Throwdown in Peru

We used to joke about watching triple sunsets, like on the Star Wars red planet Tatooine, while packing up after a day’s flying in Paracas, Peru. It wasn’t until years later when I moved to Europe that rolling green hills, blue skies and predictable Alpine landscapes became the norm. Only then did I understand just how alien the jagged forms, unexpected colours, and erosion-carved unlikely shapes of the central Peruvian desert can be to the unaccustomed.

Peru is an explosion to the senses, and in many ways, wild and confusing. Like our hands fumbling through lines that, thanks to the force of gusting winds, suddenly become undecipherable tangles of colourful snakes, the uninitiated may initially struggle to come to terms with Peru. Loud, chaotic and spicy. Intertwined with complex social dynamics and fast-paced banter in Spanish. At least a dozen fruits you’ve never seen and a thousand varieties of potatoes you’ve never heard of. A visit to the land where chillis, tomatoes, potatoes, corn and the author of these words originated before their eventual migration to the Old Continent is a refreshing and intense contrast to the northern hemisphere.

Getting there

You’ll arrive in Peru’s capital, Lima, at the Jorge Chávez International Airport, named after a pioneering daredevil of early aviation who...