Story#152
The stone that fit exactly
Our guide slid a bank card at a joint in the Inca wall and it would not enter. He did this for tourists twenty times a day, and it still made everyone go quiet.
Peru
Three thousand potato varieties, walls that survive earthquakes, and a citadel Spain never found.
11 entries · 5 stories, 6 fun facts
Peru at a glance
The practical numbers, before the stories.
- Capital
- Lima
- Currency
- Peruvian sol (PEN)
- Official language
- Spanish, plus Quechua and Aymara where they are spoken
- Climate
- Desert coast, high Andes, Amazon rainforest - three climates in one country. Andean dry season is May–September.
- Best time to go
- May–September for the Andes
- Time zone
- UTC−5, no daylight saving
- Driving side
- Right
- Plugs and voltage
- Type A / B / C, 220 V
Worth knowing: Cusco is at 3,400 m. Sleep low in the Sacred Valley first if you can.
Planning a trip to Peru
The decisions that determine whether the trip works, whichever country you are going to.
Peru cultivates more than 3,000 varieties of potato, a crop domesticated in the Andes roughly 8,000 years ago. Its Inca masonry fits without mortar and is engineered to shift and resettle during earthquakes rather than crack, which is a large part of why it is still standing.
Machu Picchu survived intact because the Spanish never located it. Below you will also find the desert figures at Nazca that only made sense once aircraft flew over them, the striped mountain revealed by a retreating glacier, the reed islands that move underfoot, and the rule about ceviche: anyone serving it in the evening is telling you something.
Entries from Peru
Fun fact#697
Peru grows thousands of potato varieties
Peru cultivates over 3,000 potato varieties, and the potato was domesticated in the Andes around 8,000 years ago.
Fun fact#699
Machu Picchu was never found by Spain
The Spanish never located Machu Picchu, which is why its stonework and terraces survived largely intact.
Fun fact#701
Inca walls survive earthquakes
Inca masonry fits without mortar and is designed to shift and resettle during earthquakes rather than crack.
Fun fact#703
The Nazca lines are best seen from the air
Some Nazca figures stretch 370 metres and were only fully appreciated once aircraft flew over the desert.
Fun fact#705
Rainbow Mountain was under ice
The striped mineral colours of Vinicunca were revealed only recently as the glacier covering it retreated.
Fun fact#713
Lake Titicaca has floating islands
The Uros build and maintain islands from layered totora reeds, adding fresh reeds every few weeks.
Story#781
Boat to the jungle lodge
Three hours upriver, then the engine off, then paddling into a channel too narrow for the motor. The moment the noise stopped, the forest turned out to be extremely loud.
Story#829
Titicaca reed island
The ground moves under your feet like a mattress. They add fresh reeds every fortnight and the whole island is rebuilt from underneath over about thirty years.
Story#832
Ceviche at eleven
The best cevicherias close in the afternoon because the fish is from that morning. Anyone serving ceviche at eight in the evening, our host said, is telling you something.
Story#836
Rainbow Mountain crowd
Five thousand metres, three hundred people and a queue for the summit photograph. Twenty minutes along the ridge there was nobody at all and the same view.
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Peru is one of 36 countries in the library. Read straight through a continent, or start from the map of everywhere we have written about.