Just a year after visiting Costa Rica, I made it to my second country: Peru! At the time I was still in high school, and I had the simple expectation that Peru must be hot and humid because it was in South America. I arrived in Lima in July and was surprised that despite the tropical plants and palm trees, the weather was actually quite cool. Until I arrived, I hadn’t realized just how geographically diverse not only Peru, but much of South America could be. There were plenty of reasons I wanted to visit, but I was mostly attracted by the thought of exploring ancient ruins and experiencing the Amazon rainforest. Beyond that, there were the Nazca Lines, the Andes Mountains, Lima, the Pacific coast, and a completely different culture to experience. For someone who had barely begun traveling internationally, Peru opened my eyes to just how much variety could exist within a single country.
Since this was such an early trip for me, I carried a primitive camera and took very few photos compared to how I travel today. It wasn’t until nearly ten years later that I tried to track down what photos I still had so I could scan them and upload them to my website. Most of the surviving pictures were from Machu Picchu, which was easily one of the highlights of my trip. Even with all the famous photographs I’d seen beforehand, actually standing among the ruins with the Andes rising around them was completely different. Above is a photo of the ancient Inca city itself, while below is one of the llamas wandering around Machu Picchu.
The Incas considered mountains sacred, and high peaks played an important role in their religious beliefs. Throughout the Andes, the Incas built settlements, temples, roads, and agricultural terraces across terrain that would still be difficult to develop today. They even climbed some of the highest mountains in South America to perform religious ceremonies and sacrifices. Machu Picchu itself sits dramatically among steep mountains at an elevation of about 7,970 feet (2,430 meters). Above you can see some of the impressive Inca stonework and terraces that transformed the steep mountainside into usable land. Below is one of my old photographs of the surrounding Andes Mountains.
The Andes were another completely new environment for me. Before this trip, mountains were something I had seen mostly in the eastern United States, so traveling through a mountain range on this scale was an entirely different experience. Peru is divided by enormous changes in elevation, with the dry Pacific coast to the west, the Andes running through the center of the country, and the land eventually descending into the Amazon Basin to the east. During this one trip I was able to experience all three environments, which is one of the things that makes Peru such an incredible country to explore.
My final two surviving photos are from Iquitos, located in the northeastern part of Peru in the Amazon Basin. Reaching the Amazon was one of the experiences I had looked forward to most before the trip, and it couldn’t have been more different from the cool coastal weather I first encountered in Lima or the mountains around Machu Picchu. Above you can see houses built along the water near Iquitos. During my time in the region I took boat trips along the river, spent a night in the rainforest, hiked some trails, and even went for a brief swim. For a 17-year-old on only his second international trip, spending the night in the Amazon rainforest was quite an adventure.
And here I am at 17 years old holding a sloth! Unfortunately, these few photographs barely represent everything I experienced during three weeks in Peru. I also visited places such as Cusco and Huancayo and spent time along the Pacific coast, but I don’t have many surviving photographs from those parts of the trip. In some ways that makes Peru one of the countries I’d most like to revisit. I saw quite a lot during my first trip, but I was also young, inexperienced, and traveling long before I started documenting places the way I do today.
Looking back, Peru was an important trip for me because it showed me how much there was to experience beyond simply visiting another country. Within a few weeks I had traveled from the Pacific coast into the Andes, walked through one of the world’s most famous archaeological sites, and continued into the Amazon rainforest. There is still an incredible amount of Peru I haven’t seen, and I’d especially like to return with the time and equipment to properly photograph the places I first visited as a teenager. Even after traveling to many more countries since then, I still consider Peru one of the best destinations in South America.
