Caral-Supe

The ancient buildings of Caral-Supe really impressed me. This most ancient city in the Americas has a good collection of major structures that are at least partially restored. The site includes several pyramids, and the biggest of these is quite a sprawling construction with a signature sunken circular plaza in front of it. The Amphitheater (photo) was a unique building, so named because the archaeologists found remains of musical instruments (flutes) in the arena area. Due to their 5000 year age, you aren't allowed to climb on any of the structures, or enter the amphitheater. There is a nice trail that leads through all the main structures, and there are good signs (English and Spanish) for each major structure. There are also nice signs explaining the culture's origins and spread at the visitor's center.

An impressive feature here is that there are 20+ other smaller sites along the Caral river valley. You can see one of them across the river from near Caral's main pyramid -- the site is Allpacoto, I believe. You can catch glimpses of a couple others from the road in along the valley. View the area with Google maps satellite view and search for "Arqueologico". Zooming in can show some outlines of the ruins.

I came as a day trip from Lima (rather expensive for Peru at $160) as I was on my own and not otherwise going north of Lima. The tour included a guide at Caral who wasn't that enthusiastic …

Caral is according to the current science the oldest town in the Americas. For its age of up to 5000 years a lot of the ancient city is remaining. You can see pyramids. Most of them have been freed of the sand and stones that covered them. One still looks similar to its status when it was discovered. Apparently it was discovered by its form from a bird eye perspective because from the ground it looked like natural hills. The other pyramids have been freed from the errosion. They remained untouched for about 3,800 years.  
 
There are buses from Lima to Barranca and/ or Supe. We can recommand the cheap Hostal Los Angeles for the very informative and kind woman that runs it.  
We stayed in Barranca and went to the transport company ET Valle Sagrado Caral that took the two of us exclusively for 40 /S to the entrance (Boletería). We took the obligatory tour in Spanish with a good guide. The entrance fee is 11 /S p.p. and the tour costs another 20 for a maximum group size of 10 people. As we had a big group we paid only 5 /S for the tour. It lasts 1 hour and gives you closer views of the different pyramid ruins plus verbal explainations in Spanish. The English text signs along the paths are in my view completely unuseful because the only moment when you can read them is during the Spanish explainations. It is prohibited to walk through …

I visited the archaeological site of Caral-Supe in March 2020 during my trip to Peru. I left the town of Huaraz (hotspot for the Huascaran and Chavin WHS) in the morning on a shared taxi to Barranca. They wait in town and leave when they have four passengers. I managed to negotiate with my collectivo driver to take me to the archaeological site and then back to Barranca where I was spending the night. We stopped in town where a friend of his and her son joined us to ease the wait for my driver. It was at the parking lot on the north side of the Rio Supe that my visit began.

I was quite happy to have reached the site and to be able to visit it. The green valley of the Rio Supe makes for a pleasant landscape and makes it easy to understand why these early civilizations chose to settle here. The path leads through a small forest to a short but steep climb. It is at the top of this climb that the site can be seen for the first time. The path to the entrance offers many beautiful views of the site. There is also a large map on a board showing all the points of interest on the site, as well as suggested routes of varying lengths. I was already planning to do a very complete tour.

I was a little disappointed when I arrived at the visitor centre. Not only …

I visited this WHS in June 2019 as a day trip from Lima. It would be an ideal stepping stone between Lima and Trujillo but I had decided against visiting the Northern WHS of Peru in favour of more time at the Galapagos islands.

In June the river is almost at its lowest levels and from Lima we crossed through the Supe valley right over the river's pebble basin without the use of a 4x4 vehicle. From Trujillo there now is an easier route which can accomodate coaches even though this WHS is quite off the beaten track with few visitors yearly.

Even though most of the site remains still unexcavated, with local and international archaeologists still on site during my visit, the pyramid structures were quite impressive and seem to have been built in harmony with the surrounding desert/mountain environment. Even though I haven't visited yet, at times it felt like Teotihuacan but with a surrounding environment not very different from the Nile in Egypt. The recently discovered reliefs as well as the rotten wooden structures still visible on-site hint at how these structures could have been in ancient times. Caral Supe is the biggest of several similar sites in the Supe valley and it is believed to be one of the most ancient sites of the Americas, even though another site being excavated in the Peruvian desert seems to be the oldest one discovered as of yet.

The guide gave us ample time to marvel …

Site visited April 2018. For me getting to the World Heritage Site of Caral turned out to be agony and race against time but in the end it won over me.

I guess everything worth knowing about this site and its historical importance have been told already on the previous reviews so on my review I focus mainly on my trip to Caral.

My plan was to visit Caral on my way from Huaraz to Lima. I knew this could be a bit tight schedule for one day but I decided to give it a try. I left from Huaraz bus station at 9 AM and was at Barranca four hours later. The bus left me at some gas station outside the city centre so I had to walk quite a long distance with my large suitcase in the mid day heat. During my walk I tried to catch a taxi to Caral. The task proved to be very hard. There were only lots of mototaxis that tooted at me all the time. I thought that those are not suitable for my needs. I saw only few taxi cars and those were reserved. At some point I got tired of walking and trying to catch a taxi. Then I saw a hotel and went to the reception to ask about driver to Caral. The receptionist was very kind and she arranged a driver for me but I had to wait for some 45 minutes for it to show …

I took a bus from Huaraz and arrived at Barranca city's roadside around 4pm so I have to stay one night here. There are frequent collectivos at calle Berenice Davila as early as 7am for 8 soles and it will reach Puente Caral after 45 minutes. It's another 15 minutes walk after the bridge and you will reach the visitor center and the ticket booth. It's 11 soles for foreigners and you have to pay maximum 20 soles for the guided tour. I arrived early that day around 9am so I had to wait another hour for other visitors to share the guide fee. During the wait you can go through the signboards of Caral's history and facts, then you can visit the souvenir shops.

There were finally 7 of us who decided to share the guide fee, so each of us paid around 3 soles for it. The more people the less you pay. The guided tour is all in Spanish, for those who are not fluent in Spanish (like me) can look at the bilingual signboard in front of the ruins to get a picture of what's the usage and what was discovered. The whole tour is under the sun with no cover at all, so make sure to put on sunscreen or wear a hat. It's windy and chilly sometimes so a wind proof jacket will do. 

The whole tour takes around 1 hour. Make sure you go to toilet situated at the entrance before or after …

Caral Supe in one of the oldest cities in the world. Situated in the desert, north of Lima, the ruins are easily accessible on a day trip from the Peruvian capital. I took my tour bus from parque Kennedy in Miraflores, Lima.

The site if very interesting and archeological discoveries have allowed to better understand how people were living 5000 years ago.

This is a WHS to love. I had not visited a site so inaccessible and obscure since Romania’s Dacian Fortresses last year. Only one WHS “collector” had been here before me. I had some trouble fitting it into my Peru itinerary. At first, I wanted to go there on a day trip from Lima, but these tours are very expensive and it takes over 3 hours one way to get to Caral. After some reshuffling, I decided to visit it from the nearest city, Barranca and spent a night there. This also breaks the long trip from Huaraz to Lima or the south of Peru in two.

My hotel in Barranca easily connected me to a driver for a half-day trip out there for 25 EUR. The road is now almost fully paved, so it takes only half an hour by car from Barranca to get to Caral. During the months from December to May, it is impossible to cross the river to access the archeological site. My driver did not want to take any chances, although the water level seemed pretty low to me. So we drove to the other access point somewhat to the east. From there you have to cross a bridge on foot, and walk 2km to the site. It is signposted well, and there also is a guard posted at the start of the footpath. This way you end up at the other side of the complex from the visitor center, so you’ll have …