SOUTH OF LIMA, Peru’s coast offers travellers both the vestiges of pre-Inca cultures and abundant marine fauna. The Paracas National Reserve is Peru’s only maritime national park. The fertile waters of this desert coast are home to a variety of fauna that supported the pre-Inca Paracas culture, which produced some of the finest textiles the world has ever seen. Flamingoes inhabit desert lagoons and just offshore the Ballestas Islands are home to enormous colonies of seals and seabirds, including Humboldt penguins.

Continuing south, through the wine-growing region of Ica, we come to Nasca and its pre-Inca “lines”. Near the border with Chile, in the elegant city of Arequipa the sun shines 362 days a year upon the blindingly white walls of volcanic stone that form the neo-colonial historic centre.

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THE NORTH COAST was the cradle of several pre-Inca cultures. The Chimú were the builders of the massive fortified adobe city of Chan Chan.  

The warlike Moche thrived about 1,500 years ago and left behind an extraordinary artistic legacy, portraying every aspect of their lives in the pictorial designs of their pottery and metalwork and the colourful friezes of the pyramidal temples they built. The fabulous wealth of their royal tombs is displayed today in the region’s excellent museums.

Today, the elegant colonial city of Trujillo stands as a testament to the European empire which superseded those of pre-Columbian Peru. Named after the birthplace of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, its wooden-balconied colonial mansions are well-preserved and its people revel in their Spanish traditions of horsemanship, music and dance.

The climate of the north coast is mild, and the region is nationally famous for its fine seafood, surfer’s beaches and the excellent sport fishing that brought men like Ernest Hemingway to Peru some fifty years ago.