The last couple days were spent high up in the Andes, in the home of the Inca civilization.
After driving miles and miles along the Peruvian coastline for several days, we took a journey back up into the Andes to a city called Cajamarca. It was another serious mountain road, and we climbed from sea level all the way up to 10,500 feet. At one point we were in the clouds it was so high. The views were spectacular.
At times it seemed like we were going straight up, climbing a thousand feet every ten minutes. The good thing was that with our new geographic location, we are much closer to the equator and everything is starting to get green again.
In fact, the roads were in bad shape from recent heavy rains.
We have been passing through desert-like rocks, hills, and sand for several days, and it has been dry and rather desolate much of the time. But now we are back into more lush landscape, with lakes and rivers, even a few waterfalls.
Cajamarca (pronounced Cah-hah-mar-kah) is an ancient city sitting at the top of the Andes, and it's not easy to get to. There were more hair raising mountain roads with enormous drop offs and of course - no guard rails half the time.
This is the home of the Incan civilization, a huge empire that spanned several hundred years and a huge swath of South America. It all came to screeching halt when Pizarro showed up with his mercenary Spanish army, and killed the Incan ruler, Atahualpa. It all happened in Cajamarca.
We went to visit various historical sites, and even saw the infamous room where the Spaniards held the Incan ruler for ransom, then double crossed him and killed him. This has left some bad blood to this day, for obvious reasons. There are a lot of remnants of the Incas to this day.
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The story is told that the ruler Atahualpa said as a ransom, he would fill a room up to a mark on the wall as high as he could reach, with gold. Since the vast Inca empire had a lot of resources and precious metals (there's gold in them thar hills), they were able to meet this demand. But the ruthless Pizarro killed the ruler anyway for trumped up reasons.
It wasn't long before the Spaniards took over the area and renamed it Peru. Pizarro was later put to death in a revenge killing, but died a very rich man.
A lot the Incan history is visible in Cajamarca. But you better be in good shape, it's not easy walking around or doing much of anything at 10,000 feet high. It takes some getting used to. But the weather was good and we enjoyed it there a lot.
There is a lot of indigenous tradition around, like the two musicians below, playing a super long alpine type horn that echoed off the walls of the valley.
One of the places we visited was an ancient carving called the Ventanillas. It was an amazing evidence of the skills of the people here over a thousand years ago.
Tonight we are in Piura, and our time in Peru is coming to an end, as our next stop is Ecuador.
One last Point of View
I have decided to post a picture now and then that doesn't really have a connection to the theme of the blog, but is interesting nevertheless. This scene below was on the road from Chimbote, when we saw perhaps the most overloaded truck we have ever seen. Of course, it was broke down as shown by the guy with his head under the hood.
That last picture!! Quite the load.
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