Andante Travels

Introduction

Many people visit only the Highlands and the Sacred Valley in Peru, but anyone with an interest in the past would be cheated if they did so.  For the much earlier sites preserved along the arid Pacific coast are amongst the most extraordinary in the world.

Little is heard, in western Europe, of the massive cities and superimposed temples around Trujillo; the vast adobe palaces of Chan-Chan; or the burials of the lords of Sipan in layer upon layer of ceremonial grave goods: necklaces, bracelets and ornaments in precious stones, silver and gold - but the 7 days spent exploring these would alone make your transatlantic journey worthwhile.

This is the cultural background from which the Inca Empire sprang, and it lends their astonishing achievements both contrast and context. For the wonderful experience of the Highlands which follows, we have ensured that every experience is as good as we can make it: arriving for an introduction to Machu Picchu as the other tourists start to go home; returning to see it at daybreak; famous train journey to Lake Titicaca, as well as the extraordinary burial towers of Silustani.

We believe that we have created a very special journey, encountering traditional Andean culture as it survives today along the way.

Itinerary

Day One
Arrive Lima in the evening, drive to our hotel in the attractive quarter of Miraflores.

Day Two
A morning exploring Lima, including the Plaza de Armas and colonial houses, and in the afternoon visit the world-class National Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology.

Day Three 
Up the Pan-American Highway to Paramonga where the vast ruins of an Inca temple/fortress look out to sea. Hummingbirds and butterflies abound in impossibly arid surroundings. Sechin, where giant carved stone slabs depicting warriors, captives and  body parts surround the central plaza.

Day Four
Continue north to Trujillo. The ancient Moche city lies beneath the plain, flanked by the multi-layered Temples of the Sun and the Moon. Excavation within the latter is uncovering wonderfully preserved architecture and decoration.

Day Five
The imperial capital of the Chimu people at Chan Chan, an adobe city with vast royal compounds, reservoirs and acres of baked clay architecture . Explore the colonial houses in Trujillo, with some free time and a brief visit to the eccentric Casinelli Museum in the evening.

Day Six
Ancient bones and fabric protrude eerily from the wind-eroded ground at the enormous mound of El Brujo, where excavation has revealed ceremonial palace structures and life-size friezes of chained captives. If yet open, visit the exhibition of the Lady of Cao and her amazing burial. After lunch we first encounter the lords of Sipan, or their retainers, in the royal tombs.

Day Seven
Layer upon layer of personal jewellery and ritual objects from the burials of the lords of Sipan are on display in the world-class Sipan Museum. Time to wander through the extensive markets of Chiclayo, which include a whole section devoted to witchdoctors - involving dead toucans, ground hooves, weird mushrooms and rites and rituals. Alternative medicine is alive and well here. Fly to Lima.

Day Eight
Your flight transports you from the arid coast to the verdant highliands. Arrive in Cusco, capital of the Inca Empire at the head of the Sacred Valley. A day of rest and relaxation since we are at altitude now.

Day Nine
Morning spent discovering the Inca city of Cusco. Corikancha site and museum, and the Inca Museum. In the afternoon a visit to the fortress above the city at Sacsayhuaman, and the smaller site of Q’enqo.

Day Ten
To Chinchero and the rural estate of an Inca king with spectacular mountain views. We descend via the salt pans (it makes an exciting walk) to lunch in the Sacred Valley. Visit the Museum at Ollantaytambo.

Day Eleven
Ollantaytambo, Inca town and vertiginous terracing leading up to the sacred temple precinct. Lunch in a village far off the beaten track. The women will demonstrate and offer their weavings for sale. Our lunch includes a potato-tasting - so many varieties of potato and maize are grown here. 

Day Twelve
By train to Machu Picchu. We make our first visit to the ruins in the afternoon, to avoid the crowds who are obliged to come and go the same day.

Day Thirteen
This morning we await the sunrise at Machu Picchu, now interpreted as the private country retreat of the first Emperor of the Incas, Pacha Cuti, which was mysteriously abandoned at the time of the Conquistadors. Time for individual wandering to absorb the unique magic of this place.

Day Fourteen
Explore colonial Cusco, with some free time this afternoon to relax and take in fully the grandeur of your surroundings.

Day Fifteen
Famous train train journey from Cusco to Puno on Lake Titicaca, and transfer to our hotel.

Day Sixteen
Take a boat to visit the floating islands on Lake Titicaca; drive to the impressive burial towers at Sillustani.

Day Seventeen
Fly from Juliaca to Lima, time allowing further museum visit;  then return to London

Day Eighteen
Arrive London

NB The effects of altitude should be taken very seriously, especially by those with heart or breathing problems. However, neither age nor general fitness have been shown to effect your susceptibility. All our hotels at altitude have oxygen available.

Included

WHAT’S INCLUDED

• Flights Scheduled flights London / Lima, via Madrid; domestic flights
• Transfers private coach provided to coincide with group flights
• Local Travel Private a/c coach; local trains & domestic flights Chiclayo / Lima; Lima / Cusco; Juliaca / Lima. Boats on Lake Titicaca.
• Meals All meals included; drinks (except water) are not.
• Guide Lecturer (also local guides where these are compulsory) Not to be confused with "guest lecturers"!  The guide lecturer will be with you from breakfast to supper, and probably even a drink in the bar afterwards.  There is the occasional site where they may not be allowed to guide because of local regulations (we normally manage to circumnavigate these) but otherwise the guides are just that.  They will have been chosen because of specialist knowledge and their ability to communicate and interest you.  After 22 years of making tours worldwide, we are highly appreciative of the attributes of a good guide, and intensely critical of people who do not possess them.  If you would like to know more about David Drew , please click his name.
• Tour Manager We never know how best to call the very special people whom we choose to accompany you on your tour.  They are usually employed in this capacity only by us, and have been trained to do things in the Andante way - unobtrusive, friendly and quietly efficient.
• Local Guide
• Fieldnotes written for the tour
• Entry & tips Entry to all sites in programme; tips included.

Flights & Visa

Please note these flights are an indication of what the flights are likely to be. Please contact the office for exact details.

Scheduled flights with Iberia and LAN
IB3161                   London Heathrow / Madrid              07:25 / 10:45
LA5101                  Madrid / Lima                                   12:45 / 18:50
LA2706                  Lima / Madrid                                   19:00 / 14:00+1
IB3166                   Madrid / London Heathrow              16:30 / 17:50

Visa and Passport Requirements (for British passport holders only)

Note:  Passports must be valid for 6 months on entry into Peru.

Hotels

2 +1 nights in an international-style hotel in Lima;
1 night in a Peruvian family hotel in Casma;  
2 nights in a sympathetically converted colonial mansion in Trujillo;
1 night in a 3* hotel close to main square in Chiclayo (we think the best in town);
2 + 2 nights a very comfortable hotel close to the heart of Cuzco;
2 nights in lovely but simple hotel set in huge gardens in Ollantaytambo;
1 night in a hotel in the village of Aguas Calientes, below Machu Picchu;
2 nights in a hotel overlooking Lake Titicaca in Puno

Map

Comments

What Did You Enjoy Most About This Tour?

"Our complete immersion in one thousand years of Peruvian archaeology; the variety of stunning landscapes; friendly people on the tour and in Peru.

The professional way it was organised so that we had time to see everything in detail, and also time to relax.

Excellent opportunity to see some of the less-visited sites & to appreciate local ways of life.

The desert settlements - possibly because I knew less about them beforehand.  Machu Picchu exceeded expectations.  The long drives/rail journeys were very enjoyable (much to my surprise).  Sipan exceeded expectations.  The little surprises - reed boats on the Pacific, children dancing, Cusco at night.

We saw an amazing variety of sites and scenery.  The hotels were always clean and beds comfortable & food was better generally than I was anticipating.  Coaches and drivers were good/excellent standard.  The people were friendly and helpful.  It was wonderful to catch them now in their colourful costumes before the majority are forced to embrace the 21^st century."

Reading List

This list is no more than a guide to some books that you may find useful to read in advance of the tour. Talks given on the tour will attempt to fill in the background to what we are seeing, so no prior knowledge or pre-tour cramming is expected or needed. In many cases, we expect that you will find some of these books even more interesting and useful to read once the tour is over.

Please note: Several of the recommended books are out of print but they should be obtainable through libraries or, in several cases, second-hand from Amazon, abebooks etc.

General Introductions to Ancient Andean Culture

Craig Morris & Adriana Von Hagen The Inka Empire and its Andean Origins, American Museum of Natural History / Abbeville Press, New York 1993

Michael E. Moseley The Incas and their Ancestors, Thames & Hudson 1992. Revised ed. 2001

Karen Olsen Bruhns Ancient South America, Cambridge Univ. Press 1994

Adriana Von Hagen & Craig Morris The Cities of the Ancient Andes, Thames & Hudson 1998

The above are all good, up to date surveys. As an archaeological overview, the Moseley volume has most to recommend it, especially since it has just been updated. The Morris & Von Hagen is more of a coffee-table book, hardly something to take on the plane to Peru. But it is well arranged, beautifully illustrated and particularly good as an introduction to the coastal cultures. Not easy to track down, however. This is also true now of the Bruhns, which is engagingly, quirkily written and unusual in that it covers not just the immediate Inca homeland area of the Andes, but the whole of South America. The Von Hagen & Morris will be much easier to obtain, orderable if not immediately to hand in better class bookshops. It employs very good maps, plans and reconstruction drawings to trace developments from earliest farming villages to Inca empire and summarises some of the very latest work, especially on the Pacific coast. Strong on myth, ritual and the ancient environment, this book, following recent fashion, includes vignette reconstructions of ancient lives, such as a day in the career of a llama herdsman and the last few hours of a sacrificial victim. Compelling stuff.

The following are somewhat out of date by now, but worth considering none the less if located in libraries or second-hand bookshops:

George Bankes Peru before Pizarro, Oxford 1977

Richard Keatinge (Ed.) Peruvian Prehistory, Cambridge 1988

Edward P. Lanning Peru before the Incas, New York 1967

J. Alden Mason The Ancient Civilizations of Peru., Penguin, first published 1957 (This last book, reprinted very recently, is the most dated of the lot, but is worth buying for its illustrations).

Finally, two inexpensive and easily obtainable introductory books are highly recommended:

Carmen Bernand The Incas. Empire of Blood and Gold,. Thames & Hudson 1998. In the pocket-sized 'New Horizons' series, this tiny volume has some magnificent and unusual illustrations, from the Conquest and early Colonial periods in particular, and is strong on the history of the conquest and the careers of the early archaeologists and explorers such as Hiram Bingham.

Rebecca Stone-Miller Art of the Andes from Chavin to Inca, Thames & Hudson 1995, second edition 2002. Part of the 'World of Art' series, this is a good read and more than just an art history. Well illustrated and easy to slip in amongst the luggage.

More Specialised Reading

Pre-Inca Periods

Chavin

Richard Burger Chavin & the Origins of Andean Civilization, Thames & Hudson 1992. Excellent coverage of the early evolution of Andean society.

Moche

Good summaries are still:

Elizabeth Benson The Mochica: A Culture of Peru, Thames & Hudson 1972

Christopher Donnan Moche Art of Peru,Univ. of California Los Angeles 1978

More up to date but not easy to find are:

Walter Alva & Christopher Donnan Royal Tombs of Sipan, Fowler Museum of Cultural History UCLA 1993

Garth Bawden The Moche, Blackwell 1996

Izumi Shimada Pampa Grande & the Moche Culture, Austin Texas 1994

Joanne Pillsbury (ed.) Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru. Yale Univ. Press 2001

On Sipan also see National Geographic Magazine 174/4 1988 with articles by Walter Alva, 'Discovering the New World's Richest Unlooted Tomb' and Christopher Donnan, 'Unravelling the Mystery of the Warrior Priest'.

Chan Chan, the Chimu and the Lambayeque Region

Thor Heyerdahl, Daniel Sandweiss and Alfredo Narvaez Pyramids of Tucume: the Quest for Peru's Forgotten City, Thames & Hudson 1995.

Michael E. Moseley & Kent Day Chan Chan : Andean Desert City, Univ. of New Mexico Press 1982

Michael E. Moseley & Alana Cordy-Collins (eds.) The Northern Dynasties: Kingship and Statecraft in Chimor, Dumbarton Oaks Washington D.C, 1991

The Inca Empire

For the history and development of the Empire see:

Brian Bauer The Development of the Inca State, Austin Texas 1992

Geoffrey W, Conrad & Arthur Demarest Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism,

Cambridge 1984

Terence D’Altroy The Incas, Blackwell, 2002. A very good, up to date survey.

Maria Rostworowski History of the Inca Realm, Cambridge 1998

Also Nicholas J. Saunders The Incas, Sutton Pocket Histories, Sutton Publishing, 2000. Good, short overview.

And, still useful background, Ann Kendall Everyday Life of the Incas Batsford 1973

For the more physical infrastructure:

John Hyslop Inka Settlement Planning, Austin Univ. of Texas Press 1990 and his The Inka Road System, Academic Press New York 1984

Craig Morris & Donald Thompson Huanuco Pampa: An Inca City and its Hinterland, Thames & Hudson 1985 is the detailed study of an imperial installation in the provinces far from Cusco.

Inca Religion & Myth

A very good, cheap, portable introduction to Inca religion and myth is:

Gary Urton Inca Myths in the 'Legendary Past' series published by the British Museum Press 1999

For Art and Architecture, apart from the Stone-Miller introduction already mentioned, see:

Graziano Gasparini and Luise Margolies Inca Architecture, Indiana Univ. Press 1980

John Hemming and Edward Ranney Monuments of the Incas, New York Graphic Society 1982

Rebecca Stone-Miller To Weave for the Sun, Thames & Hudson 1992

Machu Picchu:

Richard l. Burger & Lucy c. Salazar (eds.) MachuPpicchu. Unveiling The Mystery of The Incas. Yale Univ. Press 2004

Johan Reinhard Machu Picchu. The Sacred Center. 2^nd edition . Cusco 2002

Ruth Wright & Alfredo Valencia The Machu Picchu Guide Book. Johnson bros. Boulder Colorado 2001

There is still no really good guide-book to Machu Picchu. Of the above, the Burger and Salazar volume is a hefty hard-back catalogue to an exhibition on Hiram Bingham and the discovery of Machu Picchu that is still touring the USA. It contains some interesting contributions but is of most value as a catalogue of the archaeological material Bingham collected from Machu Picchu and the Cusco region. Reinhard’s book is very good on the religious significance of Machu Picchu and the ‘sacred geography’ of the area, Wright & Valencia’s guide is a good account of individual buildings and the skilled engineering that went into construction of the city.

On the Spanish conquest the established, authoritative account, beautifully written, is John Hemming Conquest of the Incas, Macmillan 1970, Penguin 1967. Hemming’s book is the modern classic, but still a very good read is William H. Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Peru, New York 1847, but there are many later editions.

Exploration and Travel

Hiram Bingham Machu Picchu • A Citadel of the Incas, National Geographic/ Yale 1930. Reprint Hacker Books New York 1970. This is Bingham' s classic account of his discovery of Machu Picchu in 1911. His Lost City of the Incas New York 1948/ Phoenix House 1951 is a later version of the story, in which he comes to elaborate and rather dubious conclusions about the city's purpose and the kind of people who lived there. There is a new edition of Lost City of the Incas, edited by Hugh Thomson and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2002.

Alfred Bingham. Portrait of an Explorer: Hiram Bingham, Discoverer of Machu Picchu, Iowa Univ. Press 1989. Interesting, debunking biography by one of the ‘discoverer’s’ sons.

Ronald Wright Cut Stones and Crossroads; A Journey in the Two Worlds of Peru, Viking London 1984. A terrific, acutely written blend of history, archaeology and comment on contemporary Peru, Highly recommended.

Mathew Parris Inca Kola, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1990. Engaging and perceptive account of his travels by the political sketch-writer and ex-MP.

Hugh Thomson The White Rock, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2001. Part travelogue, part history of the Incas and of Inca exploration. A little unreliable in parts, but up to date and worth reading.

A splendid recent, large format photographic book is Max Milligan Realm of the Incas, Harper Collins 2001. Not just a glossy feast for the eye, but the text very engaging as well. Recommended.

For a good day-to-day, more practical travel guide, the Footprints guide, from the same publishers as the famous South American Handbook is perhaps the best of its kind. Also look out for Peter Frost's Exploring Cusco, but this is best bought on the spot in Peru.

For those who take or have access to National Geographic magazine, it is worth looking back over issues that feature Peru from the last decade or so. Especially striking is the coverage of the discovery, mostly by Johan Reinhard, of the wonderfully preserved ritual burials of children amongst mountain peaks. Also look out in particular for the May 2002 issue, which features an article on the excavation of an ancient burial ground on the outskirts of Lima and which has an excellent pull-out map of the empire and a very attractive artist’s reconstruction of what Machu Picchu may have looked like in its pomp. Pursuit of National Geographic volumes for 1913, 1915 and 1916 is very worthwhile since they include Bingham's early reports, with stunning photos of Machu Picchu emerging from the jungle.

Booking