Perusing Peru – January, 2017
It was January and cold and rainy, time to go south of the equator. South America is closer than Australia, Africa, etc., it’s inexpensive , not much jet lag and we get by fine with our Spanish. So off we went to Peru which we last visited in 1979 and threw in Chile as well, two weeks in each country.
We flew United to Houston and connected for a six and a half hour flight to Lima. We chose to stay in Miraflores, an upscale residential area with many restaurants and close to the sea. We decided not to go to Cuzco and Macho Picchu, which we had previously visited, since we heard it was now expensive and overrun with tourists and we wanted to keep our memories intact from years ago.
Lima is a big city, approaching ten million, and other than what we had read in Lonely Planet, we knew little about it. We had heard that Lima is the gastronomical capital of South America and Misti had been gathering names of restaurants for our foodie adventure. From many available hotels we chose the Hilton, which is centrally located in Miraflores, probably the nicest and safest neighborhood in Lima.
We spent four days exploring the city using inexpensive taxis to get around. Taxis in Lima are great as long as you understand the guidelines: have your destination name and street address written in Spanish on a piece of paper and agree on a cost before getting in. No need to bargain because the fares are always low, usually two or three dollars to go almost anywhere in Lima, and the drivers are honest. One time I heard a fare quoted that I thought was too high and I said “gracias no” and closed the door.
Two operative words in Lima are Pisco sour (Peru’s national drink) and ceviche. You have to watch the Pisco sours, they’re delicious and go down so easily you want to keep drinking, but keep going and you’re in trouble. Lima is world famous for its ceviche, in all types and forms including beef ceviche, sounds weird but it’s delicious.
We spent our first day in Lima exploring the central district visiting the Pisco Museum where I had the best Pisco sour ever, the Choco (chocolate and cacao) Museum, the Plaza de Armas and several churches. We hired a guide, Luis for ten dollars and he filled us in on Lima history, churches, etc. We ended the day with drinks (Pisco of course) at the Huaca Pucllana restaurant looking out over floodlit ruins, an amazing ceviche dinner at El Senorio Sulca on the malecon and then a walk along the malecon watching the lights across the bay. A nice beginning for Lima.
Because Lima is only three hours ahead of California (the same time zone as New York), we really didn’t have any jet lag. On our second day in Lima we explored Miraflores with its many shops and restaurants and spent the afternoon at the Museo Larco, set in an 18th century mansion and displaying thousands of ceramic works from all of Peru’s pre-Columbian cultures. Included were two rooms full of erotic pottery showing creative sexual positions from these people who lived thousands of years ago. A bonus was the excellent restaurant attached to the museum. Dinner was at Pescados Capitales in Central Lima where we had an innovative ceviche and risotto. We capped the night with drinks at the rooftop bar in our hotel overlooking the lights of Miraflores.
The next day, our third in Lima, we taxi’d to Barranco which is Lima’s Greenwich Village and is just five minutes from Miraflores. It was a Sunday afternoon and families were strolling the streets and parks filling the restaurants and cafes. We first went to the Museo Mario Testino which exhibits large photos of celebrities throughout the world, including the last photos taken of Princess Diana in a specially arranged all day session. We had never heard of Mario Testino but apparently he’s a big deal photographer and his huge color photos are impressive.
We were strolling the streets watching Peruvians celebrate their Sunday afternoon and looking for a restaurant that Misti had found in Lonely Planet, when we came upon Ventarron restaurant. It looked nice from the outside and was very crowded, a good sign, so we went in. An excellent lunch of Chicalayan food, and as we were leaving the owner, Marco Gasco, approached and told us the story of Ventarron, a city 3,000 years ago on the Northern Peruvian coast occupied by the Chavin culture. Marco spoke good English, had lived in California for two years and attended UC Berkeley. He was excited to learn we were going north and might see the namesake city of his restaurant. We ended the evening with dinner at Rosa Nautique, a waterfront restaurant with views of Lima Bay in a New England type setting.
A bit of bad luck in Lima. We travel a great deal, and considering we’ve gone to many countries some might consider “unsafe”, we’ve been amazingly lucky in not having had problems with crime. The last was fifteen years ago in St. Petersburg where someone stole Misti’s fanny pack that had nothing of value in it. That luck changed in downtown Lima. Walking down a central street with crowds of people, I was bumped into by a young man. When it happened I should have realized what had just occurred, but I didn’t react as I should have. Moments later I went for my phone to take a photo and realized that my phone was gone. My fault because after taking the photo I inadvertently put it in a back pocket which was an easy grab.
Not a big deal because I was only using the phone to take photos and it wasn’t set up for international calling; we were using Misti’s phone for calls. Thanks to my son Mike’s insistence that I use a password, the phone was locked and it couldn’t be used. Mike contacted Apple to make sure it was secure and I checked with an Apple store in Lima and was told the phone was “dead” and would only be good as a paperweight.
Since we had seen Cuzco and Machu Picchu years ago, we decided we’d explore the northern coast of Peru driving up to Trujullo taking in several major archeological sites along the way. We laid out a rough plan and since we had no hotel reservations knew we could change it as we went. Before leaving the US we had reserved a four by four SUV through Europcar which we picked up at the Lima airport. It was nice that they upgraded us to a Toyota Four-runner, which is beefy and much like Toyota’s Landcruiser.
Leaving Lima wasn’t easy. The Pan-American highway going north was clogged with traffic; huge trucks and buses spewing diesel fumes and some of the worst congestion I’ve ever seen. I had read in Lonely Planet to expect difficult driving because of the aggressive drivers, so I expected driving to be challenging and wasn’t disappointed.
Driving here, especially in Lima, isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to quickly get up to speed- their speed- adapt to what I call “fender to fender” driving where everyone constantly cuts you off, and not be timid. With full focus and both hands on the wheel it’s doable, even fun. It reminds me of bumper or scooter car driving in amusement parks, and the amazing thing is, we saw no accidents. While there are police with roadblocks on the highways checking for security, they don’t seem interested in speeding or crazy driving.
We had a late start leaving Lima and since we didn’t want to drive at night we decided to stay in the first town of any size with hotels, which was Huacho, about two hours north of Lima. We got a room at the Villa Santa Maria, the biggest suite they had, for a pricey $70, but it was comfortable. The hotel manager, Bety, felt I was fluent enough in Spanish that she could rattle away, not realizing I mostly had no idea what she was saying. Trying to get the wifi password (codigo) and directions to a restaurant in her machine-gun Spanish was a comedy act.
We took a moto-taxi (in Asia they’re called tuk-tuks) for a meal at a seaside restaurant with a big sign advertising “Pescados-Mariscos (Fish-Seafood) although they didn’t have either, so we settled for chicken.
We had rented a Garmin GPS through Europcar, Misti had the Genius GPS app on her iPad and Google maps on her iPhone, but even with all this GPS we still had problems finding places, perhaps because the remote areas we were in weren’t mapped. Several times we hired a moto taxi, paid a dollar or two and followed them to our destination. I coined a new word for this - “moto-taxi navigation”- better than GPS.
We realized that going north after Huacho there were no decent towns with hotels or restaurants, so we decided to go straight on to Trujillo , about a seven hour drive.
On hotels.com Misti found the Hotel Libratadore on the Plaza de Armas, the main square, and booked a room for two nights. After driving through a number of dirty looking towns, when we finally got to the hotel and the plaza, we thought we had found heaven. The city of Truijillo is a gem with wonderful colonial buildings and the hotel Libertadore was outstanding in every way. We liked it so much we opted for a third night which gave us time to take a nice break.
Northern Peru is quite desolate and its main attraction is the pre Inca ruins going back several thousand years. Chan Chan (means sun-sun) near Trujillo is the largest city of the pre-Columbian era and was the capital of the Chimor peoples from 900 to 1400 AD, before it was conquered by the Incas. There was never any battle between the two civilizations but rather the Incas laid siege and cut off the city’s water forcing the Chimor to capitulate.
We decided it would be easier to hire a driver and guide to tour Chan Chan rather than my driving and getting lost. A driver with car and guide for a full day cost $90. Our guide Oscar was in his late 50’s, he spoke good English and gave us a nice tour of both Chan Chan and Huacha de Luna, the home of the Moches going back about 2,000 years. Oscar became my buddy and in addition to information about the ruins he gave me pointers on my Spanish and I did the same for his English.
We left Trujillo and headed south toward Caral, claimed to be the most ancient city in the Americas, going back roughly 5,000 years or to the time the pyramids were being built in Egypt. We wanted to break up the long eight hour drive from Trujillo to Caral , so chose Chimbote, about three hours south of Trujillo and one of the few larger cities along the coast, for an overnight. Lonely Planet didn’t have much good to say about Chimbote but we found a good hotel online and snagged a large suite for $60 with breakfast. It was near the Plaza Mayor where we found a nice restaurant for our nightly pisco sours and dinner. Not surprisingly, we were far from any English speakers but our Spanish worked fine.
The next day as we headed south on the Panamerican highway, we turned into several small fishing villages along the coast, including one called Dancing Turtles (tortugas baile), and were delighted to see small, primitive towns that looked the way Mexican fishing villages did fifty or more years ago. These are not in Lonely Planet or on the maps we had, which is likely why they haven’t as yet been discovered by tourists.
Caral is about an hour off the Panamerican highway in the middle of nowhere with no hotels or anything else nearby, except for the recently opened Empedrada Lodge. We had read about the lodge online and it sounded interesting. It was built more than a hundred years ago as a huge hacienda, at one time was occupied by the president of Peru, and recently was turned into a high-end resort. Finding the hotel and Caral was a challenge and included narrow almost impassable roads and fording two rivers, which was fine with our high clearance four-wheel drive Four-runner. Since our GPS didn’t know where we were we followed photos the hotel had emailed us.
A highlight at the hotel was our meeting Steven and Nathalie and their eleven year old son Fin. We had gone a couple of days without hearing any English and our ears perked up when we heard it spoken. Steven is from Australia, Nathalie is originally from Germany and they’ve lived in Lima for the past five years. They invited us to join them for dinner and we talked the evening away, including some banter about our now one day old new president.
After breakfast the next day, we followed Steven and Nathalie to Caral, since they were more adept using Google maps. It took the better part of an hour to travel less than fifteen miles on a road that is more goat path than road.
The Sacred City of Caral-Supe is the oldest enter of civilization in the Americas, going back 5,000 years, and because it is situated on a dry desert and for millennia was covered by sand, it’s especially well preserved. It covers a very large area and you can only see it with a guide. Unfortunately there were no English-speaking guides available, since the site gets very few English-speaking visitors. So we tagged along with a Spanish-speaking guide with Nathalie translating for us. It was quite sunny and hot and after about forty-five minutes we decided we’d seen enough and returned to our car. We said our goodbyes to Steven and Nathalie with the understanding that we’d see them again in Lima.
We left the Hotel Empedrada the following morning, after breakfast on the terrace for our last valley views, and headed toward Lima, about a three-hour drive. We were planning to return the car to the airport and taxi to our hotel in Lima, the Hotel Adiana in Miraflores. About seventy miles north of Lima we came upon hundreds of trucks and buses stopped on the highway. I zipped to the front of the line and learned that workers on strike had closed the Panamerican highway for more than four hours. Luckily the police had it cleared in less than an hour and we continued on our way.
We arrived at the Casa Adiana Hotel mid afternoon and checked into an enormous two room suite, much nicer than we expected. Nathalie and her son Fin picked us up the following afternoon and gave us a tour of Barranco and we packed that night for our flight to Santiago.
Art Faibisch
January 29, 2017
