At just under 4000 metres (13,000ft), Cullhuay is a tiny town in the Chillón Valley who’s population survives by agriculture and fishing.
Providing passers-through the opportunity to get something warm to drink, oh… a see a mummy discovered in an ancient burial site nearby, Cullhuay is otherwise as quiet (and as friendly) as an Andean town can get.
The town of Canta sits upon a hill high up in the Chillón Valley of Lima. Sitting on another nearby hill is Obrajillo, and on another San Miguel. This peaceful and picturesque town, green throughout most of the year, is just two hours journey from Lima.
The rock art at Checta may be as much as 5000 years old, some say more. Carved onto rocks above the Chillon valley in the department of Lima, the petroglyphs hold the yet uninterpreted secrets of some of the most ancient Peruvians.
As with all valleys leading into the mountains from Lima’s desert coast, the Chillón starts sandy and dry but soon starting turning green the higher up you go, especially during the Andean rainy season which is yet to finish.
Huayco (also Huaico) is a Peruvian term for the flash floods that occur regularly during the rainy season in the Andes. Often they are regular but minor, such as the one that affected me yesterday in the Chillón valley, blocking the road with mud, boulders and a torrent of water for several hours. Other times they can be more violent, washing away bridges and even towns.
The Morro Solar of Chorrillos was the scene of a battle, was once an exclusive beach resort in the 1800s and nowadays is home to an observatory, some monuments and the exclusive Regatta’s club.
The fertile green mountain valleys of the Andes were traded for the rocky desert wasteland that is the Peruvian desert coast. There were no homes for the new arrivals, nor land, nor money to buy either – so they had to invade.
A sunny day in Miraflores, as new penthouses tower over the up-scale Larcomar shopping mall, which sits embedded in the cliffs of the Coast Verde overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Before Lima’s explosive growth it was a small, quiet, clean and very modern city. This documentary video, funded by the United States Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in 1944 shows us a time that many older Limeños hold in high regard and with great nostalgia.
Walking is my favorite form of transportation in Lima and I do it just about every day without fail. The biggest downfall of walking is that, well, if you walk in Lima, you will eventually have to cross the street. And cars drive in the street. I’ve heard that in Lima, six people are run over and killed every day. Not just run over. Run over and killed. And, after living here for four months, it seems like an Act of God that the number is so low.
Little is known of these ruins as no formal studies have been carried out. Left in ruins, and overgrown with shrubs, what we do know that it was constructed in the same time as Kunturwasi by the same pre-Inca culture, with Tantarica being more of a centre of population than only a place of religious worship.
High in the hills above the Rio Jequetepeque valley that leads from the northern Peruvian coast into the mountains of Cajamarca, is a temple named Kuntur Wasi, the House of the Condor. Looking out over a vast area from its mountain top perch, from this ancient temple you can survey an area as vast as a condor could.
