Being off the tourist routes means you don’t meet any tourists. However today I went to see the sacred city of Caral.

Here I met an Austrian family. I felt a little ashamed as he was translating Spanish into German for his family and into English for me. He had been working at the Austrian embassy for three years so maybe had to be good with languages.

Never really thought how stupid I looked in the middle of the desert dressed like that.
This site is the oldest known civilisation known in the Americas and dates back 5000 yrs and covers an area of 66 hectares. I would have thought that there must have been more water about then as why build it in the middle of the desert? There are many signs of  religious activities and work is still ongoing to work out more. It is interesting that this site predates the pyramids in Egypt but every thing was built in a pyramid form.

I passed along a very fertile valley to get here. These are hops, there was also fields of chiles, strawberry, sugarcane, asparagus.
I retraced my way to Huacho. From there a road climbed back into the mountains. It was partly paved and the rest was gravel. I was going to Churin the site of ancient mineral baths. After an hour on gravel I came to this.

It’s three o’clock and the road is closed until five. At first I thought she meant 5 minutes. When I asked again she  said no five o’clock. I weighed up my opinions. Sit there for two hours and have at least another hour or so on gravel roads and then tomorrow at least four hours on gravel or turn back two hours to where i stayed last night. I don’t like gravel roads. The bike is too tall and heavy. If I go back the only other option is to go through Lima which is a city of about 9 million people most of whom are in their cars or on buses, with lorries delivering everything they need and take the main route up into the mountains? Do I make the right decision?