We returned to Lima from the jungle where we met our new guide and added group members. Maricela Pereira, our intrepid OAT Guide, kept us informed, on the move, and on time. Always in good humor yet ever the professional, she never lost her cool.
The Group. And what a group it was, from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to Wisconsin, California, and Alaska. We learned to laugh and play together and when needed, to help each other out.
We enjoyed exploring the central district of Lima, with its beautiful Spanish architecture and extensive parks.
Joanne took an opportunity to make friends with the Police.
We spent two days hanging out at museums trying to learn what we could as quickly as we could about the diverse indigenous cultures that existed long before the Incas arrived. Although there is evidence of human habitation in Peru as long ago as the eighth millennium BC, there is little evidence of organized village life until about 2500 BC. It was at about this time that climatic changes in the coastal regions prompted Peru’s early inhabitants to move toward the more fertile interior river valleys. For the next 1500 years, Peruvian civilization developed into a number of well organized cultures.
We visited Pucllama in the Miraflores District in Lima, one of several mud temples found around the city dating from 200 AD – 650 AD. Lima culture was governed by a caste of priests and Pucllama was a ceremonial center where people would gather to celebrate feast days, discuss major events, and receive instructions from their political and religious leaders. The pyramids here are solid structures. None of the Pre-Columbian cultures had a written language so interpretations are made largely through their artifacts. They saw the sun as their chief spiritual and life force and may have had a cosmology based on the daily rise and setting of the sun with the burial of the dead leading to rebirth along with the rising sun in the east.
Tapestry at the National Museum of Peru showing Religious Rituals
They were expert metallurgists and had rooms filled with gold and silver. They had skill in doing brain surgery and like the Egyptians, they practiced cranium shaping.
At the Larco Museum in Lima, there is an extensive collection of pre-Columbian artifacts from various regions of Peru with explicitly erotic pottery. The following is a brief peek. The Moche had a fascination with sex. SEXUAL CONTENT ALERT!!!!!
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