PERU: FROM MOUNTAINS TO VERY JUNGLES

South America is probably the most mysterious and exotic continent on my personal map. I only visited Peru but was blessed with an opportunity to see different parts of the mysterious Inca Empire (not just touristish Machu Picchu). I want my travel story to follow the route of our adventure that started from the capital Lima, went on high into the mountains to Cusco, and culminated in the Peruvian jungles.

Join me through reading because you will like that virtual acquaintance with Peru, and maybe will want to see it for yourself one day. As per usual, my posts are rich in cool historical facts, true cultural patterns, and my own impressions. Keyword for this post are: riddles-riddles, the Spanish, architecture, altitude sickness, corn+potato, wild jungles. It will be fun.

Let's start it formal and official with the capital

Say hi to Lima. Even though the capital has a distinctive Hispanic-ish feel, there are still some architectural echoes of the past. You can notice these subtle patterns while traveling from the airport to downtown: traces of how the Inca Empire was taken over by La Conquista and eventually formed the modern Peru.

The city was part of the Inca Empire (that briefly existed from the 13th till the 16th century), when in 1535 a Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro who overtook Peru as part of La Conquista (Spanish Colonization of the Americas) made it a capital. A clear case of the harsh realities of colonialism with the grimmest consequences for the indigenous people who faced genocide and a total cultural wipeout.

Yet nowadays, when it's been almost 200 years since Peru's independence from Spain, Lima is a major financial centre of the whole Latin America. Situated in a unique climatic unity of tropics and desert, life in the capital is humid and stuffy. Due to the country's geographical position, Peru has a diversity of climates consisting of mountain ranges, coastal regions, deserts, and jungles.

The economic landscape, largely influenced by the descendants of the Inca civilization, is marked by a significant focus on agricultural and fishing exports. Notable products are artichokes, grapes, avocados, mangoes, alongside the exportation of natural resources such as copper, silver, gold, and timber. The services sector, particularly telecommunications and finance, constitutes a substantial portion of the national GDP.

Sad observation: locals have a pretty strong colonial sentiment and are clearly not fond of Americans, who, in their words, exploit Peru. They are involved in the illicit cultivation of the coca plant, from which cocaine is derived and purportedly shipped to the USA. Very few people speak English, though it's obvious that they understand you, they just prefer to stick to Spanish no matter what :) Makes sense, as Spanish is the official language spoken by 82.6% of the population, followed by the indigenous Quechua language, spoken by 13.9%.

Amazingness alert for museum junkies

The thing that impressed me most in Lima was the Mujica Gallo Private Gold Collection and Weapons of the World Museum. Despite its lengthy name, it is an absolute gem that demands attention. You can get there only if your guide will let you know about its existence, because the museum isn't a public place but a private collection. I've never been into weapons but those numerous halls filled with ancient swards and handguns of secrets agents made me rethink my interests. The pièce de résistance, however, lay in the abundance of golden artifacts from the glorious days of the Inca civilization. From statues to jewelry to gloves crafted from pure goldddddd.

Also I was lucky to catch the Lima Independence Day celebration on 28th of July. They had a grand parade, a tradition embraced by many nations with military histories. One of the highlights of the festivities was a captivating display of supersonic military jets, skillfully slicing through the sky above the ocean. In the picture below, you can watch me capturing those exhilarating ultrasonic waves of air.

Oh, food, you are the essence of life (lunch break before the serious Cusco part)

Ok, exaggeration, but it's much needed fuel for our bodies. Before my journey to Peru, my expectations were limited to churros and corn, revealing the extent of my knowledge about the country, which was, frankly, quite pathetic.

It's a common stereotype to associate this country with corn. Originally, corn was domesticated by peoples in Mexico 10,000 years ago and 'mastered' by ancient Peruvians only 3,500 years ago. Various climates and a bit of wit allowed farmers to grow that universal crop in 55 varieties today. It is cooked and consumed in all possible ways: boiled, grilled, ground, fermented. Nowadays, corn is more than food, it's one of the most used ingredients in the world utilized in the production of ethanol, feedstock, corn syrup, vinegar, shoe polish, soap, and many more.

Yet, the true culinary superstar in Peru is potato. Its story begins on the Titikaka lake, where locals spotted this vegetable and started cultivating it. Forget about 55 varieties of corn, there are over 10,000 types of potato grown in the Andean highlands of Peru. This staple food bears a near sacred status in Peru. Different communities trade special varieties of potatoes and gift them at weddings and celebrations. Anddddd, there is a National Potato Day celebrated on 30 May each year!

Honestly speaking, the national cuisine (heavy on potato) wasn't to my taste. Except for salmon ceviche (raw marinated fish) and a pisco sour cocktail.

Cusco! The historical and galactic capital of the Inca Empire

High in the Andes mountains, 3,400 meters above the sea level, lies the city of Cusco. Upon landing, the first thing that struck me most wasn't the breathtaking highland views. It was the inability to literally breath. That's how I learnt about the existence of an altitude sickness, the hard way.

To a person who never had breathing and blood pressure problems, it was an entirely new kind of nightmare. This condition, triggered by a low percentage of oxygen high at high altitudes, brought forth the most intense headaches I had ever experienced. Huge thanks to the local pharmacy for providing magic altitude sickness pills that instantly relieved my suffering.

Amidst the challenges of altitude, Cusco stands as a city rich in history and dotted with remnants of a once-mighty empire. Serving as the Inca Empire's historic capital during its brief three-century existence (13th to 16th century), Cusco witnessed the enforcement of Spanish culture by conquistadors, forever altering the fate of the indigenous population. Just take a moment to consider how people around year 1400 would erect large-scale urban constructions in the heart of the mountains with no knowledge of iron and steel? Still no clear answer to that.

The Inca's riddles

Ancient locals had their own way of engineering things, which is now called Inca stone masonry. The most common shape is a rectangular building without any internal walls but roofed with wooden beams. The Inca crafted these structures with precision using stone, bronze, or copper tools, often splitting stones along natural fracture lines. Walk through the streets of Cusco, and you'll encounter humble stone walls standing alongside modern buildings for over six centuries, held together with a mysterious Lego-like fit—no mortar required. The Inca's stone-cutting technique, still a puzzle today, becomes even more perplexing when considering the fact how they were lifting and transporting these ancient constructions.

Another riddle is an extensive system of roads – 25,000 miles! (for the comparison, the longest USA highway is just 3,365 miles). This intricate system connected the entire empire, with people traveling mostly on foot or occasionally on alpacas. Add here a complex water management system featuring subsurface drainage, and it becomes clear why Inca cities could remain functional even today. The engineering thought was superb, modesty aside. But how? How did people manage to construct such advanced developments without even having a basic writing system?

Enter Quipu! It's something that can be defined as an alternative writing system based on knots. Yes, the Incas used a knot system as a recording devices. Imagine a long thread consisting of coloured threads or strings made from cotton with a different number of knots on them. Those cords with knots were used for bookkeeping and documentation, containing data on tax obligations, calendar information, and so on.

Tax obligations lead us to another interesting staple of the Incan mystery. Their society was functioning without money and markets. How#2, you would ask. Instead of paying taxes in money to the state, the Incas were obliged to pay with their labor. Literally, to get some food a person would need to perform some job from construction to cleaning to anything that needed to be done. For that reason, the Inca Empire is often categorized as an authoritarian socialist state. How did the locals sustain innovative architecture and agriculture within this labor-based economic framework?

Machu Picchu, the most popular word about Peru

Let's finally depart for Machu Picchu and see some architectural marvels for ourselves. By the way, it was recently acclaimed a new wonder of the world, which initially served as a royal estate for the Inca emperor. The location was approximately three days' walk from the Inca capital of Cusco, resting 2,430 meters below in elevation and offering a pleasant climate. It was intended as a place where the Inca emperor and his family could host feasts, perform religious ceremonies, and administer the empire's affairs.

In 1900, a farmer living nearby stumbled across the abandoned ancient site. Perplexed by what he had seen, he decided to keep it a secret to avoid accusations of madness. Then, in 1911, an American explorer made Machu Picchu official to the world – 104 years later, I made my own pilgrimage (; Of course, I chose the laziest route, taking a 3-hour train and a 20-minute bus to reach the 'Lost City of the Incas'.

1. How did the Incas transport and carve those colossal stones at the mountain's summit?
2. Where did they source their water and food? (From Cusco?)
3. Why did the whole civilization vanish overnight?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Amidst the wonders of Machu Picchu, llamas are kings and queens of these highland regions. You can see a pair of them haughtily weaving through the throngs of tourists, adding more mystery to already intense ambience of this place.

Peruvian Amazon and my fear of wild jungles

We decided to take Peru full-on, and included a profound trip down the Peruvian Amazonia, a vast and magnificent rainforest that covers 60% of the country with imaginable and unimaginable biodiversity. We took a 5-day cruise on a modest boat with occasional field trips into the deep jungles on an air boat, guided by two experts armed with a rustic machete and accompanied by my fear of the unknown.

You know what? We were even requested to receive yellow fever vaccinations in our home country. Jungles are a dangerous place. And it only added to my perfect storm of anxiety and anticipation.

Now, let's get back to the Amazon, that mighty river traversing the wild jungles –a landscape familiar to everyone from fairy tales and nature documentaries. Amazon is spread across 9 countries, and Peru was lucky to get a sizable piece of it too. Our journey began in a tiny airport of the lower jungle town of Iquitos. Before the rubber boom of the 1880s, it was a jungle outpost. When the boom ended, lumber and oil export became the major economic activity of the region. However, the area is not without its challenges, as illegal activities related to these commodities continue.

During our cruise, we stopped by a small village nestled in the heart of jungles. I was struck and awed by what I saw. Despite the harsh realities—such as the deadly encounters with anacondas while children play by the water—there exists an authentic and seemingly unattainable happiness among the people. Their genuine joy in the face of an alienated way of life shows such a profound contrast to the complexities of urban living.

My trek into the untames (wild-wild!) jungles ended abruptly after I was shown a super poisonous frog and snake... Add to that the ominous sounds of predators lurking somewhere in the background. As a sensitive and emotional person, it took a mere 15 minutes to burst into tears and beg to return on the boat :(

Another terrifying situation happened during our Amazonian river cruise on a motorboat. Suddenly, a massive anaconda leapt unexpectedly—yes, you read that correctly—vaulting out of the water just centimeters away from our faces O_o