TRAVERSE 62
Luna and the incredible Chan Chan.
The Moche lived between 100 and 800 AD evolving into a highly structured civilization; they were skilled ceramic workers and it is precisely thanks to the finds discovered that it was possible to reconstruct the detailed picture of their daily lives. Their knowledge ranged from medical to agronomic sciences, from breeding to architecture and the impressive works they built are testimony to this. The Pyramid of the Sun is the largest pre-Columbian structure in Peru and the internal visit allows you to observe the construction layers that have occurred throughout history. Chan Chan is the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas and the largest in the world built entirely of adobe, a mix of clay, sand and straw. Unfortunately, the heavy rains of " El Nino ", which followed one another over the centuries, destroyed the buildings almost entirely. Today, thanks to the recovery and restoration works, we could walk amongst the remains of the ten walled citadels that housed 60,000 inhabitants of a civilization rich in gold and silver. The wealth that had remained during the time of the Incas was soon diminished to less than dust with the arrival of the Spanish.
We left the coast and headed towards the cordilleras which boast more than eighteen peaks exceeding six thousand metres. To do this we chose to travel along the " Canon del Pato ", literally the Canyon of the Duck which, despite its name, is defined by many as one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Here the White Cordillera meets the Black Cordillera, approaching up to fifteen metres in precipices that exceed one thousand metres in height. Everything would turn into a long adventure on a two hundred kilometre dirt road that crosses fifty-four tunnels dug into the rock, in a continuous up and down, along the tumultuous waters of the Rio Santa.
In Yungay we struggled to recognise our motorbike that had become submerged in dust and mud, partly due to a fall without serious consequences. The town was the scene of the largest natural disaster in the Andes when on 31 May 1970 an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale caused fifty million cubic metres of ice and rock to fall on the small town, wiping out all its inhabitants in less than three minutes. Our landlady told us that she and her husband were saved only because they were at school, far from the city, but that both of their families were killed. Today the
TRAVERSE 62