The Power of Peru

Instead of taking the more common overland route from Ecuador to the northern coast of Peru, we chose to take the road less traveled through the Northern Highlands of Peru from Vilcabamba, Ecuador to San Ignacio, Jaen, Leimebamba, Celendin and Cajamarca, Peru. Lonely Planet guidebooks often glamorize remote regions in the world. But in the case of the Northern Highlands, they nailed it: “Vast tracts of unexplored jungle and mist-shrouded mountain ranges guard the secrets of the Northern Highlands like a suspicious custodian. Here, Andean peaks and a blanket of luxuriant forests stretch from the coast all the way to the deepest Amazonian jungles. Interspersed with the relics of Inca kings and the jungle-encrusted ruins of cloud-forest-dwelling warriors, connections to these outposts are just emerging from their infancy.”

The border crossing from southern Ecuador into the Northern Highlands of Peru was remote but straightforward. But pretty quickly, we learned that the roads in the Northern Highlands were anything but. For the first few days of driving, the dirt and paved roads were extremely narrow with huge drops into the canyons below. One wrong move would have resulted in certain death. As I drove, Leah looked out the window and told me how many inches we had between the edge of our tires and the edge of the cliff. “4 inches, 2 inches, 3 inches, 1 inch”. When big trucks approached us, we were forced to engage in a game of chicken, the loser of which had to back up on the single lane road until there was space to pull even closer to the edge of the cliff to let the other vehicle pass. Unfortunately, this was a game we often lost. Since few tourists, never mind overlanders, travel to this region, there were no campgrounds and we often found ourselves camping on soccer fields in the middle of indigenous communities.

But despite this stress, overlanding through the Northern Highlands was more than worth it. The region includes numerous amazing waterfalls, including 2 of the 5 highest in the world. It’s also full of relatively unexplored ruins of the Chachapoyas or “Warriors of the Clouds” a mysterious and sophisticated pre Inca civilization.

After a few weeks in the Northern Highlands we descended from the mountains to the coast of Peru. This Peruvian coast is actually a long desert that stretches 1,500 miles from the border of Ecuador to Chile. This wasn’t our favorite part of Peru, but the driving, and some of the beachfront towns, were nevertheless fascinating. During our trip through the desert, we explored Paracas National Reserve, a huge reserve that consists of beaches, deserts and islands and os home to dolphins, otters, penguins, sea lions and even Humpback Whales.

After a failure in our camper’s lift mechanism, we headed to Lima which with ~10 million inhabitants, is the second largest desert city in the world behind Cairo. To many Peruvians, Lima is Peru. Many people in Lima know so little about the rest of Peru, that they say things like “It doesn’t rain in Peru.”

No trip to Peru would be complete without visiting Machu Pichu and the fabulous Inca ruins in the Sacred Valley. Most people stay in Cusco and take tours to the ruins in the Sacred Valley. But we chose instead to stay in a campground in the Sacred Valley which enabled us to get to many of the ruins early in the morning before the tour buses arrived. Exploring Machu Picchu was also a highlight. Getting there was expensive and surprisingly painful trip involving trains and hotels and buses are things that we just aren’t used to. But after catching the second bus to the entrance of Machu Picchu at 6am, we were rewarded with an amazing view and hike through the amazing ruins.