me visit him, all the way from
England.

What an epic day. Lying in bed late yesterday evening, reading myself to sleep, I noticed the bed suddenly wobbling strangely, I thought maybe it was a tremor – nothing as alarming as an earthquake – then maybe just a couple in the room next door having a rather good time. Then it was over before I could really work it out, and I forgot about it. Today, however, it was the small talk of the day amongst the Chiclayo guides and drivers who took me around to the tourist sites in my itinerary
today. It was a mini-earthquake; the first in quite some time, especially noticeable for someone, like me, on the sixth floor of my hotel. The joys of being so close to a continental plate subduction zone!

Anyway – up early to get breakfast in before meeting my guide for the
day at 8.45am, we headed straight off to the Tucume complex, a
Lambayeque (also known as Sican) site to the north of Chiclayo.
Following the Cupisnique culture 800-200BCE on the far north coast, the
Piera-based Vicus culture 1000BCE-300CE and the Moche civilisation
1-800CE over the whole of northern Peru, the Lambayeque/Sican culture
750-1375CE, contemporary with the Chimu in the southern half of northern
Peru, covered the northern half of what had been the Moche
civilisation. Facial reconstruction from royal skulls, along with
distinctive ceramic and architectural styles, set them apart from both
their Moche forebears, and their Chimu 900-1470CE neighbours, whose
culture represented more of a development from the earlier Moche. Both
were later taken over by the pan-Andean Inca’s, shortly before the
arrival of the Spanish. The only surviving written records of any
pre-Columbian cultures are of course, like Roman accounts of the Celts,
written by the Spanish conquerors, but include a monk’s retelling of the
Lambayeque origin myth, which claims that their first God-King arrived
from the sea, with a fleet. Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition proved
the practical possibility of the Lambayeque having originated from a
Polynesian invasion. Contemporary with the third stage of the
Lambayeque culture another group of Polynesians of course arrived in New
Zealand, establishing the Maori, and populating the islands for the
first time. Even if, after the manner of Francis Pryor’s anti-invasion
historical stance, this Polynesian invasion of northern Peru was little
more than a Norman-style invasion by a new ruling elite, it is still a
compelling theory. Mochica, the language of the Moche, was spoken all
over the north right up until the last Mochica speaker died 25 years
ago, and there is no record of any specific Lambayeque language.

The Tucume complex is from the third stage of the Lambayeque/Sican
culture, with its own distinctive style of ceramics. The first and
second stages, 750-900CE, and 900-1100CE, were characterised by a dark
grey ceramic style (the colour came from the smoke of the firing
process) that, at least in the second stage, was mainly focussed on
representations of their God-Kings. The second stage ended during a La
Nina – the 20-30year dry period that appears erratically in opposition
to the more common El Nino
wet periods that bring floods every half-decade or so to the Peruvian
coast. The 2nd stage Sican culture – and their 30 or more pyramids –
ended in flames, and they moved to Tucume, where a third stage Sican
culture 1100-1375CE, built another 26 new pyramids, but were no longer
led by God-Kings.

Tucume is a vast site – a complex of 26 mud-brick pyramids –
clustered around an isolated pyramidal hill. The pre-columbian peruvian
pyramid is not like the Egyptian pyramid; in the north here,
especially. Here in the north they were made of mud-brick, and with wide
flat tops that act as platforms for royalty and priesthood to live on,
with all their various entourages. The largest of the pyramids here at
Tucume is the largest pyramid in the Americas. They have all suffered
somewhat from the last 1000 years of rain, but for mud-brick it is
remarkable how much has actually survived!

Further south the last museum of the day showcases the remains of two of
the Lords of the Sican/Lambayeque culture – from the second stage
900-1100CE, prior to Tucume.

But by far the most amazing visit of the day has been to the Lords of
Sipan museum in the town of Lambayeque. Sipan, a pyramid site up to the
north east of the coastal area and unsupported by electricity and other
amenities, was one of the main burial tombs of the Moche kings, and the
museum here in Lambayeque houses two of them – everything from the gold
and silver clothing to their very skeletons, in a magnificent new
building built just like a pyramid. This is probably one of the finest
museums I have ever been to, and although everything was in spanish my
guide interpreted it all in excellent English for me and it was the
highlight of the day. Cameras and mobile phones are not allowed inside,
so I took no pictures. I did however buy the book, and have taken a
couple of snaps for you to get the idea…

 

 

All in all an exhausting day – and time for the local specialty dish: duck and rice; washed down with a Chilean red methinks!

Impressions of Peru so far? So many! As the KLM flight came in to land at Lima International Airport, the first impression was of a brown, low-rise, half-built town, with a glittering glass crown in the centre. My week in that centre, at an international conference, served to underline this. The ‘middle classes’ of Lima, if I can use such a term, are the wealthy, with, it seems, far, far below them, the very poor, and little if anything in between. The gap is evident in the gated business sector I have spent the last week in, like a Baghdad Green Zone, characterised by the profusion of security guards, high steel fences, the railings, broken-glass-topped walls, spikes and grilled up doors and windows that are ubiquitous here.

As a colleague of mine said to me yesterday, as we took a hotel taxi to the best private museum, we have earned the privilege of being among Lima’s wealthy, chaperoned, protected, looked after. There are poor in our countries, too, and we have worked hard to get where we are. Yet, in the UK at least, the welfare net is set so very much higher than the average level of the poor here, and prevents the worst excesses of poverty so visible in the faces of those desperate to sell us “anything” at the windows of the taxis when they stop at the lights. The driver presses the central locking switch, in a quiet, protective move, and then we are gone. The garish colours and busy-ness of the advertising hoardings and shop fronts are such a contrast to the dull brown, low-rise town seen from the air as you approach – the outskirts surely where the poor gather like (equally brown) moths to the city-centre flame, their (equally brown) faces pressed to the security gates, admiring the spectacle of transnational wealth.

And never before have I been given so many warnings about how dangerous a country is – what not to do, where not to go, what to be careful about. In Egypt the tour guides marshalled the hawkers, fair enough, but they were pleasant enough, just a little overwhelming. Here, apparently, it just isn’t safe to go out at night in many places, where ones tourist face is so clear to pick out. I don’t know if the tales are an exaggeration, but am I really that inclined to find out? What with this having been the worst year for my back in over a decade, and the orthotic strap holding me together the only reason I didn’t bring my stick, I don’t fancy my chances at running away from anything. But everyone I have met has been really pleasant, welcoming – albeit also protective. I am glad I have booked this entire trip through a travel agent, and that every step of my journey around Peru will be guided. My Spanish is non-existent, at any rate, and outside of the city-centre, so is the English of most people other than my guides.

Arriving in Chiclayo, today, after the short flight north from Lima, the impression is immediately one of being in a third world country. I am strongly reminded of southern Egypt. Although it is winter here now, and I arrive in the early evening, the warm air as I step off the plane is dry, slightly dusty, and faintly sweet. The view of the town during the descent was similar to the outskirts of Lima – half-built, (at best), and here the metalled roads are in the minority – the main thoroughfares, interspersed with broken concrete lanes near the centre, and simple flattened dirt in the outskirts. The taxi ride to the hotel reinforces this impression. I must say something about the driving here. It is terrifying. I am so glad I didn’t even consider hiring a car. Although the drivers (well, the one who spoke some English) tell me there are few accidents because of the driving style, just the usual accidents due to drink and speed, this is clearly because, as he says, all Peruvian drivers “have eight eyes and radar inside their heads”. The roads are a complete free-for-all with no rules at all. Terrifying for a well-behaved British road user.

Anyway. I am here principally, now that my conference is over, to see pre-Columbian Peru, and extremely fortunate to be able to do so. Like most tourists from the ‘rich’ world, I will simply have to deal with the poverty around me by getting into private cars, taking private tours, and, basically, not dealing with it, not looking at it. All I can hope is that by visiting some of the less well known sites, as I am doing this week, in the north of the country, I am bringing some desperately needed tourist dollars to the local economy, and that this is at least something, and all I can possibly be expected to do, in the face of so much need.

The Larco Herrera Museum, in Lima, is reputedly the best collection of pre-Columbian artefacts in the capital, if not the largest (The National Anthropological Museum) or the richest (the Central Bank’s Gold Museum). I have taken over 100 photos there, and confess to being completely enchanted by pre-Columbian history. The Moche, in particular, I am finding really fascinating – a culture that rose and fell through five stages from 1-800CE, and which has left some very striking artefacts, along with its own mark on the civilisations which followed it. Of particular note, (predictably) for me, is that the Moche left a great deal of erotic art and ceramics behind, of which there was a whole separate gallery at the Larco, and of which I am told there will be more at the Cassinelli Museum I am to visit during my stay up here in the north.
See flickr.com for all the photos.