Where Lilly spent most of our 2 weeks in Puyango (at the left of the photo – in that chair staring at her iPad)
Celebratory dinner when John decided to fly to the US to pick up new injectors and IDM computer
Sunset makes anywhere look nice, even Puyango
Temporary home where the near-drowning happened
John installing the new injectors by himself in the dirt and sun
Chapter 31: Ruins and remote pueblos of northern Peru
My husband – always smiling! (Getting stuck in the mud when we took the wrong road to Karajia)
Pueblo de los Muertos – it looks worse than it was, I promise! But I can’t believe they let random tourists like us wander around up here.
Above is a video I took at Pueblo de los Muertos – what a wild place!
Doorways of LaMud
Kuelap ruins
Lilly’s 8th birthday in Kuelap
The more sensible ruins of Revash where they DON’T just hand you the key to the secret door like they did at Pueblo de los Muertos
Walking back to the village of Revash from the ruins
Friendly lady who invited us into her house
We stop in our first town in a while, Leymabamba with 3,500 people, to have a look at the mummies that were removed from the sarcophagi at some of the other ruins we saw and placed here for safekeeping. It is somewhat creepy to see the skeletons lined up in rows on shelves in the museum, like canned food on a supermarket display.
The road to get back down into civilization in Cajamarca is unbelievable. It’s the narrowest possible sliver of path you could cut out of a steep mountainside and still fit a car on it. As John white-knuckles around one particularly narrow section he says, “It feels like I’m 1,000 feet up on a rock climb, except I’m driving a van!” I’ve been on trails like this many times before, but always on foot. It’s such an improbable place to be in a vehicle.
Marcahuamachuco ruins at 3,600m. These were some of our favorite ruins. We were the only tourists over the 2 days we spent there. It was a 10km hike round-trip to see the remains of the buildings.
Chan Chan ruins at Trujillo. Why would you build a sandcastle near the beach as your fortress? Not surprisingly, several hundred years later there’s not much left of it. Most is reconstructed at this point.
Chapter 32: Into Thin Air
Cañon del Pato road, where John constantly honked the horn and I sat with my nose pressed up against the windshield to try to see further!
Camping at Laguna Paron at 4,200m / 13,800 feet
The lady who we bought corn from, and who we watched killing and skinning the cuy (guinea pigs)
Santa Cruz trek hiking up to 15,600 feet
50 km over 4 days
The road back to town afterwards
Corn drying in a little village we passed on the last day of the hike
Hatun Machay climbing area at 14,100 feet
Can you spot Mary just below the moon up top?
One afternoon exploring the rocks, we came across this little house! There were several others around it, some dogs & chickens, and laundry hanging up to dry. What a wild place to live!
And then we found a cave full of ancient carvings and paintings.
The flexibility of homeschooling!
One of my favorite campsites of the whole trip – Laguna Antacocha at 12,900feet where we camped with 2 other families and went climbing just a few minutes walk away.
The fun town of Huaraz at “only” 10,000 feet – we kept running into parades whenever we were there
Chapter 33: Sand, Sand, and More Sand
Beautiful Paracas, the only nice beach we found in Peru!
There is one paved road along the mainland that the tour buses take to various designated viewpoints. But, the huge peninsula that juts out into the Pacific ocean is just one big flat expanse of hard-packed sand, with nary a road in sight. An overlanding paradise!
Camped on the beach at Paracas. The national park entrance fee keeps down the number of visitors and, therefore, the trash. But, it doesn’t stop the dead animals from washing up on shore! Over the 3 days we camped there, we shared our little section of beach with 2 dead seals and 3 dead turtles, plus the requisite carrion birds enjoying these free meals.
Turning eastward from Paracas, we drive through endless sand dunes punctuated by shantytowns. Everything is covered in sand, giving the area a muted orange aura, like looking through dirty orange sunglass lenses. Trash piles up everywhere, perhaps deposited by locals with no trash removal service, or simply blown in by the ever-present winds through the sandy mountains.
Dwarfed by steep sand dunes on all sides, the tiny town of Huacachina calls itself an “oasis” due to the small lagoon in its center. It’s basically a tourist trap, with almost no true residents, only employees who come in from the nearby town of Ica to work the multitude of tour agencies, restaurants, and hostals.
Necropolis: there are over a dozen rectangular pits dug into the sand, each with 1 or 2 mummies tied up in a sitting position, covered in shawls or blankets. Walking between the tombs we see human bones laying in the sand. I’m worried Lilly will be uncomfortable but she says, “I’ve seen lots of human bones!” and starts listing all the places she’s seen them already. Her upbringing is nothing if not unique!
22-year reunion in Arequipa with my Peruvian mama and sister
We camped at the condor viewpoint in Colca Canyon for 2 nights and enjoyed close up views of condors each morning
Chapter 34: Machu Picchu and All That
Terraces at Pisaq
Saqsaywoman is a great example of Incan trapezoidal architecture
Ollantaytambo ruins – definitive proof that John is taller than the Incas were
The location of these structures makes them even more impressive. At Pisaq, we hiked for an hour over a hilltop through many ruins, only to find a perfect set of Incan walls hidden down in a canyon on the other side.
Machu Pichu (MP) is another great example of expansive ruins in a difficult location. Nowadays you can take a train to the base of the hill where MP sits, and then a bus up to the ruins themselves. But not so 500 years ago! The famous “Inca trail” purports to follow the original Inca road and enter MP in the same way that the king would have entered.
Q’oricancha used to be a magnificent sun temple, whose walls were covered in solid gold sheets, and whose interior was filled with solid gold figurines. The Spanish melted down all the gold and built a Christian church on top/around the remains of the building. So you turn one way and see a (recreated) panel worshipping the sun god, turn another way and see Jesus on his cross!
Chapter 35: Even Thinner Air, and Last Days in Peru
Ausungate hike 2nd night campspot.
We walked around the enormous, glaciated Ausungate mountain, and then over a high pass to enter a rainbow wonderland of colorful peaks all around.
We wake up the 4th morning to freezing temperatures and thick clouds. Lilly is so cold that she wears all her clothes plus John’s heavy coat which hangs down past her knees. She struggles to walk the final few miles, breaking down in tears from the intense cold on her tiny body, but she makes it! We finish up at Rainbow Mountain parking lot in a sudden swarm of tourists and buses, always a surprise when you’ve been away from civilization for a few days, and collapse into a bus to return to Cusco.
The following week, we passed through the town of Chincheros which is famous for using the ancient Incan weaving techniques. We stopped at a little market to buy some fabric for a window covering in the van. The ladies there gave us a demonstration, which was much like what we’d seen from the señora I described during our Ausungate hike.
