El Caral

My first experience traveling outside of Lima brought me 3 hours up the coast to the ancient ruins of Caral. The city slowly fell away as the bus drove north, giving rise to sand dunes and rocky mountains, covered with clusters of huts and pueblos. I have never seen a desert like this one, with pure sand and zero vegetation. Lima is technically part of this desert, but you'd never know it from all the grass and palm trees. Of course, this is only possible through frequent irrigation. The coast was on our left, and we got occasionally glimpses of the sea as we climbed into what seemed like another planet.

I didn't notice how very silent the country was until I heard the rush of water. Green sprouted up around us, and we were in the Supe Valley, home of Caral. In the fields, people were cultivating crops as well as livestock - mostly goats it seemed. There were also lots of horses, donkeys, and dogs. On either side of the lush valley rose rocky mountains (foot hills, really, but to my Wisconsin eyes they were mountains), a reminder that the desert stretched out endlessly around us. A rickety ride on the rocky country road brought us to the archeological site.

We hiked away from the river valley, out into the desert and the merciless sun, where the city of Caral once lay. It is supposedly the 3rd oldest civilization on earth, after Mesopotamia and Egypt, and was built around 2500 BC. It consists of a large semicircle of pyramids make of rock. The pyramids were tiered and probably served as religious meeting places for the citizens of Caral. My favorite site was the "reloj del sol" or sun dial that was positioned in front of one of the pyramids. It was a simple large stone embedded in the earth, but somehow, it made the people of Caral seem more real to me. Such a human thing to chronicle time. Some of the artifacts they found there included flutes and 16 vertebrates of a whale, which they think were used to sit on. Crazy! The cool thing about this site was that, unlike La Huaca Pucllana in Lima, you could get a true idea of the size of the city. The tour took about an hour and a half, which should give you an idea of the size and spread of the city and it's pyramids. At one point there was a beautiful vista looking down into the vibrant river valley, and at other times you could feel the desolation of the desert and it's surrounding cruel mountains. The pyramids were dwarfed by the size of these hills, but their grandeur still remained a testament to the lives of those who had lived there.