That face of Peru eluded me until the very end. For me, Peru was the luxury and comfort of Miraflores, the maddening chaos of Chiclayo, the thick nostalgia of Arequipa. And then, there was Cusco. In Peru, there are three options on the menu. You can have the Andean Peru you were expecting. Fatigued of both Andes and Amazon, I tended toward the middle option. I visited two cities cities in this region on my way south to Lima. One was worth my time, and one was not. Even so, I had fun with my my host there, a year-old microbiologist named Alyss below.
I was really touched by his dedication to his darling grandma, with whom he shares everything, including his bed. I had to rush out of Chiclayo before the upcoming Peruvian elections left me stranded there. On the opposite side of Trujillo, lie the ruins of two enormous pyramidal temples built by the emperors of the ancient Moche civilization beginning in AD.
The Moche decorated their temples with colorful polychromatic friezes depicting themes central to their religion and culture, such as ritual human sacrifice and the supreme deity with an octopus body and human head. In keeping with the old maxim, Lima is what you make of it.
What are these mansard roofs doing in Latin America? Lima has enough baroque and renaissance architecture to rival any European capital.
The main drawback of Lima is the ungodly traffic. On my first day, it took me 2 hours by bus to cover a distance that would have taken 20 minutes in any other city.
