The Third Highest Waterfall in the World

After leaving the mountains of Huaraz, we continued zigzagging north through Peru. This first took us to some ancient ruins near Trujillo on the coast then, back in the sierra, to Chachapoyas, with more ruins and the third highest waterfall in the world.

The foot of the Gocta Waterfall - note the tiny people!

We wanted to visit Trujillo as it is close to the UNESCO site of Chan Chan. This was the capital of the Chimu culture that was built around 850 CE. It consists of ten huge citadels, although only one has been restored enough to be worth visiting. As the culture lived by the sea, the walls are covered in designs of fishing nets, fish and sea birds.

Fishing net decorations on the walls at Chan Chan

The highlight of the area around Trujillo was some other, earlier, ruins from the Moche culture (approx CE 100 - 800). Now called the Temples of the Sun and Moon, they are two massive pyramids that are still being excavated. Only the Moon temple can be visited, and the excavations have revealed, amazingly, still intact wall paintings.

Painted walls at the Huaca de la Luna

Continuing on to Chachapoyas, we climbed back up into the mountains to see some more ruins - those at Kuelap. This is an enormous fortress that, like Machu Picchu, is on top of a mountain, giving it fantastic views of the surrounding area. It's the largest pre-Colombian structure in the Americas, with huge outer walls 20m high. The construction was begun in 600 CE by the Chachapoyas culture, and was later occupied by the Inca. It's a fascinating site, and many of the remains are still covered by cloud forest. In fact, Chachapoyas is a Quechua word meaning 'cloud forest'.

Trees covering the ruins at Kuelap

Also close to Chachapoyas are a series of incredibly tall waterfalls. We visited the one at Gocta, which is claimed to be the third highest in the world at 771m. It's an astounding sight seeing it from a the nearby village, then getting closer and seeing the water turn into mist as it falls.

On the way to the Gocta waterfall

We're now heading back south towards Lima, breaking up the journey by visiting some more ruins along the coast.

Trekking Again: Peru's Stunning Cordillera Blanca (And Falling Into a Cactus)

We've spent the past few days in and around Huaraz, a pleasant city in the northern highlands. Huaraz is surrounded by some spectacular scenery in the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Huayhuash mountain ranges, and is fast becoming known as the trekking and adventure capital of Peru. You can see several beautiful snowcapped mountains just from the city centre, with the skyline dominated by the majestic Huascarán, the highest in Peru at 6768m. Ready for some more hiking after a break since our long Machu Picchu trek, we were excited to explore the region.

Trekking in the Cordillera Blanca - Santa Cruz Trek, Day 4

The city of Huaraz is up at 3100m, and having had a while down at sea level we needed a couple of days to re-acclimatise to the altitude. Our main objective here was to undertake the famous 4 day Santa Cruz hike in the Cordillera Blanca, voted as one of the world's best treks by National Geographic, and we spent our first day in Huaraz looking round all the local trekking agencies. In fact this hike can be done independently, but we didn't fancy carrying all our own gear (including tents and cooking equipment) around, especially at altitudes of well above 4000m. We decided to sign up for an organised trek with a small company called Eco Ice, departing in two days' time.

Following the river at the start of our Laguna 69 trek

Having got that sorted, we needed to do a day hike to acclimatise further prior to the longer trek. We chose the trek to Laguna 69 (inventive name!), which came highly recommended by several other travellers. The hike started at around 3800m and proceeded across mostly flat terrain, following the river and passing numerous gorgeous waterfalls. After some fairly easy switchbacks, we reached not Laguna 69 but its sister lake, Laguna 68, and from there it was a lot tougher going. Kev was okay with the altitude but I was gasping for breath and had to slow to a snail's pace for the last section! However as we crested the summit and got our first view of Laguna 69, it was all worth it. The most dazzlingly turquoise lake you can imagine, ringed by snowy mountains and glaciers (that from time to time would creak loudly!). The weather had been very changeable on the way up but as we arrived it cleared nicely and we had a wonderful view of the tops of the mountains emerging from the clouds.

Laguna 69

Laguna 69 is hard to do without taking organised transport, and while this was fine on the way it was a little frustrating on the way back. We were some of the fastest people in our busload of people; in fact having got to the top and spent an hour there eating lunch, on our way down we passed the majority of the group still going up! So it was quite a long wait for everyone to finish before our bus could depart for the long 3 hour trip back to Huaraz.

View down the valley at the end of our Laguna 69 trek

On our return from this hike, we found an email from Eco Ice advising us that our Santa Cruz trek had been postponed for two days due to the illness of someone else who'd signed up for it. We were actually not too sad about the delay - it was pretty good not have to get up before dawn again for the second day in a row, and I was grateful for some more acclimatisation time. Rather than hanging about any further in Huaraz, we decided to switch our plans around and visit the nearby historical site of Chavín de Huantar before the trek.

The main plaza at Chavín, with temple behind, surrounded by mountains

We took a very rural local bus out to Chavín, opting to stay a night in the town itself rather than do a day tour from Huaraz (which would have been another 6 hours round trip!). The road wound up into the mountains and then through a tunnel into the neighbouring district of Chavín, where the road surface changed dramatically for the worse: an hour of bumping along, often next to a sickening drop, with feathers blowing in the windows from the dozens of crates of chickens on the roof. Arriving in Chavín town itself in the late afternoon, we checked out what Lonely Planet describes as 'thermal baths'. Expecting some nice hot springs, we were a little disappointed to find they really were 'baths' - several private cubicles with bath size holes in the floor, which we had to fill with a hot tap to a maximum depth of about 8 inches. Not quite what we'd hoped for.

Snake carvings on the steps at Chavín

But our main reason for coming to Chavín was to see the ruins near the town, which make up yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. This site was built by the Chavín culture between 1200 and 500 BC, and used as a ceremonial centre where local people would come together to worship. The main temple was a huge pyramid, with a sunken plaza in front and stone columns still with original carvings. The whole complex had a ventilation system, earthquake proofing and even a system of channels that would have acted as a sound system, amplifying sounds during ceremonies. Perhaps the most impressive feature was the elaborate series of underground passages, or galleries - some have unbelievably high ceilings and you can still walk though them today. One passage has at its centre a huge carved stone monolith of the Chavin supreme deity, the Lanzón: most of the gallery was dark but the lighting was cleverly designed by the temple's builders so that light from outside beams directly on the sculpture. It was pretty incredible.

Underground gallery at Chavín

The monolith representing the Lanzón deity

We returned that afternoon to Huaraz and the next day were up at 5am to start our Santa Cruz trek. Like Laguna 69, this trek goes through the Huascarán National Park in the Cordillera Blanca. The trek was amazing, with scenery reminiscent of Patagonia. The Cordillera Blanca has 33 peaks over 5500m and over 700 glaciers - there were magnificent snowy panoramas everywhere we looked.  We even saw Paramount Mountain; yes, the one in the Paramount Pictures logo! While easier than our ridiculous Machu Picchu trek, it was still challenging at times, particularly with the altitude. Day 2 took us up to a 4750m pass, the highest I have ever hiked to, and that day we camped at 4250m. Two sleeping bags still weren't enough to quite keep out the bitter cold; it's the highest we've slept at on the whole trip and the first time we've had ice inside the tent! We were lucky with the weather though, with clear skies most of the time allowing us stupendous views at both of the highest points.

Looking out on the Paramount Mountain

We were in a group of eight, all lovely people - an Aussie couple, two Israeli brothers, and an Aussie girl and Canadian girl travelling together - plus two guides, a donkey driver and several donkeys. And a dog, which ostensibly belonged to the donkey driver but was nameless and spent most of his time trekking with us. In fact he became rather overprotective, one night waking everyone up barking wildly and attempting to chase away nearby cows.

Kev with 'El Perro' ('The Dog') - we gave him a name!

On the last day of the trek we had a fairly easy walk downhill, next to a lovely river with so many waterfalls that we beat our record number in a day. Kev managed to fall over spectacularly on top of a cactus - the guide got to practise his first aid skills bandaging his hand and later extracting a cactus spine at least an inch long! We celebrated the end of the trek with beers at a shop in the tiny village at the end that was actually run by our guide's aunt and uncle.

One of numerous waterfalls along the river on day 4

That evening we were all also invited to the house of Orlando, the owner of the company, for delicious homecooked dinner and pisco sours, with a demonstration of the making of the latter. Orlando invited us on to the birthday party of one of his colleagues and we had a great evening drinking, chatting and watching the (somewhat odd) Peruvian style of dancing. We'd definitely recommend the Eco Ice company to anybody!

Our final campsite at Llamacorral 

There's plenty more to do here, and in fact we'd like to come back here on holiday in the future to do the challenging and perhaps even more impressive 10 - 12 day Huayhuash circuit in the other cordillera. But for now we're pushing on up north before we fly back down to Patagonia in 2 weeks' time to meet family and do yet more hiking!

Our trekking group at Punta Unión, the high pass on day 2 - new height record!

The Oldest Civilisation in the Americas

We've spent the last few days getting to know a bit more of Peru's history, from the oldest civilisation in the Americas to the turbulent recent past.

Ayacucho

From Ica, we set off for the less-visited city of Ayacucho, back up in the mountains. Ayacucho was the main base for the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) communist organisation. Starting in the early 80s, it waged a guerilla war against the military government that, predictably, responded with violence. This left much of the populace caught between the two sides with thousands of casualties, the majority poor people from the countryside. Sendero Luminoso declined in activity from 1992 when its leader was captured, but there are still sporadic bursts of activity.

The remains of the powerful Wari empire

We used Ayacucho as a base to visit the ruins of the Wari civilisation's capital city. This was a city of an estimated 50,000 people and was the centre of a pre-Inca empire extending over much of Peru between the years 500 and 900. There isn't much left of it today; although there are some remaining buildings and walls still standing, it's hard to imagine a city that big in the abandoned cactus-covered desert.

The main square in Lima

After Ayacucho, we took another night bus back down to the coast for a brief stay in Lima. We're planning to return here in about a month, so we just visited the main sites - the park filled with stray cats in Miraflores (which Jo loved), and a walk around the historic colonial-era centre. It felt a bit depressing as Lima is famous for being covered in white mist for half of the year. We cheered ourselves up by finding one of the first places in which pisco sours were made.

5,000 year old pyramids at Caral

We left Lima to travel further north along the coast to Barranca, the closest town to the ancient ruins of Caral. This is an astounding site - it dates from 5,000 years ago so is one of the cradles of civilisation. It's the oldest such site in the Americas, and was founded at the same time as the Egyptian pyramids were being built. There are remains of pyramids and residential buildings centred around a large square that are in amazing condition considering their age.

Being gluttons for punishment, we've now returned to the mountains, where we're hoping to do some more trekking from Huaraz.