From mid-September until October, I traveled with my friend Esther Newman from CA to Peru. Peru has been on my photo bucket list for many years and when Esther invited me to accompany her I jumped at the opportunity. The trip covered two weeks and a triangular region defined by three cities: Lima on Peru’s central west coast; Cusco, in the Andes 360 miles to the southeast; and Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca, 250 miles south of Cusco. Within that large area, we visited Machu Picchu and just about every other notable ruin aboard trains, planes, reed boats and tuk-tuks (a 3-wheeled motorcycle taxi) and also found ourselves in the middle of a general strike with protestors calling for “muerte al gobierno” or death to the government. It was a memorable journey through a country of striking contrasts in geography and culture.
Landing in Lima, we spent the first night with Esther’s family who quickly became my good friends. Arriving at their home late in the evening, we had a few too many Pisco Sours (Peru’s national cocktail) to make a 6am flight to Cusco easy. Due to Cusco’s high atlitude, ( approx. 12,000 ) feet, the locals recommend brewing a tea made with, or chewing Coca leaves. Although illegal in the US, the leaves or tea can be found at just about every hotel, eatery or market. The tea helps the locals and the tourists deal with symptoms of altitude sickness.
With a population of more than 350,000, Cusco is a vibrant city of red-tiled residences, Spanish churches and cathedrals, and narrow, cobblestoned streets lined by ancient Incan walls. The mortarless joints of these stone walls won’t admit even a knife blade. With so much indigenous and colonial architecture preserved, the historic capital of the Inca empire was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.
Founded in the 13th Century, Cusco served as the capital for a vast area the Incas called Tahuantinsuyu, stretching from Colombia to Chile. When Francisco Pizarro arrived in 1534, his soldiers went about destroying Inca buildings and temples in order to construct a new city for the Spanish conquerors. From Cusco, the Spanish colonized and spread Christianity throughout the Andes.
Instead of Ten Commandments, the Inca religion had only three: don’t lie, don’t steal, and don’t be lazy. There are countless ruins that prove they took commandment #3 seriously – walls, temples, fortresses and cities constructed in the relatively brief period of the Inca empire – including Machu Picchu, the “Lost City of the Incas.” Of course, it wasn’t lost to the locals but when Hiram Bingham, sponsored by Yale University, “discovered” the mountaintop ruins in 1911, he brought worldwide attention to the site. He also brought back a trove of excavated artifacts to Yale. Their refusal to return these antiquities is still a bitter source of contention.
Too big to pilfer, the Nazca Lines,“geoglyphs” created by the Nazca culture which pre-dated the Incas by a thousand years, include dozens of stylized figures and symbols which are visible only from the air. The images, inscribed onto a desert plateau south of Lima, are up to 600 ft. long. Created by excavating differently colored layers of sand, the symbols are thought to have had religious significance.
One of Peru’s natural wonders, Lake Titicaca, shares shoreline with Bolivia. It is South America’s largest lake (by volume) and at 12,500 ft. in altitude, the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. Regional cultures are as varied as the communities atop the floating reed islands of Uros and those on the mountainous terrain of Taquile Island.
Maria Teresa Milla Hurtado of Milla Turismo, based in Cusco, provided outstanding tour arrangements and accommodations, including guides Valentin Quispe, Ruben Chalco and Angelica Mamani. Thanks, too, to our Lima hosts, the Amano family.
Both Esther and I provided photos to this folder.
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© David L. Shogren Photography
