Best ancient sites in Peru

Peru’s ruins span four and a half thousand years. Caral, north of Lima, was building pyramids around 2600 BC; the Nazca scraped their lines into the southern desert and buried their dead at Chauchilla; the Moche and Chimu raised the Huaca del Sol and the mud-brick capital of Chan Chan near Trujillo; Wari, Kuelap and Sillustani belong to the highland cultures before the Inca. The Inca came last, and their estates fill the Sacred Valley: Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo, Pisac, Chinchero, Tipon and Sacsayhuaman above Cusco.