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“We arrived in Chincha with no idea of where we wanted to go or what we wanted to see” |
Michael and I were pretty eager to leave Lima and see what rural Peru had to offer. We had already decided to travel south along the coast to Nasca before crossing inland to Cusco on the other side of the mountains. We suspected Cusco, Machu Picchu, and Arequipa would be very touristy, so we hoped we might be able to get off the "Gringo Trail" for a bit by visiting a Peace Corps volunteer or two along the coast.
My friend Emily had put me in touch with her friend Meghan, who is serving as a Peace Corps volunteer (PCV) in Peru, and Meghan provided me with contact info for a few PCVs who were posted near Ica, a city of 170,000 people about 4 hours south of Lima. I contacted them just before I left for Peru, and by the time I left Lima, I knew one of them was in Chincha. So, Chincha it was! Michael and I arrived at the Soyez bus station on Sunday morning just in time to buy a ticket and board the bus for Chincha. We arrived in Chincha Alta (Upper Chincha) about 3 hours later with no idea of where we wanted to stay or what we wanted to see. Unwilling to haul our heavy backpacks across town in search of the perfect place to stay, we asked a passerby at the bus station where we might find a hotel nearby. Turns out there was one just a block and a half away that suited us fine. We dropped our bags and set out to explore Chincha.
Since we didn't really have any specific plans in Chincha, we first went out in search of food, and we ran right into it a few blocks from our hotel. Chincha is a market town, and Sunday was definitely market day. The market seemed to stretch on for blocks, but we were starving and didn't make it past a couple of rows before we were sitting at a table eating lunch from one of the vendors. Our lunch, which seemed to be typical fare for the area, was a plate of carapulcra (a stew of pork, peanuts, and cubed potatoes) and spaghetti noodles covered with some kind of chili seasoning. We didn't really care for the carapulcra (which we had also tried in Lima), but the Chili Mac spaghetti was surprisingly good.
After lunch we grabbed one of the mototaxis that seemed to be the only mode of motorized transport in town. Smaller that a car, the mototaxis were built around a motorbike of some sort, with one seat in front for a driver and two in back for passengers. Each one was incredibly personalized by its driver, and because of their small size, they were constantly darting in and out of traffic, making the streets look all the more chaotic. We took our mototaxi away from the center of town to a winery we read out in my guidebook: Bodega Naldo Navarro.
Owned by the same family for over 100 years, the winery was one of the few open that day. There we sampled several different kinds of wine--which, by the way, was personally siphoned out of the casks by the man who gave us the tour--before buying a bottle to drink on the pleasant patio in back. In the evening, we didn't do much besides wander down to the central plaza, where we ran into a big political rally. Local elections were to be held the following Sunday, and there was evidence of vigorous campaigning in every place we visited in Peru. Supporters of mayoral candidates had painted political slogans on many of the houses we passed, and you could go more than an hour or so without hearing the rallying cries coming from a car with loudspeakers mounted on top.
We were never quite able to hook up with the Peace Corps volunteer Meghan knew in Chincha, so the next morning we took the advice of the staff at our hotel and went out to see Huaca Centinela near Chincha Baja (Lower Chincha). Although it didn't sound all that interesting to me from the description in the guidebook (just another adobe pyramid, I thought to myself), we ended up having a fantastic time there. Surrounded by fertile farmland scattered with other huacas, Huaca Centinela was at one time an important administrative center for the Chincha and then the Inca peoples. Although the newish self-guided trail indicated that some effort has been made to attract tourists, we had the ruins all to ourselves. We spent the whole morning traipsing up and down the well-worn paths of the complex, snapping photos all the way. After we had fully explored the site, we grabbed a taxi to Chincha Baja and managed to snag a cheap lunch at a small store that also served food. There we ate a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a plate of rice-n-stuff while chatting with three older women watching a telenovella. All in all, a beautiful day.
previous travel blog entry
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