Ruins of the Chan Chan pre-hispanic city

From the cold and high altitudes of the glaciers we continued our trip to down to the desert of the Moche Valley to visit the largest the ruins of the largest mud city of the Americas. I know.. when I heard about for the first time I thought about simple rectangular shaped houses without roofs made of mud and sand that would be far from impressive when compared to something as impressive as Pyramids in Egypt or Mayan archaeological sites of the Yucatan Peninsula - but I was glad to notice how wrong I was.

This is the view to the desert from our bus.




The settlement also known as the city of Chan Chan "capital of the ancient Kingdom of Chimor". Chan in an ancient Mochica language means the sun and it was built in Pre-Hispanic period in 850 AD to be a home for approximately 30 000 to 60 000 people. It had houses for the royal families, priest and the servants, storage facilities for food, ceramics and colorful feathers for clothings, shrines for making human sacrifices and worshiping gods as well as tombs to bury the most important people of the society. It is 20 km² big and was inhabited until 1470 AD when the Incas conquered it and the people were forced to move to Cuzco, the capital of the Inca empire.

This is the city plan:



These are the storage facilities:







The tourists were allowed to visit two sites. On the first site we saw a fortress with almost 10 meters high walls, palaces, courtyards, gardens and towers. Many of the walls were decorated with clay friezes that represented shellfish, waves and marine birds. There people worshiped the moon and the mythical figures of the ocean. Living between the sea and the desert sea-faring skills were vital to the people - after all it was their only source of food and inspiration for myths and legends. In this site all the paint was eroded by the sun and the heavy el niño rains, in the second site we could see that the rooms were painted in bright red, yellow, green and black. The reason for this was that before being relocated to Cuzco the people buried many of the rooms with sand to protect their culture from the Incas. Thanks to this it was still possible to see the impressive wall paintings of the gods and the warrior dancers in the shrines and golden artifacts in the tombs.

Huaraz

The following day we said farewell to Lima and continued to explore the country's picturesque seaside towns, beautiful jungles, magnificent mountains and the forgotten temples of the ancient cultures in the desserts. Our first destination Huaraz - a small town in northern Peru situated in the valley of Callejón de Huaylas and at the foot of the mountains of Cordillera Blanca. It took almost 10 hours for us to get there by bus even though it is only 420 kilometres from the capital. As you can see in the picture ..



in many places the roads were unpaved and in a bad condition and the area was so montaneous that we had to go up and down high hills and mountains all the time. The On the other hand, the scenery was so breathtaking that I could watch it for hours and the bus had such comfortable seats and windows that it made the trip pleasant. When we arrived to Huaraz it was 8 pm and already dark. We didn't see much of the city because our hostel was situated in the outside the centre and our main goal was simply to take our luggage to our rooms and find the closest restaurant. We didn't see many people on our way there but instead big bags of garbage on the streetcorners and heaps of stray dogs trying to find something to eat. Many of the dogs looked surprisingly well-kept and healthy - their furs were clean and they paid only little attention to people walking by. The amount of dogs still made us feel a bit uncomfortable so we were glad to reach the town centre and find a small restaurant where to eat. To our surprise the place was run by a English bloke who was married to a Peruvian woman and had a small motorcycle tour company. Because it still early in the evening and there weren't many customers in the restaurant he sat with us quite a while and gave us many good advices where to go rock and ice-climbing. After all trecking and ice-climbing were the main reasons why we had arrived to Huaraz.

Early the following morning we hopped on the bus to the Huascarán National Park - a park sized of 3000 km² and that contains 663 glaciers and 296 lakes. That's quite something for a park! First we travelled by bus for 2 hours to get there and then walked up to the altitude of over 4000 meters above the sea level! It was so tiring but the sun was shining so warmly that it made the walking easier. The best part of the trip was definitely ice-climbing :) Each of us in the group could try at least once and we could experience how it feels like to hang on a small ax several meters above the ground and trying to find a place where to put feel on a slippery surface. It was so much fun I'll definitely do it again one day.

Here you can see some pictures of the one mountains and lakes that we saw..

Lima

After Machu Picchu I continued my journey to Lima in order to start my 21 day journey to Quito, Ecuador with 9 other fellow travellers from Australia, Czech Republic, England, Ireland and Uruguay. When I arrived to the city in the morning I was somewhat worried if I could go to look around in the city alone. The areas through which the taxi went on my way to the hotel looked a bit dogdy - there were
dreary rows of ugly apartment buildings that looked old and uncared for. One could see that many of the houses were colourful once but had lost their charm after the big part of the paint had peeled off. There was also somewhat trash here and there on the streets and cars seemed as if they were bought 10-20 years ago. To my dissapointment also from the outside the hotel didn't seem to have any character. It was just a grey concrete building with 5 floors and small windows a bank, parking hall and other buildings that reminded me of monuments to cold and deadpan functionality built in the 1960's and 1970's when houses were built fast and cost-efficiency was considered more important than the appearance. The decoration inside was fortunately quite charming with their dark red carpets and paintings on the walls.

I was told at the hotel that the city centre was perfecty safe during the daytime and biggest threats were some random pickpockets in crowded places, so I ventured to the downtown after lunchtime. I was impressed especially by the historical centre and it´s grandiose cathedrals and palaces that were built in French baroque style, massive moorish-style balconies as well as the lovely parks that were located just stone's throw away from the centre. I was a bit surprised to see so many cops everywhere, but I was told that just a few days before there had been some conflicts between police and indigenous protesters.

Indigenous communities got furious after the government passed a law that eases restrictions on logging and development in the Amazon rainforest and complained that it enables among others, oil and gas developers to encroach on their lands and put their traditional way of life at risk. When the indigenous people were convinced that the government didn´t pay enough attention to their peaceful demonstrations they put roadblocks near a city called Bagua where the police killed at least 35 people when clearing the roads and this, on the other hand, lead to wide demonstrations in the capital and forced the police to close many of the roads near the city centre. The day when I was there though seemed peaceful and quiet. Many of the locals were at work or at home and there were only a handful of tourists with their cameras and bags full of souveniers.

In the evening I met the rest of my group and we went to eat to a French Carmelite restaurant in downtown Lima, which was run by Carmelite nuns. One of my fellow travellers had recommended the place saying that the food there is gorgeous and really cheap - and she was right. I have never eaten as delicious fish in my life and the wine was a joy. I found it a bit peculiar though that everyone in the restaurant had to stop eating in the middle of the dinner to sing Ave Maria in French! I don't know a word French let alone be able to sing religious songs in that language, but I tried to pretend singing as well as I could in order not to seem rude. All in all it was a delightful and unique experience and the nuns were so warm-hearted and sweet that it made me feel genuinely welcomed right away when we entered the restaurant.

Anyway, here are some photos I took from there.. there aren't many of them, but then again I spent only 2 days in the city, so I didn't have an opportunity to see that much..

Machu Picchu

My journey to Machu Picchu started with some inconveniences. My hostel didn't have 24hour reception and I couldn't therefore tell the staff that I wanted to check out and leave my bag there. I was confident that they would look after my bag so I just left it in the room and planned to call them later on. I wrote down the number on a piece of paper, but unfortunately forgot the paper in the hostel and didn't notice it until in the bus on the way to Machu Picchu. It was Sunday morning and my guide couldn't reach anyone in the travel agency until around noon.

Otherwise, the trip had started well. It was a warm, lovely day and the scenery was really beautiful. We stopped for breakfast in a small town and I had coca tea for breakfast. Well .. it was actually just coca leaves and hot water, but quite tasty still.

This is my group. The picture is taken in the starting point.



The first day was relatively easy. We started our hiking trip at around 9 am and walked approximately for 2 hours down the Urubamba canyon, visited the sculpted Inca farming terraces and the settlement of Llaqtapata on the banks of the Cusichaca side river before having lunch. The porters were already waiting for us with warm coca soup, corn juice, dried sweet potatoes and pasta. It was a delicious lunch and after that it was so nice to sleep for half an hour on the grass and enjoy the sunny day. I knew that the porters were used to the high altitude and therefore were much faster than we, but I was still amazed that they could carry bags that weight over 20 kg on their shoulders, stop to help and support hikers if needed - and still make it to the resting place and manage to cook lunch/dinner by the time we arrived to the resting place and cheer when we arrived there. In a way I felt like a child who is learning to walk and is being cheered by athletes running a marathon.







This is the inca farming terrace. Here they used to storage among others corn and meat and save it there for worse times when for a reason or another there wasn't enough food for everyone. A terrace farm looks like steps which are created by using rocks and trees. On those steps it's possible to grow crops, because when it rains the water is stored on each step instead of flowing down freely.



After lunch we walked for another 4 hours or so before dinner. This time the hike was somewhat harder, because I wasn't used to hiking in the nature for hours. My knees and shoulders were a bit sore, but otherwise I was ok. The camping place was quite nice - it was a field in the mountains where it was possible to put tents and a little river where one could wash hands and teeth. We had a big dinner there - salad, soup and bread for starters, chicken and mashed potatoes for maincourse and a fruit dessert as well as a cup of tea. Considering that the 8 porters made a similar dinner for 7 hikers and 2 guides for 4 days and they carried all the incredients, cooking equipments, plates etc with them for 4 days - it was actually quite a luxurious dinner. Probably only very few campers in other destinations would eat as much and as good food as we did there.

This is what we saw after lunch:







This is me :)



They were our porters.

The second day was much harder. We woke up already at 6 am and had a breakfast. Also the breakfast was massive - an omelette, pancakes, fresh and dried fruits, bagels (with butter/jam/ham), toast, fruit juice and tea/coffee. Not even expensive hotels in Peru offer such a big breakfast! We tried to eat as much as we can, but couldn't eat everything and had to throw somewhat food away. It was really cold in the morning and I had to wear a t-shirt, 2 sweaters and a jacket for breakfast, but when we started walking it got warmer and in 20 minutes or so it was so warm that even though I wore only t-shirt and trousers I was still sweating! We climbed a steep-sided Llullucha valley and through an enchanting woodland. It was rather tiring due to the high altitude, but the scenery was so beautiful that I quickly forgot how tired I was. When we started to ascend the highest pass, Warmiwañusca (peak was on 4 200 meters above the sealevel) I was really tired. It must have taken like 20 minutes to walk a distance of 200 meters - that's how hard it was to walk. It was really hot as well (more than 30 degrees and the sun was shining brightly) and there was no shade where to stop to rest. I got badly dehydrated and got a bad migraine around half way of the to the resting place. I don't even remember a time when my head would have ached as much as it did then. The guide was really helpful and kept me company the entire time from the bottom of the mountain to the peak and gave me medicine and water to make me feel better. I'm so grateful about it, because without him there's no way I would have managed to walk all the way to peak. Each step felt harder, because the air got thinner and in Warmiwañusca I felt that my head was about to explode. I just fell on the ground and put my arms around my head and sobbed uncontrollably. After lying there for 15 minutes or so the guide helped me to continue downhill and as little as 10 meters lower I felt much better. My headache went away in 15-20 minutes and I could breath much better. We arrived to the camping place at around 4 pm after walking for 9 hours (distance of 11 km). We were served a big lunch (soup, salad, bread, avokados, chicken with yucca (a bit like potatoe), but I couldn't eat anything at all. I just ate a spoonful and went to sleep to the tent. I woke up at 7 when we had a dinner and could eat slightly more than earlier that day, but still just a little.

This is the view from Warmiwañusca:







This is our camping place.

On the third day we woke up around 7 am and had a big breakfast. Luckily my appetite had returned so I could get some energy for hiking. This day was much easier than the second even though we had to climb a steep hill, which on that altitude was quite tiring. Luckily we stopped in quite a few places to see inca ruins and to eat snacks. I was a bit surprised and dissapointed when I realised that I hadn't really seen any wild animals except few birds that far - even the mosquitoes didn't bother us there. The guide told us that there used to be plenty of animals, such as goats, deers, bears and other animals, but the locals hunted them for food and that's why there were no wild animals there. It's a pity because it was such as magnificent place and there would have been plenty of food and water for animals (at least on lower altitudes).

These are the main sights that we saw on the third day. These sights include the ruins of Sayacmarca (Inaccessible Town), an intricate labyrinth of houses and the Inca viewing platforms where one can see the Phuyupatamarca (Cloud-level Town.











Our last camping place was the nicest - unlike in the previous places there was good toilets and hot showers. We also met other groups there and there were many of them. Most of them seemed to be from the US and Australia, but there were few also from France and Italy (less than 10 perhaps). The Americans were the loudest and I could hear them from far away. They were shouting and cheering at everything possible. It was the first place where one could buy cold beer, which made them so happy that they were quite drunk as well. That evening we were served cake and chocolate for dessert (before the maincourse, which was quite funny - but it's possible that way as well). Every single one of my muscles were aching after 3 days of hiking so I slept quite badly and very little (we had to wake up at 4 am).

The last day was the best. It took 4 hours for us to walk to Machu Picchu ruins and we were really tired then, but it was definitely worth it. The mountains, the forest
and the narrow paths were mesmerizing. The ruins were surrounded by mountains shaped of a triangle many of which were covered by clouds that made them look dreamy. I could understand there why incas believed in spirits and the gods - there was something very spiritual about that place. Something that it's difficult to explain with words - only through art and poetry. That's a place where it's easy to think that there could be higher powers that have created something that beautiful.