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Inca Wall

The Incas also arrived in the Nazca plains, albeit about 1000 years after the Nazca culture faded from existence. The people of these desert valleys still lived as they once did, maintaining the irrigation canals of their ancestors and producing textiles of similar quality with similar patterns. After being dominated by the Wari they were accustomed to the idea of foreign rule and submited to the Incas easily.

To administer the region the Incas built Paredones. Named in Spanish for its expertly fitted Inca walls, Paredones consisted of a number of adobe buildings, a stone-built palace and a corridor leading to stone steps that take you up to what would once have been a temple to the sun.

The surrounding hills are covered with the remains of lower quality homes, tombs, and tonnes of broken pottery. The entire site covers about 2km².

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At 12 hours from the Peruvian capital Lima, Caravelí, in the Arequipan province of the same name, was lucky to survive and keep - thanks to its relative isolation - its splendid bodegas of wines and piscos. Other towns in the south weren’t so lucky and were pillaged and burnt to the ground by Chilean troops in the War of the Pacific. This year the town presented itself in the national pisco contest that took place in Lima and took first place for its exemplary pisco of black creole grape, called El Comendador.

Written by Álvaro Rocha Revilla

Caravelí feels disconnected to the rest of the world. And in a certain sense this is true. In the almost two hours it took to get up here from the coast, from the turn off at Atico, we haven’t crossed paths with a single house, tree, river… nothing. Stopping on a curve on this abandoned road to nowhere, there below we saw a small green smear floating on a vast barren desert. Not just any desert - its dunes of sand and its rocky expanses have tones of red and salmon. However in this very dry land, apparently completely infertile, is produced one of the best piscos of Peru.

If were turn our heads, just a little, away from the spectacular desert scenery, to the left we see the Sara Sara mountain. Here in 1996, thanks to global warming and the melting of its ice caps, the mountain revealed, in perfect condition, a preserved mummy from pre-Columbian times. Called Sarita, the mummy is now exhibited in the Museo de la Universidad de Santa María in Arequipa. We also see the peak of Solimana and the Coropuna, the later being the highest volcano in Peru at 6425m.a.s.l.

It’s surroundings, the barren desert, volcanic peaks and the flamenco-filled Parinacochas lagoon below Sara Sara give the forgotten town of Caravelí a special atmosphere.

Vineyards

Caravelí was the first part of Peru to be divided up and given out to Spanish conquerors. On the 3rd of July in 1532, Francisco Pizarro authorised the issuing of Caravelí to Cristóbal de Burgos. The introduction of the first grape plants didn’t take long. Evidence shows the first was planted in 1548 in the grounds of Álvarez de Carmona for the Jesuit monks. From then until the time of Peruvian independence - when the town was used by patriot Mariscal Miller as a base to hunt down royalist Ameller - the town survived commercially as an exporter of grape produce. When the town was levelled in republican times by an earthquake in 1868, the town’s industry provided it with the ability to slowly recover.

Bullet holes

“Abundant tinajas (clay pots for fermentation), with bullet holes, are a testimony to the barbarisms lived during the war with Chile. Among the geopolitical objectives of Chile was to end the wine and pisco industry in Peru to aid the start their own, and to this end their armies destroyed machinery and shot at fermentation jars”, explains historian Luciano Revoredo, adding, “the pisco, as we have mentioned, is a denomination of Peruvian origin. No one else can use this name, only those territories around the Pisco area”.

Fortunately, Caravelí did not suffer heavy damage in the war. Its industry survived and the Chileans did not pillage and burn the town down, nor massacre its population, as happened elsewhere.

El Cholo Berrocal

The day we arrived, the caravelians were beaming with pride for the official presentation of The Comendador pisco, winner in the competition held days before in Lima. The men wore the finest hats and the women also dressed elegantly. The Peruvian flag was being raised high into the ever-blue sky of Caravelí and a band played the national anthem.

The band also played the work of the great Cholo Barrocal, the famous composer of musica criolla born in Caravelí in 1937 and dying prematurely in Lima in 1983. They did a great job of playing Payaso, as well as No Me Beses and Adiós a la Patria, all hits of Isidoro Barrocal Coronado - his real name.

We made a point to look all over town for a photo of the great musician, who was blind from the age of eleven and for that reason formed a intimate relationship with his guitar. But we never did find any evidence of his being born and raise here, this idol of idols in the north of Peru as well as Ecuador and Colombia.

Bodegas

Before going to lunch at the bodega Chirisco, we were told by locals to cover our heads. Everyone wears hats around here due to the fierce burning sun that shines day after day. “It’s been years since it last rained, God has punished us”, said local woman Liliana Montoya, believing more in divine design than climate change. “And when it does rain, the sun comes out twice as strong”.

In all the bodegas we see huge tinajas, large clay jars used for hundreds of years to produce pisco. The jars are distributed in dark caves, some half-buried with dates like 1612 carved into them, with stylised crosses and a cap of volcanic rock to seal them. Their value is immeasurable, they don’t make these any more.

The owner of Chirisco is Marco Antonio Franco, who has 22 of these jars, where the grapes ferment from between 14 and 20 days. It is he who produces the black creole grape from which the champion pisco El Comendador is made.

Pisco route

The next day we visited other bodegas of Caravelí, those belonging to the Pisco and Wines Producers Association, otherwise known as the ruta del pisco - the pisco route. It posses incredible scenery and great historic and natural value, in addition to the incredible pisco. The further you travel, towards the edge of the department of Ayacucho and the peak of Sara Sara that sits in our way, we find the Parinacochas lagoon with its flamencos and the Galeras pampa and its vicuñas.

Mario Casas Berdejo, a local intent on showing Peru and the world the riches of Caravelí tells us; “Sometimes some European tourists pass through here. They camp in the higher parts, close to the guanacos and the condors… an incredible area, with forests of queñuales. But above all, the important herds of guanacos, perhaps one of the most important in the country. The problem is that there are hunters, that’s why we are asking that Alto Caravelí is declared a national reserve.

We visited the bodegas of Colca, Buen Paso, La Ollería and finally La Huarca, which has the oldest plants and is very pleasantly located. You really feel like you are out in the country.

We do see a strange structure in the distance though. Mario explains that this is a gold mine, but one Caravelí sees no benefit from due to poor distribution of the revenue. Worse still is that the company that runs it feels little in the way of social responsibility.

We stop for a moment to see the ancient petroglyphs of Ananta, while below us we see the valley of Caravelí, a vibrant fertile green colour, looking as if it is teasing the bleak desert that surrounds it. Mario says the volcanic soil found in his land, like the land of Italy, allows for the cultivation of the perfect grape. He stood there for a while, admiring this view as if it was his first time seeing it.

Now that the sun’s heat was waning, it was time to go home. In Caravelí, life is not measured in hours but in centigrades.

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Written by, and with thanks to, Rafo León

Our patrimonial Machu Picchu is, without a doubt, a wonder. But part of its current problem is that each day it suffers more and more from congestion by tourists, to the point where at times it looks more like some kind of fair. Today there are some interesting solutions that have been put forward to tackle the overload of this site, and one of them consists of putting more value in other nearby archaeological attractions and fostering a desire in tourists to visit those, thus de-congesting the main complex of Machu Picchu.

Inca road, Photo: Sam Judson

This is what they have achieved by cleaning up the access to Huayna Picchu, a very good idea from the chief of the historic sanctuary, archaeologist Fernando Astete. With this simple measure, there are 400 less people each day en Machu Picchu at peak hours. This idea can also be applied to a site called Kantupata, which Tiempo de Viaje [Rafo León's programme] was privileged to be able to visit.

If you’ve hiked the Inca Trail you’ll quickly understand the location of Kantupata. It is higher than Intipata, the citadel full of terraced farms that you visit just before arriving at Intipunku, from where you see the impressive panoramic view of Machu Picchu from above. As Manuel Alejo Silva, the archaeologist working on the site explains, Kantupata is found on the “other side of Machu Picchu”.

To get there we do something a little bizarre; we take the Inca trail backwards, going in the opposite way as tourists going to Machu Picchu, arriving as far as Wiñay Huayna. Here we spend a night, in the hostal, and before dawn the next day, we begin to climb. We first pass through tropical cloud forest, then through mountainous ferns and finally arriving at the Andean puna [dry high-altitude grassland]. The hike is very short in distance, but very tiring. We pass through an incredible diversity of habitats.

One of the steepest slopes delays us enough to observe the immensity of the view, and while the wind almost blows us off the mountain, we discover that before our eyes Machu Picchu is in view… but from an angle we have never seen before, not even in photos. The view is, how can I say, from behind. It is really stunning to behold.

Kantupata announces itself with a grand stairway of stone, which once cleaned-up by the archaeologists is truly impressive. Despite the way to the ruins being cleared, it doesn’t much lower our chances of coming face to face with the feared jergón, a venomous snake abundant in this area. Thankfully this didn’t happen and we could descend the stairs and arrive at some enclosures and a number of terraces, who’s design indicated they were for some very specific and fine use, perhaps to feed the Inca elite.

We continued on to a place that has particular impact. A large plaza with a shrine in the centre, surrounded by buildings and walls. Below, with a view of the peaks in the distance, more stone farming terraces unfold, parallel with water fountains similar to those at Wiñay Huayna. This place, framed by forest that is crossed by clouds of fog, sometimes illuminated by a sun that it rarely receives, is contrasted by the nearby giant ferns.

The stairs to Kantupata are mentioned in a report by the archaeologist Leoncio Vera in 1985, the only reference we have until, in 1990, Manuel Silva and a team received information of its existence during the time they were working on restoring Intipata. The informant was Silva’s personal assistant, Honorato Huillca, who in a low voice let him know of this wonder. Manuel Silva climbed up to it, analysed it and made a report to the corresponding authorities. But organised exploration never happened due to lack of financing.

15 years later, in 2005, an anthropologist from Cusco, Theo Paredes, became interested in Kantupata and he decided to visit. Paredes, a very well connected man and director of the Poqen Kanchay group, received financial assistance from the US association AMB. So, Silva and his team after all this time have now embarked on this restoration project.

The team has been working for the past year, prospecting and cleaning - processes that are revealing more and more artificial construction on the landscape, but constructions that are integrated into the natural environment - ecological architecture of the Incas with an as yet unsurpassed perfection.

Let’s hope that with the work of these archaeologists, all the world will be able to visit the lost ruins of Kantupata.

Photos of the site can be found here.

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To one side of the southern regional capital of Ica, and the fertile valley it sits in, is a huge expanse of sand that stretches out for miles in the direction of the coast. Completely barren and devoid of moisture, the winds shift the sands as they have for centuries forming huge dunes that bask and bake in the strong sun. Bleached white with light during the day, and taking on deep warm tones as the sun sets, the dunes hide among them small oases of tiny lakes and palm trees. But there’s no time to sit, stare and take in this scene of exquisite natural beauty, yet another of millions to be found across Peru. It’s time to sandboard!

Dunes outside Huacachina

Huacachina is an oasis town formed for and overrun by tourism. Hotels and bars surround the little central lake, all in the shadow of the surrounding dunes. From here buggies ferry visitors around, up and down the dunes at breakneck speed before arriving in various locations where the sands are steep enough to slide down on boards.

Stopping off for an afternoon can give you a taste, but if you have time you really should hang around for a couple of days. It really is great fun.

A Taste

Dune buggy

Oasis

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Descended from the older Paracas civilisation, the Nazca are of course most famous for their countless mysterious lines drawn in the rocky desert plains in which they lived. They were also great water engineers, creating a series of complex aqueducts.

When you think of the Nazca, you think of their mysterious geometric shapes and lines in the desert, which were seemingly important enough to dedicate such huge amounts of time and resources to create.

From their capital city of Cahuachi, archaeologists have gleamed far more information about this pre-Incan people. This city was of immense, memorising proportions. Most estimates put the terrain it covered at as much as 24km2, that’s, dare I mention it, bigger than Chan Chan, built centuries later. It stretches along the sandy slopes overlooking the fertile valley, in a line that is, by my estimate, about 12km. Here you’ll find dozens of pyramids, broken pottery scattered across the desert and textiles just beneath the surface.

What was found here told us that the Nazca were descendants of the older Paracas culture, continuing their production of some of the most complex and creative textile patterns in the Andean world, and continuing and improving upon their ceramic production techniques, creating new methods to produce colourful and more realistic decoration.

From their ancient burial ground of Chauchilla, we learn that far from being small, the average Nazcan was 1.7m or 5.57ft tall. They also sported long thing dreadlocks that reach the floor.

Other than the fascinating lines, or the huge ceremonial city of Cahuachi, the Nazca are also famous for their complex underground aqueducts, bringing water to the more arid parts of their world. Wells leading down into them are found at Cantalloc, near the much later Inca ruins of Paredones, eventual rulers of this land.

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A team from Peru’s National Institute of Culture (INC) working on the ruins of Torontoy in the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, have discovered the tomb of an Inca with full funerary regalia. The gender and age of the tomb’s owner has not yet been determined, but found with the body were a number of decorated ceramics and two pins.

Burial site in Torontoy

The dig was taking place as part of the budgeted work for 2008 and was led by archaeologist Homar Gallegos Guitierrez. It is thought that the burial dates from the time of the founding of Torontoy, when the Incas first built the citadel in the kancha design of enclosed rectangular walls.

The remains and the objects discovered will be taken to Cusco for detailed analysis.

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Thousands of archaeological sites dating from hundreds to thousands of years old sit abandoned and forgotten across Peru. Year after year they decay further through lack of care or are intentionally destroyed. In the past century untold amounts of history has been lost.

Those that are recognised and fall under the protection of Peru’s National Institute of Culture (INC) don’t fair much better, but at least the INC must grant permission for any work to be carried out around the ruins, preventing their destruction in large and/or legal projects.

To this long list of protected national monuments, 80 ancient sites have been added yesterday from the two Peruvian departments of La Libertad in the north and Ica in the south.

INC protection isn't everything

In La Libertad, the archaeological sites now recognised include the Cerro Huarcayoc and Huarcayoc I, located between the towns of Santiago de Challas and Huancaspata, Pataz province.

In Ica, among the archaeological sites declared cultural heritage are Maijo Chico 1, 2 and 3, Maijo Grande, Caracoles 1,2 and 3, Pampa Media Luna 1 and 2, Cerro Tres Pavos 1 and 2, Pampa Media Luna 4, 5, 6 , 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13, Media Luna 1 and 2, San Marcos 2, 3 and 4.

As well as, Santa Catalina 2, Asiento, Chuichipampa 1, 2 and 3, Cucahuischu, Illatoro 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, Marcaya 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, Media Luna 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, Casa Blanca 1, 2 and 3, Huayurí Bajo 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, Huayurí 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Other ancient sites include Pampas de Huayurí, Pampa Las Carretas 1, 2, 3 and 4, Larán, Monte Grande, Pampa Media Luna 7, 12 and 14, San Marcos 1 and Huayurí Bajo 7.

Now falling under protection as “National Cultural Heritage”, any road, agricultural or farming project that could affect the sites in any way must first be approved by the INC.

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Laying untouched for centuries, this isolated spot in the dry Nazcan desert was used as a place to bury and preserve the mummified dead of the Nazca culture. Since then, the countless hundreds of tombs found here have been pillaged and destroyed. What remains is at first a fascinating sight for visitors - bones, ceramics and cloth scattered across the sands, pieces of ancient fabric blowing around in the wind - but that fascination soon turns to despair as you realise the amount of precious historical information lost.

Ancient textiles in the sands

It almost looks like another planet, perhaps the moon. Crater after crater as far as you can see. These aren’t meteor impacts though, these were once the tombs of important members of the ancient Nasca society. It is they who inhabited this region of Ica from roughly 200B.C. to the coming of the Wari in the 700’s A.D.

These tombs, hundreds of them, were destroyed by tomb robbers in the past century. Fuelled by demand from wealthier parts of the world, the local poor - made so by the ways of their conquerors - ransacked the resting places of their ancestors destroying untold amounts of archaeological information. Pottery, metals, fine weaving and other objects were sold for thousands of dollars, while thousands of years of history were lost.

Despite the damage, a few complete bodies were found. So too were several tomb walls, giving us clues as to how burials took place - for example, bodies always faced the rising sun. One of the best preserved is in the site museum, still with skin and hair.

A Nazcan

Some examples of beautiful tapestries have been saved from the fate of being locked up in a private collection of a North American or European millionaire, and are on display to the public. Lesser cloth is found blowing around in the wind, or poking out of the sandy top-soil.

In the surviving tombs, some of the finds - bones, skulls and even intact mummies have been placed as they would have been. Visitors can walk around each of these and get a feel of how Chauchilla may once have been.

Perhaps the most interesting fact these mummies tell us is how the Nazcan people looked physically. Far from being the impoverished short Peruvians of the past five centuries, your typical well-fed and well nourished Nascan was a tall 1.7m or or 5′6″. Few Europeans were that tall in 500A.D.

Also fascinating is the Nazcan’s long dreaded hair, so long that if it were let down, it would trail along behind them as they walked. Many of the bodies found still sport this long hair, trend-setters for Caribbean peoples 1500 years later.

Visiting the site from Nasca is easy, it’s just 30km away, reachable by taxi for S./40. Make sure you ask for a ticket when you pay the small entrance fee, so you know the money is going to fund the preservation of the site.

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The Nazcan city of Cahuachi was a stunning and magnificent place. Stretching along the dusty hills above the Nazca River valley are an as-yet unknown number of pyramids and temples - a good number of those rolling hills are not at all natural features. Some estimates of the area the city covered are as much as 24km2 - bigger than even the famous Chimú city of Chan Chan.

Despite its size, no-one but the civilisation’s elite lived here on a permanent basis. Cahuachi was a religious and ceremonial city first, and the administrative centre of the Nasca’s world second. It is thought that huge gatherings took place here, where huge numbers of pilgrims from across the surrounding valley’s came to take part in rituals. Most of the ceramic pottery found here was high quality, beautifully decorated religious pottery - few simple domestic items have been found.

From the ceremonial city it is only a short distance across the valley and across the hills to the main desert plain on which you’ll find the civilisation’s famous geometric patterns, shapes and lines. Could the rituals carried out at Cahuachi and those carried out at the lines be part of the same event, part of the mass gatherings? It is so far unknown.

Grand Pyramid

The first thing that strikes visitors to this archaeological complex, being worked on by Italian Giuseppe Orefici, is the Gran Piramide, perhaps the best restored monument in the city where dozens more remain buried in the sands. Although it too still has a long way to go, it no longer looks like just a mound of sand.

The pyramid, and the other buildings stretching along 17km of the valley, are roughly between 1500 and 2200 years old. As well as pyramids there are ceremonial buildings, workshops, open spaces and places for pilgrims to stay.

At the foot of the Gran Piramide is the Templo del Escalonado, one of the oldest buildings and the most important during the earlier period of the city’s existence. This building was named as such because its walls were decorated with the top half of chakanas(Andean crosses) the look a little like stairs.

We know that music was important to the Nazca - we find images of musicians on many textiles and ceramics, but only from Cahuachi we find out why. It seems, based on archaeological finds of instruments such as flutes and drums at key ceremonial areas, that music was used during religious rituals and ceremonies.

Cahuachi existed for 8 centuries, from 400B.C. to 450A.D. when the city was abandoned. There was no rush in its abandonment though, huge amounts of resources were applied over time to demolish its outer walls and bury the many pyramids beneath the sands. The pyramids ceased to be artificial monuments and returned to nature as towering sandy hills. The city was no longer the capital of the Nasca, and became a holy place, even a burial place.

It is not known what caused the city’s abandonment, and what made the people move on to other newer urban centres, but it is thanks to their attachment to this place, and their care in burying and preserving their city, that one day we might, through our own application of huge amounts of resources, see it in its original form again, uncovered and restored - the biggest of the ancient urban centres of the southern Peruvian coast.

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Etched into the barren rocky desert plains of Nazca, in the region of Ica, is a mystery yet to be solved. Stretching for miles, and only visible from the air, are a series of lines, geometric shapes and figures that are 2000 years old. Created by the Nazca civilisation, their true purpose has yet to be determined.

How they were made

The deserts plains that span the distances between the narrow green valleys of southern Ica are a barren place strewn with rocky debris. Under the baking hot sun, no plant life can be found here.

Line formed by out-line stones

Line made by revealing sand below

There were two techniques the Nazcans used in this hostile environment to create the lines and shapes.

One was to simply pick up each rock and throw it to the side, revealing the lighter coloured sand beneath.

Repeating this process over tens of kilometres in a straight line would create a path through the rocks.

To help define the lines when needed, the rocks removed would be placed on the border of the created path, with the darker outline providing more contrast.

It can only be guessed at as to how the lines were built so straight… perhaps by using pegs and ropes… but some of the largest lines are more than 10km long. The complicated geometric shapes are precision perfect, the spirals found - both separately and on the tails of monkey images - must have be measured expertly.

No one is sure how such huge shapes, not of which can be seen from ground level, could be created with such precision.

What they were for

Theories abound as to what these lines were for, and the people of Nazca today respect each of them. Here are some:

The ancient people of Nazca lived in a brutal desert with little water. They saw this as a punishment from the gods, who if they prayed to sufficiently would reward them with the life-giving substance. So, as part of their organised religion, they created huge images in the desert, figures of animals mostly from wetter parts of the world - parrots, pelicans, monkeys and sea creatures. These huge images were only meant for the eyes of their gods and so could only be seen from the air. - Local stories

The lines point to places on the horizon where the sun, and other stars, rise and set. The lines form part of a huge celestial calendar. Some lines match up exactly with the rising and setting sun on certain days of the year, noticeably at key times such as the winter solstice. Animal figures may represent constellations of stars, and lines that pass through them indicated as yet unknown key dates or events. The lines were a sun calendar and a huge observatory for astronomical cycles. - Maria Reiche

The lines reveal sources of water. It can be no coincidence that many of the lines or geometric shapes end or begin at the edges of fertile valleys, essentially pointing at them. They might reveal underground sources of water or be futile requests to the gods to make the river water spread out into the plains in the direction of the lines. - David Johnson and others

It is now agreed that the lines were walked along in some kind of ritual. Religious pottery has been found along the lengths of many of the lines, and a great number are interconnected, forming routes that could be taken for different purposes. The entire central plain where the majority of the lines are found could have been one huge open-air temple. The truth is, where the lines are found there are a number of underground water sources, many of the lines do match with positions of celestial objects, they can only be seen from the air, they were walked on and the Nazca people’s religion almost certainly did involve pleading for more water. When the gods didn’t grant it to them, they even went and got it themselves.

For detailed reading, check out nazcamystery.com

Great people have been trying to work out exactly how much of each theory was true, such as Dr. Paul Kosok and of course Maria Reiche. You can read more about them, the lines and more in upcoming posts.

Related posts
Maria Reiche
The Nazca Culture
Could the Nazcans fly?
Nine fingered destiny

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