Janet Cohen traveled to Peru with Audley
Butterflies greeted me upon arrival at the riverbank, and the only boat to be seen belonged to a Bolivian family
My Peruvian adventure began in the Amazon — and an adventure it really was, as I found myself the only passenger on a dugout canoe for six hours traveling to the Bolivian border, passing gold dredgers and tranquil stretches of dense jungle. The first bathroom stop was at Bolivian Customs, the young army recruits all with guns laughing at me climbing up the steep muddy riverbank!
Heath River Wildlife Center was my
comfortable base for exploring the
Amazon. Butterflies greeted me upon
arrival at the riverbank and the only boat
to be seen belonged to a Bolivian family,
who used it to collect Brazil nuts. Of the
activities on offer at Heath, seeing blue,
red, green and bronze macaws feeding
at the clay lick at dawn was the most
unforgettable experience.
The second part of my trip was exploring the pre-Inca civilizations of northern Peru, where one day I will return if I am not too old to travel! First stop was the Royal Tomb of Sipán and its accompanying museum, filled with gold, silver, painted pots, textiles and jewels all recovered from the mummies. At the Tucume Pyramids many tombs were still to be excavated, and burial chambers were linked to ancient ceremonies of human sacrifice. It was in the desert here that I also saw an extraordinary owl with its nest on the ground and its young emerging from a hole in the ground.
On to Trujillo, and we made a stop at
the large Moche complex at El Brujo,
and another fascinating museum with
spectacular views of the desert and
navy-blue sea. We also enjoyed a
delicious fresh ceviche lunch, made
from raw sea bass, onions and lemon. My final stop in the north was the
enormous adobe city of Chan Chan —
the largest of its kind in the world and
one-time capital of the pre-Inca Chimu
empire. It was a fitting end to a
fascinating trip that I could never have
organized myself as a single traveler, and
which has left me keen to return to this
wonderful part of the world.
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