Ruins in Peru

Ruins in Peru | July 21, 2025

Lima - Cusco - Aguas Calientes/Machu Picchu, 2021

Peru was a force of oppositions, brought out in stark relief due to the time in which we visited. Autumn 2021 was at the height of Covid. I still can't believe we actually pulled off our trip as planned. 

Years after our return, I would continue to receive updates in my feed about how Peru experienced the highest Covid fatalities in the world. I didn't know that at the time of our trip, of course. Tickets were booked 6 months in advance, just like I usually do with our international trips, and before the height of the pandemic. But as September drew closer and the situation worsened, I monitored the Peruvian travel websites, the U.S. travel advisory site, and news in general to make sure I had all of the attestations, paperwork, and vaccine boosters completed correctly. I was sure that at any time, the plug would be pulled on the trip. But, I kept complying with the ever-increasing requirements, and the time eventually came where we arrived at the airport the day before our flight to get the mandatory PCR Covid test. This test was required to be performed within 24-hours before boarding an international flight, and no clinics in my county provided it. (I called literally ever provider's office in the weeks up to the trip, and some hadn't even heard of this test.) Complete rip-off companies started emerging in airports, taking advantage of the fact that travellers had to provide this very specific testing information or risk cancellation of their plans. My husband and I ended up driving to SeaTac a day early and paying $500 to sit behind shoddily-erected fabric screens in the airport basement, having swabs shoved up our nose for the privilege of a quickly-printed attestation that we were 'clear'. I remember looking at that paper, and realizing I could have made something in Word that would look identical, for a lot less money. After our trip was over, I looked up the name of the doctor whose signature was copy-pasted onto the printout - he was based on the other side of the country, and was behind these airport popup clinics. At $250 per traveller, I was as impressed by his business acumen as I was enraged at the price gouging. 

The next day at check-in, the baggage handler proclaimed that she was surprised that we had successfully navigated the red tape for Peru, given how strict the requirements were. She told us that Peru and the Czech Republic were the two hardest countries to enter due to Covid. But, my diligence paid off and we boarded without issue. Apart from mandatory masks at all times during the flight, it went fairly normally. 

In Lima, those masks were ubiquitous. Everywhere we went, we were met with double n95 masks, face shields, and temperature-taking at every store entrance. Mask adherence was nearly 100%, and authorities would stop people in the street to ensure they had their masks on correctly. Joggers, running by themselves on the gray streets in the early morning, could be seen with masks faithfully covering nose and mouth. 

In Lima on our first full day, my husband and I Ubered to downtown Lima. I had read about the ossuary in the catacombs beneath the Convent of San Francisco; the macabre arrangements of skulls and femurs interested me, and their location in the historic city center fit our bill of visiting UNESCO sites while travelling. Once inside the cathedral, we followed our mandatory guide, Renzo, to descend on stone stairs to the catacombs beneath. Besides my husband, Renzo, and myself, we were virtually alone in the catacombs. I guess this was a virtue of being a tourist in during a pandemic, in the country with some of the strictest travel requirements in the world. 

The dark and winding caverns were intermittently lit with electric lights, which illuminated thousands of bones. Some were piled haphazardly into mass graves, others were carefully arranged according to bone type, or to complete a geometric design. In one area, skulls were set on tiered stone shelves; the empty eye sockets of Peruvians long since dead stared back at our masked faces as we peered at their final resting place. This is the one place that I chanced a photograph - I needed to remember what this place looked like and what I was feeling, the eerie aura that pervaded my senses. Because the more I looked, the more disconcerted I felt. These people had died mostly due to Spanish introduction of diseases, and were now resting in mass graves or used as macabre ornamentation beneath the cathedral representing the very religion that promoted the colonialism that led to their demise. Tourists, us included, now paid money to that same church for privilege - entertainment? - of gazing upon these peoples remains. 

Now, looking back the single picture I took, another unsettling realization crosses my mind. When I was looking at those skulls, and they looked back at me, they saw a face masked to protect again a contagion not unlike those which claimed their lives 500 years ago. Their countrymen were now dying at rates higher than anywhere else in the world, succumbing to a virus brought to their lands by people not unlike myself. History was repeating itself... as it has, as it does, as it will. If the skulls could speak, what would those old bones say as they looked at their newest visitors?

After we left the cathedral, our afternoon consisted of wandering around the historic district of Lima. After a time, we found ourselves near the Rimac River, namesake of Lima. The Puente Rayito de Sol ("sunshine bridge") spanned the river's levees, and we walked across to the Rimac district. The differences between the sides was immediately apparent. Overhead tangles of electrical wires spanned rundown storefronts. In the distance, the extensive pueblos jóvenes (slums) creeped up Cerro San Cristóbal. We had been warned about wandering around this area, and soon left. 

The next day, we took a bus tour of Lima starting from our hotel in Miraflores, the  

Ruins dissassembled to make the slums across Rimac River 

Back to Miraflores, private restored ruins in Miraflores vs ruins taken apart to build the slums. No different except for their locations

the poor dismantle and rebuild, only the wealthy can preserve and restore the ruins 

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• Sacsayhuaman deconstructed for Cuszo

• peru citizens very diligent about masks due to highest death rate in the world

• oxygen tanks in hotels in cuzco for overweight, out of shape tourists, while peruvian citizens died from not enough oxygen or hospital beds 

• emptiness of macchu picchu 

• talking to woman in cuzco in spanish about Shining Path (realized later)