We left our gas station overnight spot at quarter to eight with the prospect of an hour long drive on a bumpy dirt road to Caral, the sacred city.
Pavement ran out soon enough and not unexpectedly. We were told the drive was a rough dirt road with a river crossing but we had also heard Caral is said to be part of a complex older than any other city in the world so we couldn’t pass that up.
You’ve heard of Machu Picchu, Quechua for “old peak,” but you’ve never heard of Caral and neither had we until some other overlanders told us about it. Apparently the government isn’t ready to invest in these sites so there isn’t much money to dig so there’s no money to build an approach road to attract tourists.
We bounced along for an hour covering about 14 miles, as we don’t rush on our very long journey.
The locals live Biblical lives.
And finally we arrived at the turn off.
We didn’t get far on the two mile approach road to the ancient city before we encountered a problem.
So don’t need four wheel drive to cross South America? Not at all but if you choose to do it in a comfortable heavy bus there are some compromises and this was one.
Possibly we could have made it through the mud and water. However had we got stuck there was no sign of help and we have thousands of miles to go.
There was nowhere to turn around once committed to the river and I was interested in damaging our home with thousand of miles to go just to reach Ushuaia never mind driving home.
I thought about parking and walking but there was nowhere I felt safe parking our GANNET2 so we backed up and returned the way we’d come. We passed a Dutch Sprinter van on the approach road and I waved and got nothing back. I would have liked to stop and chat but they were gone.
They had a high clearance four wheel drive so I expect they had no problem. We talked about parking GANNET2 and renting a pick up and driver but we found a better alternative and headed to the coast.
The town of Supe is home to another part of the Caral archeological complex.
Áspero (“AH-spay-row”) was much easier to get to and we were the only visitors yesterday.
Our guide Jaime has worked here for 18 years helping uncover the secrets of this town that once had 4,000 inhabitants. He described it as the fishing port that supplied the agricultural town of Caral 12 miles inland with fish.
They in turn traded agricultural products with Áspero and provided vegetables and cotton for the fishing community to make clothing and the nets they used. Below we have samples of floats and weights they used to set nets just off the beach.
They also created string bags to hold rocks together to build their monuments and the structures we see today in the sand dunes.
They made flutes out of bird bones and fish hooks out of animal bones too. Apparently they left evidence of trading with people in Ecuador and Amazonia, shells and feathers have been found from both those distant areas.
This site is believed to be 5,000 years old indicating a sophisticated town was here before more famous structures found in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and there is no evidence these isolated South Americans had any contact with contemporary cultures outside Peru.
Áspero was discovered in 1973 by an American archeologist. Robert Feldman first scraped the soil back from what is known as the pre-ceramic site but he created a huge problem in so doing.
This whole area had been used as a trash dump and it took thirty years to clear 8400 tons of garbage spread across these dunes. Unimpeded excavation began in 2004.
Jaime said it was a hell of a job clearing the accumulated trash. Archeologists discovered teen tombs here, below, a man and a woman apparently of high caste he of thirty years of age and she of forty. There is also another tomb being dug out at this location.
That third tomb is visible below in the middle of the photo where some reed matting is barely visible. These people buried their nobles in reed blankets apparently.
The city located here 5,000 years ago survived in fishing and the Pacific Ocean lapped the shore of the community where red beds grow today. The Supe River provided freshwater coming down the valley from the left.
Just like other cultures around the world built pyramids so for these people with a circular space in front for their ceremonies:
Archeologists have discovered areas where fish were salted and cooked.
The reeds called “totora” below.
A solar clock similar in so many respects to similar structures around the world, telling time and dates by the casting of shadows.
Below you can see the mud and waggle tupe construction seen in all buildings at Caral inland and almost all the buildings here. However there is one structure that does not have the reinforcing reeds in the mud mixture and that structure does not hold up as well as the ones that do.
For that reason scientists think this is the oldest building in the world, the first experimental structure built by these inhabitants formed into a city well before other ancient sites found around the world.
Pretty mind boggling.
And do we said farewell to Jaime and CB pondered how well ancient peoples did in this land and how poorly things techie in modern Peru.
We stopped for lunch, a rather bloated affair…
…a pork chop and a vast heap of pesto pasta for me…
…and a huge heap of fried fish on a bed of fried yuca for Layne. We stuffed our fridge with leftovers as you can imagine.
We traveled an hour south on the coastal freeway, the PanAmerican Highway, to the port of Chancay where there is a hotel that provides an overnight refuge to overlanders.
Snug at last. Tomorrow we tackle getting past Lima the sprawling capital on the coast with a reputation for dreadful traffic.
