Peru - The Other Bits
So I’ve been on the go for weeks and decide to take a few days to relax in the beachside town of Mancora in northern Peru. It’s the perfect little reprieve from the hustle and bustle of tourist life and NOTHING was going to force me out of the hammock, with the exception of the pool, the amazing seafood, and perhaps a deckchair to relax in and catch some sun.
I’m staying in a cute little bungalow a few minutes walk from the craziness that can be party central Mancora; the chill time in the hammock gives me the space to reflect back on where I’ve been so far. I’ve covered a fair bit of ground from southern Peru (Cusco, Arequipa, Huacachina and Paracas) through to central Peru (Huaraz, Caraz, and Trujillo) and now up north to Mancora.
I’ve spent HOURS on buses (at least 80+ hours so far) so I’ve listened to a hell of a lot of podcasts; thanks to Maddi for getting me onto The Dollop…… it’s helped to while away the hours staring out bus windows at basically a desert strewn with rubbish (once you leave the Cusco region anyway… that area is not only picturesque but tidy AF). There are signs everywhere requesting “no arrojar basuras” (no throwing trash) and yet all around these signs are piles and piles of rubbish. It’s not quite the romantic vision I had in mind when I booked the window seat anyway.
Iglesia De La Compañia De Jesús - Cusco
Cusco - it seems so long ago - I arrive at night and am staying in a hostel up some dodgy alley (only found out it was the “dodgy” alley after a few days when I was warned not to walk down there especially at night as it’s dangerous). LOL I’d been walking up and down that thing for the past 3 nights and in the early hours of the mornings (as all tours seem to depart between 3am and 5am) so clearly my resting bitch face looked far too uninviting to bother messing with me.. so I continued to wander the alley like a thug.
I needed to spend a few days in Cusco to acclimatise to the altitude prior to Salkantay so it made a great base to get out and see some of the nearby sites. First I spent a day wandering around the little narrow streets of Cusco and winding my way up to various viewing points around San Blas. Here I meet a local called Salomon who is a jeweller and he and his many dogs take me to a viewing point called La Mesa De Los Incas (The Table of the Incas) where I get the most spectacular view over Cusco city. He politely asks me in broken english if I would like him to be my boyfriend; I politely decline the offer and in the interests of not offending him explain that I have a boyfriend back home in Australia (LOL). I needn’t have worried about offending him anyway as he proffered that perhaps I should just have one in Australia and also one in Peru!!
The next day I get out to the Sacred Valley visiting sites including Chinchero, Moray, Pisac, Ollantaytambo and the Salinas de Maras. Chinchero is also home to Peruvian weaving so we get to visit a little textile place where they demonstrate how they clean and dye the wool and then weave it into the beautiful ponchos, scarves etc. Here it’s also a third of the price from Cusco so I’m super tempted to shop but with zero room in my bag and 6 months of no income ahead of me I am snapped back to reality.
The Moray archaeological site was so interesting; the circular terraces are thought to have been used for agricultural experimentation by the incas. Due to the altitude only certain foods would grow well; the terraces built this way created different microclimates and allowed experimentation to see in what climates certain foods grew best. There’s up to 15°C difference from the top to the bottom of these things. Blows your mind how clever these guys were.
From Moray we head to Maras to check out the salt mines which are not only aesthetically amazing, but, the story behind them I just love: the local community has exclusive mining rights to these salt pans. The size of your family and your family history living in Maras determines the size, quantity, quality and location of your pans. For a newbie to the area, you’re assigned the smaller pans that are probably further away, which means more distance for you to carry the bags of salt up when you harvest. The families then sell the salt to the Maras Salt Mine.
We then head to Ollantaytambo which has an archaeological site which is an ancient Incan fortress which is still incredibly well preserved. In fact, Ollantaytambo is the only Incan town where residents actually still live in the old Incan buildings. What I found most impressive about this site is that there are these massive 50 tonne stones up on the side of this mountain. The stone comes from a valley ages away and it’s thought that they brought them here by rolling them on logs; when they would get to a river they would simply re-divert the river to allow the crossing of the river bed and then divert the river back to it’s original route… ingenious!
Lastly, we venture to Pisac. Built on top of a mountain that towers over the town of Pisac, the terraces cascade down the mountain and the views over the valley are spectacular. There’s also a cemetery built into the mountain side which is exposed (you can see the cave entrances where people were buried) because the spanish raided all the graves when they invaded Peru.
The next day I’m up again at the crack of dawn to head to Palcoyo - known as the alternative to the famous “Rainbow Mountain” (Vinicunca). I decided to do Palcoyo instead for a bunch of reasons, but, mostly it’s less of an ascension as you can drive most of the way, you get picked up at 6am (instead of 3am) and, most importantly, there are only about 50 tourists a day at Palcoyo compared to about 1000 at Vinicunca. We stop into a cute little village called Checacupe on the way up for some Mate de Coca before another 1200m climb. We get to Palcoyo and true to their word there is only about 10 other people there so when we get to the top it’s literally me and 3 other people…. AMAZING. It’s a shame that right at that moment a bunch of massive clouds come over and the colours are muted but it’s still amazing to be at 5000m altitude and these mountains which are like 6000m just look like little mounds. It literally does feel like you are on top of the world.
What an awesome warmup for Salkantay; this country is absolutely incredible! So my next week and a half is Salkantay and Arequipa & the Colca Canyon. After that I jump back on the PeruHop bus headed to Huacachina. It’s a 14 hour bus journey scheduled from 5am so when I arrive at my hostel (Banana’s Adventures) it’s dark and I’m not truly able to appreciate how bloody awesome it is. I wake up to a little paradise within the oasis that is Huacachina. The sand dunes rise from behind the hostel walls and I truly feel like I’ve been transported to another world. There’s not much to do in Huacachina except drink (Pisco preferably as it’s made only a few kms away), go dune buggying and sandboarding and that’s it… so that’s what I do for the next few days. Also found out after sandboarding that tourists have died doing this; I’m not surprised as there is ZERO safety and we were fanging it down these massive dunes. Oh and I almost forgot… we stopped at Nazca too on the way to Huacachina so I got to see 3 of the Nazca lines. And I went on a Pisco tour to learn how to make Pisco.. thank goodness for photos; my memory is already shit… no memory of the pisco making process though as I tried ALL the piscos they had… but I do know they make them in these clay jars instead of wooden barrels.
From Huacachina it’s only a 90 min bus to Paracas which is literally where the desert meets the sea. The currents that mix here bring heaps of different sealife so I am yet again stuffing myself with delicious seafood. The PeruHop bus includes a trip out to Paracas reserve which kind of reminds me of the Great Ocean Road, especially as parts have broken off with waves so you now can’t walk onto the viewing platforms :) It’s also here that I get to witness my best yet #boyfriendsofinsta… took them 20 mins to get the right pic even though she was doing the exact same pose the entire time…. can’t imagine having to trawl through those pics to choose the right one to use LOL.
On the way back to Lima we also stop off at Hacienda San Jose which was an old sugar cane plantation that used thousands of slaves from Africa to work the land. A lot of the slaves were procured illegally and they would smuggle them onto the property through these secret slave tunnels that they built specifically for that purpose to save money on buying slaves. We went down into the tunnels but I didn’t last more than 10 minutes as it was so dusty and hard to breathe; dunno how they managed to live down there for weeks prior to being smuggled onto the property.
Lima - second time around - still just as shit.. it literally is just a really big city with like 10 - 13 mill people… depends who you talk to as to what the number is - I’ve even googled it and there are conflicting reports… anyway I’m not much of a city person so I high tail it outta there again to head up to Huaraz. But first I catch the local bus up to the Catacombes (on @ausjaycayman’s recommendation) to check out a bunch of really old bones. I’m the only tourist on the bus and the locals seem to think it’s strange but I felt safer catching a bus than the banged up taxis that are flying around everywhere like crazy mofos.
Huaraz…… I’m in love. Such a beaut little city nestled within the peaks of the Cordillera Blanca. It is literally views all round and is the central spot that most of the hikes in the area depart from. I choose the paramount trek which is centred around Laguna Paron and what a beauty it was. The colour of the water was insane and we snaked our way along the lakes edge up to Laguna Artesancocha and back. All up approx 12kms at over 4200m altitude. It should be easy but the lack of oxygen makes this such a slog; totally worth it for the views though.
After Huaraz I head up north and have a day to kill in Trujillo between buses. I book into Hostel Wanka (because when you find a hostel named after you, you just gotta). Anyway the hostel is pretty much a shithole, I’m pretty sure I was the only guest, there’s nothing much around it but it’s close to the bus station and it has hot water and I’m only in town for 12 hours anyway so really it’s just a place to dump my bag and have a shower before jumping on a midnight bus. There’s not much to Trujillo, it’s the 3rd largest city in Peru, also the most dangerous so everything is all barred up… tourists don’t really stay here as the better place is 30 mins away Huanchaco (little surfer town). I decide I am over tours and people explaining shit so to kill time I do my own tour out to the Chan Chan archaeological site. I jump on the local bus (75c), again the only non-local, much to their amusement.. and head out to Chan Chan. I get off the bus on the highway and have to walk a few kms to the site, decline all offers for tour guides and decide to tour the site myself - the guard tells me I’m ‘muy loco’ and he’s probably right because to me it just looks like a bunch of mud walls and structures and there’s probably a really interesting story about this ancient (pre-Inca) civilisation that I’ll never know unless I google it, but CBF.
The next morning, after a super delayed departure at 2am from Trujillo, I arrive in Mancora. It’s like stepping into a whole new world and so unlike everywhere else I’ve been in Peru… kind of more like Bali or Thailand; little tuk tuks buzzing around, palm trees, tacky stores all selling the same generic beach clothes and a smorgasbord of amazing food… A pretty special way to see out my last few days in Peru, cerveza in one hand, ceviche thats fresh AF and amazing sunsets like this one below!
