Perú I – The North

Still daydreaming about Galápagos, we got ourselves into an 18hr journey that took us to the peaceful, fishermen town of Huanchaco, in the north of Perú. The ride there was very interesting, with arid Andean hills on the left and pure desert and dunes extending to the very Pacific Ocean on the right. It was difficult to imagine older civilisations surviving in such dry conditions!

Whilst the main attractions close to Huanchaco are the pre-Incan ruins of Chan-Chan, Huasca del Sol and Huasca de la Luna, we found the town a relax gem with plenty of photography opportunities.

Amazing sunsets in Huanchaco

Being in low season really helped to create this feel, but so did the yummiest dessert we’ve had on this trip so far, the homemade cremoladas from our host Carlos. Half a sorbet, half a smoothie and with plenty of chunks of whatever fruit (and chocolate) you can imagine, it has definitely earned a spot in the top 3 of the dessert category. Check trip advisor, we’re not the only ones raving about it!

Huanchaco is also quite famous for its gentle surf, although locals sport a different type of board here, the Caballito de Totora (Totora’s little horse).

This watercraft is a canoe made of reed and it’s been used to fish for 3000 years! It’s just admirable that fishermen still use them, considering how much easier fishing would be with a modern boat. If you don’t fear the freezing peruvian current, the fishermen will take you out for a few soles.

The favourite catch there is the crab, and the dish of choice, the Cangrejo Reventado (blown up crab). They crash the crabs open so they release their yummy juices and scramble them with eggs and the superhealthy seaweed, hand-picked by locals at the shore. A real treat!

A local hand-picking seaweed

nyom nyom nyom

We loved Peruvian food (if you hadn’t realised already) and it met the expectations for its reputation, so we decided to stop in the local market of Trujillo, a bigger sized town nearby, to try the local almuerzos. Arroz con mariscos (rice with seafood) is probably the closest dish to paella we’ve ever tried. They served it to us after an unasked, unexpected but very welcome spicy ceviche…and we couldn’t finish it! It was so nice that we took the leftovers in a doggy bag so we could keep eating at the ruins, haha.

The ruins of Chan-Chan, declared world heritage site by UNESCO in 1986, were different to everything we had seen so far. While they’re not as impressive as the colossal Mayan temples, the fact that they were built with adobe (it’s the largest city made of adobe, 30,000 people lived there) and are surrounded by desert, gives them a very untouched feel.

The famous adobe walls in Chan-Chan

 

Sea motifs decorate most of the walls

 

Chan-Chan was a city built by the Chimus, a pre-incan civilisation that inhabited the north of Perú between 1100 and 1470aD, when they were conquered by the Incas. Every time a new king rose, the previous premises were abandoned and a different palace was built. Up to 40% of the space was destinated to storing tax collections in the form of ceramics, salt, textile and fish. Imagine the stink under a 35°C sun!

The tomb of the king.. his 2 closest wives were buried with him. The remaining 88 (yes, wives) were buried in smaller tombs around it.

 

However, corridors, walls and holes were designed to bring the sea breezes into these sections of the palace and keep stuff cool.

Our guide was quite lazy and when he realised we were speaking both in English and Spanish I was asked to work as a translator during the tour… I managed to get the tour for free in exchange, so it worked out quite well!

Hipster chimus…designing with pixels before it was cool.

Following the tradition, we became friends with another dog, this time a Peruvian dog! This breed is quite special, they look wrinkly and old because they’re almost hairless and their body temperature is 40°C..apparently they were used as hot water bags and to help cure diseases.

This is a real hot dog

In the afternoon we moved to Huasca de la Luna and Huasca del Sol. These ruins belong to the Moche culture, who inhabited the area between 200 and 700 aD, and were used for ceremonies (including human sacrifices after a ball game – quite similar to the Mayans), and administrative purposes respectively.

The moche god Aiapaec – adored and feared, he was known as the beheader

Huasca del Sol remains mostly unexplored due to the lack of funds but you can easily tell that there’s a huge temple waiting to be discovered under this hill.

Huasca de la Luna was really cool to walk through. In this case, when a new king rose, instead of moving to a whole new palace, they filled the old one with adobe and built another one ontop. This practice kept going for 5 generations of kings, so it was really cool to see the colourful, well preserved walls from previous dynasties uncovered after so many years.

The different levels have been excavated and emptied and are visible now

In contrast to Chan-Chan, the building rose for 5 levels instead of being flat, so it was great to witness such different styles separated by just a few kilometers.

The wall of myths in Huasca de la Luna

Outer walls of Huasca de la Luna

By the way, the mode of transport of choice was the colectivo. Its drivers and “ayudantes” (assistants) are really stressed in the north of Perú as they have to complete their laps in a certain time. To make sure they achieve it, the assistant has to sprint to different checkpoints scattered in the route to get a stamp on the time card within the time limit. Missing the time or the checkpoint means losing the earnings of the entire lap. Riding on them was quite an adventure in itself!

After this dose of culture and heat we headed to Huaraz on an overnight bus. We loved a bus company called “Linea” because they played the gags from “Just for laughs” on their TV’s, so much fun! Huaraz is a hiking destination nestled in Cordillera Blanca and our first test at altitude.

Trout farm in Huaraz

The town itself is quite boring – except for a trout farm by the river – unless you’re into clubbing, so we got ourselves into the first hike to Laguna 69, a stunning, turquoise hidden lagoon at 4,450m.

Laguna de Llanganuco at the beginning of the hike

Huascarán mountain, over 6,700 metres – south side

Huascarán – north side

To all those dirty minds, the name comes from the lack of imagination in Perú, they just numbered the different lagoons instead of giving them names.

The hike to the laguna took us a good 4hrs and lots of coca leaf chewing (more on the coca leaves soon! It deserves a post by itself!).

We made it!

After this exhausting hike, we went for another day trip to Chavín de Huantar, with a stopover at the picturesque Lake Querococha.

Chavín de Huantar is an archeological site with temples built around 1200BC and used until 400-500 BC from the pre-incan Chavín culture, once a pilgrimage destination and now quite popular among experience seekers.

Chavín de Huantar ruins

A hallucinogenic drink is prepared with the cactus called San Pedro, offerings are made to the Pachamama and several day courses meant to find and connect your inner chacras are held there. While we respect all these practices, we didn’t have the time and money to undertake them but, we took the tour and learnt a lot about their architecture, culture and customs.

The state of conservation is far from ideal (they don’t receive any help from the government while it pockets all the proceedings), but walking through the maze-like corridors where they performed the sacrifices was really cool.

The most important piece in the ruins is the Lanzón Gallery, located at the very center of the corridors, contained a sculpture of the Lanzón, which is assumed to be a supreme deity of Chavín de Huantar. The figure is anthropomorphic, with a feline head and human body and this is where they poured the blood from the sacrificed.

El lanzón, still hidden in the middle of the maze of corridors

It’s quite interesting to see that Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, Chavins, etc, they always designed their temples to be aligned with the moon cycles and sun solstices and equinocces. While they prayed to different gods, the reference to the mother earth (Pachamama) is common and still respected by all, despite the efforts from the Spanish to establish catholicism by force and fear.

The only cabeza clava still standing in its original place – they represented mythical creatures from the Chavín culture

Local assembly in Huantar town

An example to this is the first sip of any beverage (especially alcoholic) being tipped to the ground, a flower or a tree, giving back to earth a little that we took from it. Might look stupid to throw your whisky away…but we find it a nice tradition!

After some exciting days around Huaraz we took the longest bus ride yet, 9 hours to Lima, where we spent 8hrs visiting the coast (Miraflores suburb), and then 21hrs more to Cusco, our next destination!

Miraflores cliffs – Lima

Parque del amor in Miraflores

Until then, mucho amor from Sal & Xavi.

PS: we booked our flights to Barcelona, arriving on the 24th of March, wohooo!!!

Ecuador II – Galápagos

We normally keep a tight ship with the travel budget, but once we got to Ecuador, the proximity to the Galápagos twisted our arms until we said…stuff it, let’s just go! Growing up being enthralled by nature documentaries and basically animals in general, it was a real dream to be able to go and experience it first hand!

The Galápagos are made up of about 13 main islands that sit 1000kms off the coast of Ecuador on top of a three-way tectonic plate junction – hence all the volcanic activity. It’s a crazy place because in the scheme of things, the islands are fairly young, and the animals living there have generally developed apart from human influence or that of any other large land-dwelling predators. As a result, the animals are really not afraid of people and in fact in some places we had to be really careful not to step on sleeping iguanas, birds nests or sea lions!

We really wanted to do a liveaboard dive cruise, but they are ridiculously expensive, so chasing last minute deals from Quito, we settled on a normal non-diving cruise doing the northern route. It is also possible to visit Galápagos via land staying in hostels and getting ferries between the islands, but we wanted to make the most of the time to see as many islands as possible, get to remote spots, and as a plus on the cruise you have a local naturalist guide for the whole trip.

On our first day, we visited North Seymour Island to see the frigate birds, blue-footed boobies, land iguanas and the first of many many sea lions. The frigate birds are pretty cool, not only do the males have crazy red throat sacks for attracting their mates, but they eat fish without ever getting into the water! Basically, they either catch flying fish, or they practice kleptoparasitism…bullying other birds to force them to release or even regurgitate their food – gross! Anyway, the first day was a bit of an overload, animals and photo opportunities everywhere but we were soon convinced that this was only the beginning.

Land Iguana

On Santa Cruz Island, the main attraction was the famous Galápagos tortoises. We went out to a farm in the highlands where they are roaming all over the place and in fact the farmers have had to raise the lower rung on their fences to allow the tortoises to pass without wrecking their fences! These guys may be slow, but they’re strong – they can weigh up to 250kg with the shell itself being approx 50kg!

They’re even bigger than Xavi!!

This one is for you Jorge!

We also visited the Charles Darwin Research Station, which was the previous home to Lonesome George, the last giant Pinta Island tortoise who died at the grand old age of 100 in 2012. Since losing a few of the unique species of tortoises to extinction (they were apparently great for food and lamp oil in the 17th-19th centuries), the research stations breeding programs retreive eggs and raise the little tortoises for 2 – 5 years before releasing them back to their original habitat.

After a rough night of motoring which resulted a lot of dinner being left uneaten (no-one told us it would be soo rough!), we woke up on the west side, by Isabella Island. This was our favourite day of the trip!! In the morning we wandered across harsh, dry lava fields with a small brackish lagoon in the middle. You wouldn’t think anything would be able to live there, but there’s a family of elegant pink flamingoes.

Then in our first snorkelling session at Urbina Bay we saw an amazing variety of interesting creatures! To start with the sea lions are like dogs with their huge inquisitive eyes are playful nature, we could have spent hours blowing bubbles and playing with them, but there was more to see. Galapagos Penguins, zoomed by us while fishing, turtles cruised by at a much more relaxed pace and the Flightless Cormorants swam around underwater chasing small fish and checking under ledges for octopus.

Flightless Cormorant – excellent swimmers and they hold their breath for longer than we can!

Galápagos Penguin

The highlight of Fernandina Island were the marine iguanas. In response to the harsh, dry conditions on the island, these guys evolved from the land iguana to swim and eat marine algae. However because their bodies still can’t handle ingesting such large quantities of salt, they spend their days basking in the sun and spitting it out their nostrils. Imagine the show with more than 20 iguanas per square metre.

On the following days, we visited Santiago and Rábida Islands taking in more and more diverse landscapes and animals, including visits from whales and dolphins while on our way there.

El Obispo / The Bishop

Fur seals on Isla Santiago

The most striking feature of Isla Rábida is the red sand beach which is a result of the high iron content of the lava there. There were also plenty of sea lions lolling on the beach or wanting to play fetch with sticks in the water. While snorkelling there we also saw our first shark, a Galápagos Shark, which a sea lion proceeded to chase away so it could stay the centre of attention.

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For the last island visit of the cruise we were taken north (another whole night of motoring) to Genovesa Island to see the Nazca Boobies, Red-footed Boobies and Tropic birds. Due to the lack of land based predators on the island, the birds nest on the ground or on low bushes. The mother birds were mostly all out fishing leaving the fluffy white babies behind to fend for themselves. Sadly, we saw a couple of cases where the mother didn’t come back, and they died of starvation waiting. However, most of the little ones were really inquisitive, staring at us with their beady eyes hoping we might deliver them some sort of fishy meal.

After an amazing seven days on the seas, we were dropped back at the airport with wobbly legs. We made our way to Puerto Ayora on the south of Santa Cruz where we had organised an airbnb stay and a few scuba dives. With an afternoon to kill before the dives the following day, we walked out on a trail through national park to Tortuga Bay, and unexpectedly came across the prettiest beach of the trip so far! It had beautiful flour like white sand, turquoise water and for Galápagos novelty effect, marine iguanas strolling along the beach and swimming in the waves.

Five ocean currents converge at the Galápagos islands. The Equatorial, Cromwell, Humboldt, and Panama currents create variable water temperatures and unpredictable tides in the area resulting in a unique marine life. What really attracted us was a chance to dive with some big creatures, especially hammerhead sharks and it didn’t disappoint.

After a 2.5hr boat ride to Floreana Island, complete with people spewing over the side, we were treated to banks of endemic black striped salema (they surround you like a funnel), schools of barracuda, whitetip reef sharks, sealions, seahorses and nudibranchs. The current was so strong it was like diving on fast forward when going with it, a real workout swimming into it or like being in a washing machine when we held onto a rock for a rest or to get a better look at something.

Gordon Rocks is one of the famed dive sites for spotting hammerheads and a school of about 25 were roaming about when we were there. Luckily, thanks to the abundance of food in the Galápagos, they just swam right by us totally uninterested. They weren’t as big as we had imagined them, between 2.5 to 3 metres, but they’re the smallest out of the 5 different hammerhead species. Still, we will always treasure the few minutes we were hovering among them, staring at their routine laps around Gordon Rocks.

While in some parts of Galápagos we found the walking paths and allowed areas on the islands a bit restrictive, when you realise it’s for the protection of the animals, their eggs or nesting areas it makes sense. I think the best way to describe the experience of visiting Galápagos is that it’s like being on the inside of a zoo! It was a dream come true and definitely worth the extra expense. We’d go back to do the South route in an instant, but for now it’s back to budget and onwards to Perú!

Love Xavi & Sal