I was invited to tag along on a trip to Perú with Bob and Eileen. Lucky me! Here we are at the airport in Dallas. I was treated
like royalty because they have a membership to the exclusive Passport Lounge, allowing access to the Club DFW (and other airport lounges all
over the world.) For $32 each (plus their annual membership), we had an open bar, all-you-can-eat
lunch, comfy chairs, and luxury bathroom. This sure made the LONG
layover much more than tolerable. 
This is our lovely and quaint hotel in Miraflores, a very nice section of Lima. They had lots of antiques on display. It was called Casa Suyay, and was converted from an old home.
This painted tile piece depicts "La Tapada Limeña," ladies from the early Spanish times. Started by Muslim refugees during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, who were often upper class, Christian women also adopted the style so they could go out and have more freedom.
Our next destination was the Historic Center of Lima, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where we saw the Government Palace, the president's house, in the Plaza de Armas,
Next we went to the private Museo Larco which has a huge collection of 45,000 artifacts from the Chavín, UNTIL RECENTLY considered the mother culture of all the civilizations in the north central mountains dating back to 1500-2000 B.C., long before the Incas.
This one was woven from feathers!
Our guides all carefully distinguished between theory and fact, as proven by finding evidence to back up depictions of art, such as the pictures on this typical handle-spout container. The chart makes the artwork more clear, and helps the archeologists to search for artifacts to prove it wasn't fictional.
This museum allows visitors to tour the store rooms. Not everything is on display at any one time.
Our next stop was the Amano Pre-Columbian Textile Museum, an amazing collection of 2000 years of textiles. The west coast of Perú is a desert, which helped preserve these wonderful pieces, many made on waist-looms of hand-spun cotton and alpaca wool, and dyed with natural materials.
After touring the museum proper, we paid a little extra and they opened the storage drawers below for us to see... hundreds more specimens!
We walked to our restaurant for dinner, but had trouble finding it. These ladies offered to walk us there. So kind!
We finally arrived and ate a delicious dinner at Restaurante El Señorio de Sulco. Of course we had a Pisco sour!
On Day 2 we started our 5-day private tour of the ancient civilizations of the northern coast of Perú with our wonderful guide Diego. This shows all the archeological sites we would see.
We set out in the morning for Áspero, the site of a newly discovered and excavated group of pyramids of the Supe/Caral civilization 3000-1000 B.C., now considered one of the Cradle Civilizations of the world. Wikipedia doesn't even have an article about this yet, and is still calling the Chavín culture the oldest in Mesoamerica.
On the way we saw many settlements of immigrants, mainly from Venezuela, who build shelters out of whatever they can find. If they are able to stay for five years, they may apply for ownership of the government-owned land.
We saw these taxis everywhere, in Lima and in the countryside. They really are elaborate motorcycles.
I had to get a picture of the asparagus fields to show Louie. This is one of Perú's major export crops.
Everywhere there were farmers taking their products to market in the early morning hours.
All the towns were bustling with activity and hard work everywhere.
The architecture was such a mixture of modern and traditional methods. Here is one with reed walls. It almost never rains here, so this and the flat roofs are adequate.
We learned so much in the little visitor center.
This civilization used "Shicras," little hand-woven mesh bags filled with smaller stones in between the layers of construction which made their buildings earthquake-proof. Still standing 5000 years later!
This panel shows that each of these early groups of people lived in the valleys of the rivers fed by Andean snow-melt.
There were 25 settlements in the Caral civilization in this river valley, and Áspero was one of them. The people here specialized in ocean fishing, and provided fish for all the 25 settlements in exchange for their specialized goods. They had domesticated cotton out of which they made beautiful textiles, nets for fishing, and quipu for record-keeping. Before recently, it was believed that the Incas invented quipu, but the Supe/Caral culture had it 3200 years earlier!
This case shows artifacts found here related to fishing: sinkers, bobbers, hooks, lures, nets, baskets, and the remnants of a raft.
Up close we could see the shicras, still intact!
These were lined storage bins for grain.
Diego was learning that Eileen and I like to ask a lot of questions, so after Áspero, we took a shortcut over an almost-dry riverbed to make up a little time on our way to Caral.
At Caral we learned that each subsequent civilization built on top of the previous one.
This was our meal-time view from the dining room at the Empedrada Lodge in Caral.
And our beautiful rooms.
On our third day we were off-roading again! This was our next destination. No visitor-center. No tickets! This is Chankillo, the site of what is considered to be the oldest observatory/calendar in the Americas. It is protected, but hasn't been excavated yet.
This was a walled city built on an outcropping high above the river valley.
There were three concentric walls to aid in surveillance and protection.
It's so dry here, the tunnel roof is still intact.
This shows the reeds used in construction to assist with earthquake-proofing.
Below is the river valley, where the agriculture took place. None of the ancient ruins in Perú were affected by the devastating floods of the El Niño of 2017. Their placement was carefully thought-out, not like many of the Spanish colonial buildings. The Spanish insisted on building their cities close to the coast and rivers.
This was the sun calendar observatory built over 2300 years ago. Thirteen quarried stones with the twelve corresponding gaps between allowed them to observe the sun rising and tell the date within 2-3 days accuracy.
Another nearby ruin from the Sechín culture at Casma, related to Chankillo.
Diego treated us so well! He had bottomless water bottles for us, and he chose lots of fruit and other snacks. These were my favorites: Inka Corn, and Chulpi Corn. Yummy! I had to buy some to bring home!
We stopped at a little store on the way to lunch so I could get some other items too.
Then we arrived in the town of Tortugas and ate lunch at a delightful local restaurant where a little girl and her baby sister befriended us and asked if she could practice her English with us.
Our hotel that night, just outside of Trujillo, was lovely, the Moche Sanctuary Lodge. The cabins looked rustic but were actually very modern.
Our fantastic guide cleverly organized our trip so that we would see ancient civilizations more or less in order from 5000 years ago, right up to the time of the Spanish invasion. On the morning of Day 4, we went to see Huaca de la Luna, inhabited between 150 - 800 A.D. We had another guide here, Miguel.
Families contributed bricks, marked with their own symbol. There were five layers of new buildings over the old.
In 600A.D. there was a mega-El Niño, followed by a 30-year drought. This culture developed a complex system of irrigation and cultivation with reservoirs and canals. The surplus allowed trade.
On the way to Huanchaco, we saw a Peruvian stepping horse (Caballo de Paso), and the owner had him perform for us.
The traditional reed boats (Caballitos de Totora) are still in use today for fishing.
We dropped off our luggage and went with our private guide to see the Surquillo Market.
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Natural Healing Remedies
Coca Leaves!!
Next, we went to our first pyramid, a 14-acre site in the center of Miraflores. Huaca Pucllana was built around 500 A.D. by the Limac Culture (200-700A.D.), and added onto by the Wari Culture (500-900 A.D.)
Bookcase Brick technique was earthquake-proof.
There was a little museum there with artifacts found here and restored.
and a llama in his pen outside.
Our next destination was the Historic Center of Lima, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where we saw the Government Palace, the president's house, in the Plaza de Armas,
and the Archbishop's Palace behind the statue of José de San Martin, liberator of Perú.
From there we visited the famous Casa de Aliaga, the oldest colonial mansion in the Americas. Pizarro, who founded Lima and built the Plaza according to Spanish regulations, gave the land next to the Government Palace to his trusted ally, Jerónimo de Aliaga so they could be neighbors. The mansion has been in his family for 18 generations, and they still live there. It is open to private tours only.
Next we went to the private Museo Larco which has a huge collection of 45,000 artifacts from the Chavín, UNTIL RECENTLY considered the mother culture of all the civilizations in the north central mountains dating back to 1500-2000 B.C., long before the Incas.
Quipu
This one was woven from feathers!
Mummy in funerary bundle
Huge earrings
Healer diagnosing an ailment
This museum allows visitors to tour the store rooms. Not everything is on display at any one time.
Our next stop was the Amano Pre-Columbian Textile Museum, an amazing collection of 2000 years of textiles. The west coast of Perú is a desert, which helped preserve these wonderful pieces, many made on waist-looms of hand-spun cotton and alpaca wool, and dyed with natural materials.
After touring the museum proper, we paid a little extra and they opened the storage drawers below for us to see... hundreds more specimens!
We finally arrived and ate a delicious dinner at Restaurante El Señorio de Sulco. Of course we had a Pisco sour!
We set out in the morning for Áspero, the site of a newly discovered and excavated group of pyramids of the Supe/Caral civilization 3000-1000 B.C., now considered one of the Cradle Civilizations of the world. Wikipedia doesn't even have an article about this yet, and is still calling the Chavín culture the oldest in Mesoamerica.
On the way we saw many settlements of immigrants, mainly from Venezuela, who build shelters out of whatever they can find. If they are able to stay for five years, they may apply for ownership of the government-owned land.
We saw these taxis everywhere, in Lima and in the countryside. They really are elaborate motorcycles.
I had to get a picture of the asparagus fields to show Louie. This is one of Perú's major export crops.
Everywhere there were farmers taking their products to market in the early morning hours.
All the towns were bustling with activity and hard work everywhere.
The architecture was such a mixture of modern and traditional methods. Here is one with reed walls. It almost never rains here, so this and the flat roofs are adequate.
We learned so much in the little visitor center.
This civilization used "Shicras," little hand-woven mesh bags filled with smaller stones in between the layers of construction which made their buildings earthquake-proof. Still standing 5000 years later!
This panel shows that each of these early groups of people lived in the valleys of the rivers fed by Andean snow-melt.
There were 25 settlements in the Caral civilization in this river valley, and Áspero was one of them. The people here specialized in ocean fishing, and provided fish for all the 25 settlements in exchange for their specialized goods. They had domesticated cotton out of which they made beautiful textiles, nets for fishing, and quipu for record-keeping. Before recently, it was believed that the Incas invented quipu, but the Supe/Caral culture had it 3200 years earlier!
This case shows artifacts found here related to fishing: sinkers, bobbers, hooks, lures, nets, baskets, and the remnants of a raft.
Up close we could see the shicras, still intact!
These were lined storage bins for grain.
Diego was learning that Eileen and I like to ask a lot of questions, so after Áspero, we took a shortcut over an almost-dry riverbed to make up a little time on our way to Caral.
At Caral we learned that each subsequent civilization built on top of the previous one.
This was our meal-time view from the dining room at the Empedrada Lodge in Caral.
And our beautiful rooms.
On our third day we were off-roading again! This was our next destination. No visitor-center. No tickets! This is Chankillo, the site of what is considered to be the oldest observatory/calendar in the Americas. It is protected, but hasn't been excavated yet.
This was a walled city built on an outcropping high above the river valley.
There were three concentric walls to aid in surveillance and protection.
This shows the reeds used in construction to assist with earthquake-proofing.
Below is the river valley, where the agriculture took place. None of the ancient ruins in Perú were affected by the devastating floods of the El Niño of 2017. Their placement was carefully thought-out, not like many of the Spanish colonial buildings. The Spanish insisted on building their cities close to the coast and rivers.
This was the sun calendar observatory built over 2300 years ago. Thirteen quarried stones with the twelve corresponding gaps between allowed them to observe the sun rising and tell the date within 2-3 days accuracy.
Another nearby ruin from the Sechín culture at Casma, related to Chankillo.
Diego treated us so well! He had bottomless water bottles for us, and he chose lots of fruit and other snacks. These were my favorites: Inka Corn, and Chulpi Corn. Yummy! I had to buy some to bring home!
We stopped at a little store on the way to lunch so I could get some other items too.
Then we arrived in the town of Tortugas and ate lunch at a delightful local restaurant where a little girl and her baby sister befriended us and asked if she could practice her English with us.
Diego, Eileen, Bob, and me
Luciana and her baby sister
Our hotel that night, just outside of Trujillo, was lovely, the Moche Sanctuary Lodge. The cabins looked rustic but were actually very modern.
Our view of the mountain
Our fantastic guide cleverly organized our trip so that we would see ancient civilizations more or less in order from 5000 years ago, right up to the time of the Spanish invasion. On the morning of Day 4, we went to see Huaca de la Luna, inhabited between 150 - 800 A.D. We had another guide here, Miguel.
Families contributed bricks, marked with their own symbol. There were five layers of new buildings over the old.
In 600A.D. there was a mega-El Niño, followed by a 30-year drought. This culture developed a complex system of irrigation and cultivation with reservoirs and canals. The surplus allowed trade.
On the way to Huanchaco, we saw a Peruvian stepping horse (Caballo de Paso), and the owner had him perform for us.
"Big Ben" restaurant in Huanchaco
Another gorgeous view
Causa de palta
Grouper stuffed with seafood
The traditional reed boats (Caballitos de Totora) are still in use today for fishing.
After lunch we went to Chan Chan, the home of 100,000 inhabitants of the Chimú civilization who lived from 900A.D. until 1470A.D., when the Inca took over. This is the largest pre-Columbian city in South America, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are ten walled palaces on this 5000 acre site!
We stayed a second night at Moche Sanctuary Lodge. On Day 5, we visited El Brujo, an ancient pyramid where the mummified Señora de Cao was discovered, and it was learned that women also held high positions in these societies.
Shamans still come here and to Chan Chan to practice their rituals.
We stopped in Pacasmayo for lunch at a local restaurant.
Grinding coffee by hand,
and we were serenaded.
The town and beach were so picturesque.
In the afternoon we continued on to our next hotel, Los Horcones de Túcume. Here's the view from my balcony.
Lovely continental breakfast.
Thick, dark espresso in the little decanter, which we mixed with hot water to make our cup of coffee.
Coca leaf tea, anyone?
In the morning on Day 6 on the way to the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipán, we saw this cute Mexican hairless dog with his little mane.
These ceremonial pots were very elaborately decorated.
This is a waist loom, like the ones on which the beautiful ancient textiles were woven.
The government of Perú is providing funding for the excavation of all these pyramids, as well as the development of the museums, visitor centers, and gift shops, which will help the local economies. It specifically encourages interactive displays and those geared toward education.
This display shows that the ancient religions are still being followed, and you can see modern items as offerings to the gods. Hallucinogenic herbs are still in ceremonial use. Even now, Túcume is known as the Valley of Shamans. Sr. y Sra. Bravo live across the street, and are modern-day shamans (curanderos).
This vase was looted from here many years ago, and has surfaced in the Denver Museum. Perú is negotiating with Denver to recover it.
Walking from the visitor center out to the archeological site we walked through a settlement and a farm.
Thor Hyerdahl came here and worked with local archeologists in his effort to prove that Polynesians settled here. And testimonials from early Spaniards describe the complex civilization that was here when they arrived.
We saw the Huaca de las Balsas, named for the balsa rafts depicted in the ancient art on textiles and ceramics.
Another earthquake-proofing technique was to use bricks shaped like bread loaves.
In the gift shop we asked if the woven items were made locally, the attendant stated that she had made this and many other pieces here for sale, and that she is teaching the other women the old technique weaving with a waist loom. We also learned that she was the narrator of the video in the visitor center. This is just another example of how Perú is involving the communities in this new enterprise. Other arts being practiced and promoted are beeswax batik, underground baking, chicha making, both fresh and fermented, and ceramics.
After Eileen chose her purchase, the attendant bagged it in this darling hand-decorated bag...more craftsmanship and entrepreneurship!
Off to another DELICIOUS lunch!
Avocado stuffed with shrimp salad.
Tacu Tacu with broiled fish.
And mine: Pescado con salsa de mariscos (sea bass with shellfish). I hadn't had an opportunity yet to have my favorite Papas a la Huancaína, but when I saw the potatoes and eggs on the side, the waiter was happy to bring me a dish of Huancaína dressing.
After lunch we went to the Huaca Rajada, where 16 tombs were discovered, including the old Lord of Sipán (300A.D.), the warrior priest (500 A.D.), and the new Lord (800A.D.) The actual mummified skeletons are preserved in the museum here.
This is a replica showing the grave site.
And these cutouts show the grieving people as they buried their lord. In another effort to involve the community, local people modeled for these, and were photographed, rather than using an artist's rendition.
This owl is the earliest known specimen in the world of lost-wax casting of copper, a technique widely used today in silver and other metal work.
These were two of the best charts showing all the civilizations in a timeline, and how they coincided with civilizations in the rest of the world at the same times.
When we went outside, we could see all the actual ruins and gravesites.
Here's a map showing all the sites we visited, and how far north we had come. Diego had a 13-hour drive back to Lima. We flew from Chiclayo.
On our arrival in Lima, we were transported to our lovely hotel in La Punta, the Seamen's Club.
Breakfast buffet (but they always wanted to make eggs for us, too.)
Eileen filled Day 7 for us too. We walked to the beach, and I took pictures of the varied architecture.
A passerby suggested we walk to the bay side of the Punta and watch a twice-a-year event of migrating birds, which happened to be there that day. (We also learned that there are also 120 species of birds which are only found in Perú.)
From there, we walked a little way along the Malecón, a scenic walkway along the shore.
Our path out along the Punta led us to our last excursion, a boat ride to the Palomino Islands to swim with sea lions and possibly penguins (or watch from the boat).
And Bob got to see his penguins, the last species on his bucket list!
I have one last memory of this trip which exemplifies both the helpfulness of the people of Perú, and also the efforts to increase their tourism. But I don't have a photo for it. Here is the story. I had to go to the airport by myself, because Bob and Eileen were journeying on to Costa Rica for a family vacation, so their flights were at a different time. I was nervous about the airport, so I asked my cab driver if he would come in with me and make sure I got in the right line (I promised him a pretty good tip). My Spanish is fairly good, but I didn't want to take a chance on standing in the wrong line for an hour and then miss my flight just because I misunderstood something. So he parked the car and came in, carried my bags, and helped me figure out where to go. I could tell he felt like a fish out of water. Maybe he had never flown, but he was bound and determined to make sure I was taken care of. After a few wrong turns, we found my ticket counter, I gave him his tip, and he left me with a very warm feeling in my heart.
