Peru

Just started a trip sailing south from Lima, Peru south to Chile and on round Cape Horn and into the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia, Argentina. Peru is together with Egypt the place in the world where you find more ancient cultural remains than any other place. Part of the reason is the very dry climate, but also that Peru over the millenniums been the cradle for advanced cultures such as the Incas and the Nazca people. The coast of Peru is also relatively rich because of the cold Humbolt current that sweep along all the way up to equator. A relatively small part of our itinerary is in Peru, but definately some of the highlights are here. Starting out
from Lima, the colonial capital that Pizzarro made the most important South American city after the Spanish conquest. Lima shows many signs of it being a colonial city with its achitecture, the wooden colony balconies on many of the old buildings has become a symbol for Lima.
For those of you who have visited the equisit cathedral in Toledo, Spain will notice that the Lima cathedral have a downscaled version of the famous choire from Toledo – well, a Roman Catholic cathedral itself is not something the pre-colombians themselves figured they needed. We sailed out of Callao, the giant port of Lima, the most important Pacific port of South America together with Valparaiso in Chile. From there we set course for Islas Ballestas, close to the city Pisco (hence the sour drink...). Islas Ballestas is some small islets with an abundace of seabirds, sea lions and a few Humbolt penguins as inhabitants. It is also occasionally harvested for guano that is used as furtilizer locally. The guano industry used to be big and thousands of tons of guano used to be exported from Peru, round Cape Horn and to Europe in the beginning of the last century. It was often called the nitrate trade. Our purpose being there was to take a zodiac cruise to enjoy the massive wildlife. After, we sailed into Paracas where we landed and took a guided tour with local guides.
The day after we landed in Bahia San Juan to take a bus to see the Nazca Lines, geoglyphs on the Nazca plateu. Geoglyphs are shapes that are layed out in stone, it differes from petroglyphs in the sense that the latter is carvings such as we find after ancient norse cultures several places in Norway. Some of the Nazca Lines are giant and unexplainable using .modern western references. Appreciating them from flights with small Cessna fixed wings are the most effective, but it calls for wondering knowing that the makers, the Nazca people made the lines ages before the Wright brothers came ut with the first flying machines – even well before Christ walked on water... Some of the figures resembles mammals, both terrestial and marine. There is even a figure called the Astronaut. there are also an abundanse of lines and shapes that makes arceologists, mathematichians and other that are supposed to administer modern, western rational thought scratch thein bold head. In Nazca there are also a advanced irrigation system with sub-surface aquaducts that have vents every ten meters so that sections could be repaired in case of earthquakes, aslo originating thousands of years back.
The aquaducts are still in use and I can confirm that the water are still running cold and clean – it is four years since last rainfall in the Nazca Valley! Peru´s most famous archeological site is by far Machu Picchu, but sites like Nazca and Trujillo with it´s adobe city Chan Chan truly makes the country extremely facinating travelling in. Not to mention the beautiful people inhabiting it