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" Campo Santo Monumentale " has been built in place of the old city as a permanent reminder of that tragedy.
Yungay is the base for many travellers who venture out on hikes to the peaks and lakes that dot the Andean landscapes. We had read that, by travelling along roads 106 and 107, it would be possible to make a loop in Huascaran National Park, but that the roads could go from passable to impassable depending on the weather conditions. Knowing our limits well, and those of a motorbike carrying two people and 70kg of luggage, we decide to only travel along the entirely asphalted road 107; so from Yungay, at 2400 metres above sea level, we passed to the 4736 metres of the Punta Olimpica Tunnel, the highest in the world. That choice turned out to be a good one since it allowed us to pass by some Andean communities observing llama farmers who accompany the herds towards the high altitude pastures. We travelled through narrow hairpin bends in the Shilla district and crossed some bridges made of wooden planks. The valley opened and the summit of Chopicalqui appeared in front of us with its glacier: an enormous vertical wall that rose up to 6350 metres. Thirty hairpin bends and we were at the mouth of the tunnel; we took off our helmets and were literally breathless, the highest altitude reached in our travels. We sat and remained in silence aware of the rarity of days like this.
We descended from the Andes travelling for hours on a desert plateau crossing only a few convoys of trucks.
We stopped in Barranca to visit Caral, a site where one of the most ancient civilizations in history lived between 4500 and 5000 years ago; a conglomerate of city states that controlled all the surrounding valleys. Today, six pyramids remain and the profiles of the ancient homes clearly visible from the panoramic points. The findings told us about a people who were expert makers of calendars, musical instruments and the legendary quipos woven ropes which allowed them to convey information.
The route of the journey, the Panamerican, alternated stretches of motorway, stretches of state road and stretches of destroyed asphalt and culverts marked by trucks, to which I would’ ve prefer a dirt road.
Near the great Peruvian capital, as we crossed the huge agglomeration of Ancon, I understood why many people had told me that Peru was one of the most dangerous countries in which to drive. The visit to Lima
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