Pucará

May 10, 2025

After one of the best breakfasts I have ever enjoyed in my life - Jaime really does know how to cook as well as how to artfully present food - we set off down the road to Pucará.

We passed some nice wet areas just out of Ayaviri, picking up some familiar birds as well as one new species.

After that the road was bracketed by fields of oats for much of the way.

The first half of the ride consisted of two gentle uphill slopes each followed by a steeper descent. After that it was flat all the way to Pucará. All in all a very gentle ride.

We didn't have high hopes for Pucará but instead we were pleasantly surprised.

Pucará is very into bulls - it seems to be the center of stud cattle.

The first thing we did on entering the town was to pop in to the church, the Iglesia de Santa Isabel de Pucará which was built in the Baroque style by the Jesuits in 1767 and is located opposite Pukará's Plaza de Armas.

Compared to most South American churches it is quite attractive.

I'm neither religious nor a catholic but I said a small prayer for Pope Leo XIV. Hopefully he can bring Pope Francis' ideals to fruition.

After that we headed to the museum. It was excellent, full of artifacts from the nearby archeological site mostly dating back about 2000 years.

Arms placed across the chest seems to feature regularly in pre Colombian South America.

The exhibition that really caught our eyes was the room with the Decapitator and the Devourer.

In his right hand he holds a knife, in his left, a decapitated head.

The Devourer consuming a sacrificed body. I haven't shown the one where the body depicts a child.

Then we searched for a room for the night. The first place we looked at was horrendous, smelly and clearly seldom cleaned and the lady who answered the door was completely uninterested in us. I was also not convinced the bedding had been washed so we moved on. The next place, part of the service station at the northern entrance to the town, was barely a step up but at least the dueña was prepared to talk to me and the bedding seemed freshly laundered. So we dumped our panniers and found a polleria where we had some lunch.

Then we went to the ancient archaeological site of Pucará, dated as early as 1,800 BC. Located to the west of the town, the site is very large, spread across approximately 4.2 square kilometers.

It was difficult for me to get a feeling of the place but this is where the wonderful artifacts in the museum were found. I enjoyed the environment as much as the ruins.

A pretty fluffy cactus at the archeological site.

Birding was also good. Five new species including this perky Cream-winged Cinclodes (Cinclodes albiventris).

We head to Lampa tomorrow having chosen a route to Puno that allows us to bypass notorious Juliaca - Jaime described the town as "todo loco". There's one big climb tomorrow but otherwise the route should be pretty flat.

Today's ride: 41 km (25 miles)
Total: 317 km (197 miles)

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