Machu Picchu & Caral: extreme history lessons in Peru

It's the first question any traveller in Peru asks any other traveller in Peru: Have you done Machu Picchu yet? Note the 'yet'. While we have met a few people who haven't been and don't intend to, the reasons they give tend to be obscure and mainly based in some kind of misguided defiance and rejection of 'The Gringo Trail'. Sure, many parts of the gringo trail through north western South America are worth avoiding - think Irish pubs and anywhere with gap year teenage boys - Machu Picchu is emphatically not one of them.

Everything you've heard about this particular Inca archaeological site (have you heard anything about another?) is true. It lived up to every expectation we had; a rare thing in a tourist attraction.

The experience was made all the more great by the means of our arrival. Quite finished with Bolivia, particularly with the many Bolivians who took every available opportunity to try to fleece us (I'm pleased to say mostly unsuccessfully), we arrived in Cusco, Peru, the former Inca capital. It is still a beautiful city, with very little intrusive modern architecture. Even the McDonalds on the main square has refrained signage. Not pointing any fingers, but after an especially cheap meal (see days 90 and 91 of the previous blog) I spent a few days in bed. Good as it was to have some down time, and Cusco is a top notch place for that, we were both absolutely raring to go by the time the first morning of our Inca Jungle Trail came around.

The four main ways to 'do'  Machu Picchu are thus:

1. Daytrip from Cusco on the train, which costs from $60 to $600 (really) return and moves at an infuriating approximate of 20kmph;
2. The Classic Inca Trail, 46km of overpriced and oversubscribed walking which must be booked weeks or months in advance;
3. Salcantay, a brutal trek through the high cordillera and, at this time of year, extreme weather conditions.
4. The Inca Jungle Trail route, a four-day combination of walking, downhill mountain-biking, ziplining and rafting.

Many companies now run this Inca Jungle Trail, but the trail's pioneer is a man called Lorenzo Cahuana, and it was with his company Lorenzo Expeditions that we went. [Quick aside for anyone considering it: we cannot recommend Lorenzo Expeditions enough. The four days were fantastic, and especially fantastic value for money. It costs $189, and from what we saw of other company groups, is far superior. Lorenzo's contacts and popularity from being the man who brought tourists to the villages on the route means he can get great deals for accommodation and food; and the safety equipment for the biking was incomparable to that we saw other groups wearing.]

The first day we biked for four hours downhill, dropping 3,000m in altitude and passing a tiny Peruvian settlement with everybody in traditional, brightly coloured knitted clothing. We started in the cloud and rain and finished in the sunny jungle, splashing through a couple of small waterfalls crossing the road on the way. The second day we walked 19km through hilly jungle, stopping at lots of people's houses on the way for refreshments or lessons in the way of life there. The destination was hot springs just outside the village of Santa Teresa, and the sweet combination of hot water for our aching legs and cold beer was very well received!

The third day brought rain, but also a thriiiiilling morning of ziplining across the Urubamba valley with the Coco de Mono company. The highest line was 150m and the longest 400m and all six were amazing! Next we followed the river and the train tracks 20km into Aguas Calientes - the town that also calls itself Machu Picchu Pueblo and it's at the foot of Machu Picchu's eponymous mountain. The fourth day was the day of our visit.

Without a doubt it was the most extreme day of sightseeing of my life! We were up at 4am to walk, to then start a one-hour walk at 5am (extra tough because we were already at altitude = reduced oxygen) to start our two-hour guided tour when the site opened at 6am. It was rainy and cloudy most of that time - by cloudy I mean were in the cloud - but that made it all the more spectacular when the clouds lifted and we could see all the component parts we had just been inspecting on the tour as a whole. We were both struck by how not ruined the ruins were. It's as if you could just pop roofs on on all the buildings and you're good to go.

A big part of what makes all those postcard picture perfect snaps of Machu Picchu (see above) taken from the guard house so picture perfect is the Huayna Picchu mountain behind it. Difficult, difficult, to walk up, but enormously worth it for the view from the top! Machu and Huayna Picchu are almost encircled by larger mountains, but the citadel is just perched on the top of its hill. With that view it's easy to understand why the Spanish conquistadors never found it.

It's a huge shame that Machu Picchu seems to be the only archaeological site promoted outside of Peru, because there are hundreds of amazing things to be seen all over the country.

In big contrast to the expensive but excellent experience of visiting the 500-year-old ruins of Machu Picchu was the embarrassingly cheap but equally excellent experience of visiting the 5,000-year-old site of Caral. It's barely mentioned in the Lonely Planet and very few people appear to know about it - I only do from reading Hugh Thomson's book Cochineal Red about ancient Peru - but it is thought to be one of the very few civilisations on earth, arising approximately simultaneously with Egypt, China and Mesopotamia. And I say 'embarrassingly cheap' because ... well ... wouldn't you be embarrassed if you were asked to pay £2 for entry for two and a personal tour of the pyramids?

While Caral isn't quite Giza, there are pyramids, and the place is exceptionally well preserved. The sand has helped. It was an amazing experience to be visiting - alone except for our guide Alfredo - a city where 3,000 people lived 5,000 years ago. The place is ten times as old as Machu Picchu, which is pretty cool. But by far the coolest part about Caral is that, among all the artefacts the experts have found and all the buildings they have excavated, there is absolutely no evidence of violence or warfare. So one of the first human civilisations in the world was completely peaceful. Interesting thought.

SARAH

GETTING TO CARAL FROM LIMA

This was pretty difficult for us to fathom without any recent guidance anywhere on the internet or in our guidebook. So here's how we did it:

1. Take a bus from central Lima to Huacho. There is no central bus terminal in Lima (yes, it's nuts), so you have to know which bus company you're after. We went with San Martin, took a taxi to the office, and the journey to Huacho cost S12 (about £3) and took around 3 and a half hours.
2. In Huacho, find your way to the place colectivos leave from for Supe. We engaged the services of a taxi driver for this, but it is not far.
3. Take a colectivo from Huacho to Supe. We paid S5, it took about 30 minutes.
4. If you leave Lima very early, you can probably still get to Caral. But it will take 1hr15min from Supe and the place closes at 5pm. It opens at 9am so we waited till the next day. The 30min colectivos leave from the main street and cost S3 to the town of Caral. From there it is a walk of about 40min (flat) to the entrance.