98 Fun Facts About Peru

Which ancient civilization in Peru is considered the earliest known complex society in the Americas?

Caral-Supe raised its pyramids north of Lima at about the time Egypt built its own, yet it left no pottery, no weapons and no defensive walls; Mexico's Olmecs arose nearly 2,000 years later.

Which lake in Peru's southern highlands is often called the world's highest navigable lake?

Lake Titicaca's first steamship, the Yavari, was built in England in 1862, shipped out in pieces small enough for mules to carry up the Andes, and finally launched on the lake in 1870.

The Amazon proper begins in Peru where the Marañón meets which other river?

The Ucayali meets the Marañón in northern Peru, and from there Peruvians call the river the Amazon; across the border it is renamed the Solimões and becomes the Amazon again only below Manaus.

Which Inca emperor was captured by the Spanish at Cajamarca in 1532?

Atahualpa offered to fill a room with gold in exchange for his freedom; the Spanish melted down the treasure that poured in from across the empire, then executed him anyway in 1533.

Which Indigenous language, once the Inca Empire's tongue, is co-official in Peru?

Quechua kept spreading after the conquest because Catholic missionaries preached in it, until colonial officials banned it from public use after the Túpac Amaru II rebellion of the 1780s.

Which Peruvian dish is raw fish marinated in lime juice and spiced with chili peppers?

Ceviche is 'cooked' without heat: the acid in the citrus juice firms the raw fish and turns it opaque, and many restaurants serve the leftover marinade in a glass as leche de tigre.

Which storybook bear arrives in London as a stowaway from 'darkest Peru'?

Paddington was first written as a stowaway from 'darkest Africa'; Michael Bond's agent pointed out that Africa has no native bears, so Bond changed the bear's home to Peru.

Which Peruvian writer won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Mario Vargas Llosa ran for president of Peru in 1990 and lost the run-off to Alberto Fujimori, and in 1976 he ended his friendship with Gabriel García Márquez by punching him in Mexico City.

Which grape brandy, shaken with lime juice and egg white in a famous 'sour', shares its name with a Peruvian port?

Pisco was long exported through the colonial port whose name it shares; the pisco sour is credited to Victor Morris, an American who opened a bar in Lima in 1916.

Peru is considered the birthplace of which tuber, grown there in thousands of native varieties?

The potato was first domesticated in the Andes of southern Peru at least 7,000 years ago; highland farmers still freeze-dry it into chuño by leaving it out in the night frost and trampling out the water.

Which Inca citadel high in the Andes is often called the 'Lost City of the Incas'?

Machu Picchu was built around 1450, probably as a royal estate for the emperor Pachacuti, and abandoned about a century later; the nickname is a mix-up, because the Incas' real last refuge lay elsewhere.

Thor Heyerdahl sailed which balsa raft from Callao, Peru, to Polynesia in 1947?

Kon-Tiki carried Heyerdahl and five companions about 6,900 km in 101 days before smashing onto a reef at Raroia; he wanted to show that South Americans could have reached Polynesia by sea.

Which Yale historian, led up a mountain by a local farmer in 1911, made a forgotten Inca citadel world-famous?

Hiram Bingham was really hunting for Vilcabamba, the last Inca stronghold, when farmer Melchor Arteaga led him up to the ruins, and he wrongly concluded that he had found it.

Which conquistador founded the city of Lima in 1535 as the seat of Spanish rule?

Francisco Pizarro fell out with his old partner Diego de Almagro, whom the Pizarro brothers defeated and executed in 1538; in 1541 followers of Almagro's son stormed the palace in Lima and killed Pizarro.

What is the name for the Peruvian-Chinese fusion cuisine, which is very popular in Lima?

Chifa was born when Cantonese labourers who came to Peru in the 19th century began cooking with local ingredients; its fried rice, arroz chaufa, is now eaten all over the country.

Which wild camelid, prized for the world's finest wool, is Peru's national animal?

Vicuña fleece was reserved for Inca nobility, who had the wild herds rounded up, sheared and then set free again; the animal stands on Peru's coat of arms.

What is the official currency of Peru?

The sol came back in 1991 as the 'nuevo sol' after years of hyperinflation: one new sol was worth a billion of the old soles that Peru had abandoned in 1985.

Peru's national football team won which tournament in 1939 and again in 1975?

Copa América titles went to Peru as hosts in Lima in 1939 and again in 1975, when a semi-final that finished level over two legs was settled in Peru's favour by drawing lots.

Peru is traditionally divided into three regions: the costa, the sierra, and which third region?

The selva, Spanish for jungle, is Peru's share of the Amazon rainforest; though Peru is best known for the Andes, this lowland forest covers about three-fifths of the country.

In Peru, the traditional dish cuy is made from which animal?

Guinea pig, or cuy, has been raised for meat in the Andes since long before the Spanish arrived; an 18th-century Last Supper by the Peruvian painter Marcos Zapata even puts one on the table in front of Christ.

Which pre-Inca kingdom built Chan Chan, the largest adobe city in the Americas?

Chan Chan was the capital of the Chimor kingdom, also called the Chimú, and the largest city of pre-Columbian South America; it fell to the Incas around 1470.

Which cold ocean flow running up Peru's coast helps give the country its unusual range of climates?

The Humboldt Current keeps the coast a desert while feeding one of the richest fisheries on Earth.

What is the highest mountain peak in Peru?

Huascarán rises 6,768 metres in the Cordillera Blanca; in 1970 an earthquake shook loose an avalanche from the mountain that buried most of the town of Yungay.

Which Peruvian city, built largely of pale volcanic sillar stone, is nicknamed the 'White City'?

Arequipa sits beneath three volcanoes and has been wrecked by earthquakes again and again, which is why its sillar churches and mansions have such thick walls and low vaulted roofs.

Which Inca festival of the sun, banned under Spanish rule, was revived at Sacsayhuamán in 1944?

Inti Raymi was restaged in 1944 by Faustino Espinoza Navarro, who built the pageant on the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega's account and cast local people; it is now performed every 24 June.

Which Andean 'grain', a staple of the Incas, is now sold around the world as a 'superfood'?

Quinoa was the Incas' 'mother of all grains', yet it is not a true cereal at all: the plant is a relative of spinach, and what we eat are its seeds.

Which canyon in southern Peru, one of the world's deepest, is the country's best-known condor-watching site?

Colca Canyon was billed as the world's deepest after a Polish team first rafted its river in 1981; today crowds gather at its Cruz del Cóndor lookout to watch the birds rise past the rim.

The Uros people of southern Peru build their floating islands from what plant?

Totora reed rots from the bottom, so the Uros keep piling fresh reeds on top of their islands; they also eat the plant and bundle it into boats.

Who proclaimed Peru's independence in July 1821?

José de San Martín proclaimed independence in Lima, but Spanish forces still held the interior; it took Bolívar's army and its victory at Ayacucho in 1824 to finish the war.

What is the world's largest rodent, found in the rivers and marshes of Peru's Amazon lowlands?

Capybaras can stay underwater for up to five minutes to hide from predators such as jaguars and anacondas; in Peru the animal is known as the ronsoco.

Which city was the historical capital of the Inca Empire?

Cusco's Spanish conquerors built their churches and mansions on top of Inca stone walls; a 1650 earthquake wrecked almost every colonial building, while the mortarless Inca masonry beneath still stands.

In 2019 Peru ranked second only to Chile as a producer of which metal?

Copper kept Peru second to Chile in the world rankings for years, until surging output from the Democratic Republic of the Congo pushed it down to third by 2024.

Which animal of Peru's jungle rivers is born grey and turns pink with age, especially the males?

Dolphins of the Amazon, known as botos, are thought to turn pink as scrapes and fights leave scar tissue, which is why males are pinkest; river folklore says a boto comes ashore at night as a handsome young man.

Which corn-based drink of Peru comes as both a fermented beer and a sweet purple soft drink?

Chicha de jora, the corn beer the Incas drank and offered at their festivals, was in some communities started by chewing the maize so that saliva would break down its starch; chicha morada is the purple soft drink.

Which two South American countries are larger than Peru by area?

Brazil and Argentina are the only South American countries bigger than Peru, which would be larger still had it not ceded its southern province of Tarapacá to Chile after losing the War of the Pacific.

Which northern Peru culture, famed for portrait pottery, flourished from about AD 100 to 800?

Moche potters modelled real faces so closely that their portrait jars are among the few true likenesses from the ancient Americas; in 1987 the tomb of a Moche ruler, the Lord of Sipán, was found intact.

Which giant desert drawings in southern Peru, including a hummingbird and a monkey, are best seen from the air?

The Nazca Lines were made by clearing reddish surface stones to expose the pale ground beneath, and they have lasted some 2,000 years because the plateau gets almost no rain.

Which Peruvian jungle port is the world's largest mainland city that cannot be reached by road?

Iquitos boomed as the Amazon's rubber port in the late 1800s, some 3,700 km upriver from the Atlantic, and to this day everything it needs arrives by boat or plane.

Which traditional Peruvian stew serves chicken in a creamy, spicy yellow sauce?

Aji de Gallina is thought to descend from manjar blanco, a Spanish dish of chicken, milk, sugar and ground almonds; in Peru the sauce took on yellow ají amarillo chillies and is thickened with milk-soaked bread.

Peru is bordered to the north by Ecuador and which other country?

Colombia won the Amazon river port of Leticia under a 1922 treaty; Peruvian civilians seized it in 1932, and the two countries fought a brief war before it returned to Colombian hands.

Which drum, played by sitting on it and slapping its wooden face, was created by Afro-Peruvians?

The cajón took shape among enslaved Africans on Peru's coast, by some accounts from shipping crates; flamenco adopted it after guitarist Paco de Lucía brought one home from Lima in 1977.

Which leaf do people in the Peruvian Andes chew or brew as tea to ease altitude sickness?

Coca leaves have been chewed in the Andes for thousands of years; Coca-Cola took half its name from them and still flavours the drink with a cocaine-free leaf extract.

Which Peruvian mining city, at about 4,300 m, is among the highest cities in the world?

Cerro de Pasco has mined silver since the 1600s, but its pollution is so severe that a law has proposed moving the whole city, a plan that has never been carried out.

What is the Peruvian stir-fry of beef, onions, tomatoes and French fries called?

Lomo Saltado came out of Peru's Chinese restaurants, where cooks stir-fried strips of beef with onions and tomatoes in soy sauce over high heat and then added a local touch, French fries.

Which of these South American countries shares a border with Peru?

Bolivia and Peru were briefly joined in a single confederation from 1836 to 1839, and later fought as allies against Chile in the War of the Pacific.

The Paracas culture, famed for its textiles and skull surgery, flourished in which modern region of Peru?

Ica's Paracas peninsula is where the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello excavated hundreds of burials in the 1920s, their mummies wrapped in embroidered cloaks that rank among the finest ancient textiles.

What is the large, ostrich-like flightless bird of the high Andean plains called?

The rhea, called suri in the Andes, leaves the child care to the male: he builds the nest, incubates the eggs that several females lay in it, and guards the chicks on his own.

Which cloud-forest fortress of the Chachapoyas culture stands in Peru's Amazonas region?

Kuélap is often called a fortress, but behind limestone walls up to 20 metres high stand the remains of more than 400 round buildings, which is why archaeologists describe it as a walled settlement.

Which 1981 adventure film opens in a Peruvian jungle temple with a golden idol and a rolling boulder?

Raiders of the Lost Ark sends Indiana Jones into a booby-trapped Peruvian temple in 1936, though the jungle exteriors were actually shot in Hawaii.

The Peruvian Inca Orchid, an ancient hairless breed that developed in Peru, is what kind of animal?

Dog is the answer: the Peruvian Inca Orchid is a sighthound, and hairless dogs like it appear on Peruvian ceramics from around AD 750.

Which ocean-warming event did Peruvian fishermen name for its habit of arriving around Christmas?

El Niño means the boy, a nod to the Christ child, and began as a local name for a warm current off Peru. It now labels a climate swing that brings storms to some regions and droughts to others.

Anticuchos, the grilled skewers sold on street corners across Peru, are traditionally made from which meat?

Beef heart became the classic anticucho in colonial times, when Spanish cooks kept the prime cuts and dismissed offal as food for the enslaved.

Which American duo turned the 1913 Peruvian melody El Cóndor Pasa into a worldwide hit in 1970?

Simon & Garfunkel put it on Bridge over Troubled Water after Paul Simon heard the Andean band Los Incas play the tune in Paris in 1965.

Peru's Q'eswachaka bridge, an Inca-style crossing rebuilt by villagers every June, is woven from which material?

Grass ropes twisted by local families make up the last remaining Inca rope bridge, which hangs over the Apurímac River beside a modern crossing.

Which Peruvian president, an agronomist first elected in 1990, resigned by fax from overseas ten years later?

Alberto Fujimori, Peru's first president of Japanese descent, faxed his resignation from Tokyo. Congress refused it and voted to remove him instead.

Which 2000 animated comedy, set in an Inca-style kingdom, turns its vain young hero into a llama?

The Emperor's New Groove was first conceived as a musical epic called Kingdom of the Sun, with songs by Sting, before Disney rebuilt it as a comedy.

Which medicine comes from the bark of the cinchona, the tree shown on Peru's coat of arms?

Quinine, the standard malaria remedy until the 1940s, made cinchona bark famous, and the tree stands on Peru's shield to represent the riches of the plant kingdom.

Which mostly plant-eating mammal of Peru's cloud forests is the only one of its family native to South America?

Spectacled bear markings can look like pale eyeglasses. Though it is South America's largest land predator, meat makes up as little as 5% of its diet.

Which comic-book reporter reaches Peru and finds a hidden Inca civilisation in Prisoners of the Sun?

Tintin escapes execution in the story by timing it to a solar eclipse, then convincing his captors that he can command the Sun.

Which two colours form the three vertical bands of Peru's national flag?

Red and white are linked by legend to the flamingos the country's liberator saw, or dreamed of, on reaching the coast, though the real reason for the choice is unknown.

Which smaller cousin of the llama is bred mainly for its soft fleece on the high pastures of southern Peru?

Alpaca fleece comes from two breeds: the fluffy Huacaya, about 90% of all the animals, and the rarer Suri, whose fibre hangs in straight locks.

Which export, dug from the Chincha Islands, became Peru's largest source of revenue in the mid-1800s?

Guano, the dried droppings of seabirds, was shipped to Europe as fertiliser. The islands' deposits were mostly exhausted by 1874.

Which big, colourful birds gather by the hundreds to eat clay from riverbanks in Peru's Tambopata reserve?

Macaws seem to visit the clay licks for sodium, which is scarce this far from the sea, and not to neutralise toxins in their food as was long assumed.

Which soft drink, launched in Peru in 1935 and flavoured with lemon verbena, became a national icon?

Inca Kola was created by a British immigrant for Lima's 400th anniversary, and at home it went on to outsell the world's biggest cola brands.

Which device of knotted, coloured cords did Inca officials use to record censuses and tribute?

Quipu knots stored numbers in a decimal system, and some cords may hold a non-numeric code that nobody has yet deciphered.

Lima's airport is named for Jorge Chávez, who in 1910 made the first flight across which mountains?

The Alps crossing cost the Paris-born Peruvian his life: wind broke the wings of his Blériot as he came in to land, and he fell about twenty metres.

Which Maoist group, founded by philosophy professor Abimael Guzmán, launched a guerrilla war in Peru in 1980?

Shining Path faded after 1992, when police captured its founder in an apartment above a dance studio in Lima.

Which 1879–1884 conflict cost Peru its nitrate-rich Tarapacá province and saw Chilean troops occupy Lima?

War of the Pacific losses lasted: Chile kept Tarapacá and its nitrate fields for good, and held the Peruvian city of Tacna until a 1929 treaty handed it back.

Under which name was Lima founded in January 1535, a nod to the feast of the Epiphany?

City of the Kings honoured the Magi, because the site was chosen on 6 January, but the older local name Lima soon pushed the grand title aside.

In which team sport did Peru's women, a dominant force of the 1980s, win Olympic silver at Seoul in 1988?

Volleyball brought Peru that Olympic medal six years after the team had taken silver at a world championship played on home soil.

Which famous off-road endurance race was held entirely in Peru in 2019, its first edition in a single country?

Dakar Rally organisers had moved the race to South America in 2009, after security threats in Mauritania forced them to cancel the 2008 event.

Which ninth Inca ruler turned a small highland chiefdom into an empire after beating back a Chanka invasion?

Pachacuti went on to push the frontier north to the Quito basin and east to the slopes above the Amazon rainforest.

Which Indigenous leader, claiming descent from the last Inca, led a huge 1780 rebellion against the Spanish in Peru?

Túpac Amaru II, a village chief born with the surname Condorcanqui, also decreed an end to slavery for Black people, a first in Spanish America.

Which 1824 battle in the Peruvian highlands secured Peru's independence and sealed that of Spanish South America?

Ayacucho ended with the Spanish viceroy wounded and captured, and his commanders surrendered what was left of the royal army that same day.

What did the Incas call their own empire, a name meaning the realm of the four parts?

Tawantinsuyu was made of four provinces whose corners met at the capital, and it grew into the largest empire in pre-Columbian America.

What were the Inca Empire's relay runners called, whose system could carry a message 300 kilometres in a day?

Chasqui runners handed over at stations about 2.5 kilometres apart, so each one sprinted only a short leg before a fresh messenger took the load.

Which ruler's intact tomb did archaeologist Walter Alva uncover at Huaca Rajada in northern Peru in 1987?

Lord of Sipán was buried in a tomb that thieves never reached, which is why it ranks among South America's great finds of the late 20th century.

Which name is given to the fusion of Japanese and Peruvian cooking that grew out of immigration from Japan?

Nikkei is also the word for people of Japanese origin in Peru, whose cooks used local chillies and limes to remake the dishes of their homeland.

Which Indigenous language, the third most spoken in Peru, holds co-official status there alongside Spanish?

Aymara has about half a million speakers in Peru, and its place names reach far into the centre of the country, a clue to where the language began.

Which Lima university, chartered in 1551, is the oldest continuously operating university in the Americas?

San Marcos was first governed by clerics of the monastic orders, and its founding documents now sit on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

Which Andean fruit, with a taste likened to maple syrup or butterscotch, is a favourite ice cream flavour in Peru?

Lúcuma was prized long before ice cream existed: images of the fruit appear on ceramics from ancient burial sites along Peru's coast.

Which Peruvian village surrounds a small desert lagoon ringed by huge dunes, earning the name oasis of America?

Huacachina's lagoon is, in local legend, the mirror dropped by a fleeing princess, and the dunes around it are the folds of her trailing cloak.

Which rocky group off Paracas, crowded with sea lions and seabirds, do tour boats reach past the Candelabro geoglyph?

Ballestas Islands trips take about two hours, and the sea lions often swim right up to the tour boats on the way round.

Which river waters Peru's Sacred Valley of the Incas on its way from Pisac to Ollantaytambo?

Urubamba is the river's downstream name. Higher up it is the Vilcanota, and it flows on for hundreds of kilometres as a headwater of the Amazon.

Which cloud-forest bird, whose males have a disc-shaped crest and bright orange plumage, is Peru's national bird?

Cock-of-the-rock males gather at communal display grounds called leks, where they challenge rivals and show off to the much browner females.

Which radish-like root from Peru's high central Andes is sold around the world as Peruvian ginseng?

Maca was grown only in a small area of central Peru until the late 1980s, when it was commercially rediscovered and turned into a global supplement.

Which northern Peruvian city near the ruins of Chan Chan is known as the City of Everlasting Spring?

Trujillo earned the nickname for its sunny, pleasant weather all year round, even though the city sits in a coastal desert.

Which Peruvian soprano became a 1950s star with lounge records that showed off a range of over four octaves?

Yma Sumac sold over 40 million records, and in 1951 she became the first Peruvian woman to sing in a Broadway musical.

Which Peruvian playmaker, nicknamed El Nene, scored five goals at both the 1970 and 1978 World Cups?

Teófilo Cubillas got the nickname, meaning the kid, for his boyish looks, and his 1978 free kick against Scotland is still ranked among the finest World Cup goals.

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, a Peruvian diplomat, held which international post from 1982 to 1991?

UN Secretary-General for two terms, he held the post through the final decade of the Cold War and later served as Peru's prime minister.

Which Lima-born opera star, famed for bel canto roles by Rossini and Donizetti, first planned a career in popular music?

Juan Diego Flórez got his big break at 23, stepping into a leading Rossini role when the scheduled tenor fell ill.

Which small fish of Peru's coastal waters is caught by the million tonnes and almost all ground into fishmeal?

Anchoveta catches peaked at 13.1 million tonnes in 1971, and about 99 percent of the haul still becomes fishmeal and oil instead of food for people.

Which Peruvian admiral, called the Gentleman of the Seas for his chivalry, commanded the ironclad Huáscar in 1879?

Miguel Grau returned the sword and belongings of a fallen enemy captain to the man's widow, along with a letter of condolence.

Which early culture of Peru's northern highlands, arising around 900 BC, is named for its great temple at Huántar?

Chavín builders gave their temple a drainage system so the highland rainy season would not flood it, and at its centre stood a carved deity, the Lanzón.

Which Peruvian poet published the radically avant-garde collection Trilce in 1922 and later lived in poverty in Paris?

César Vallejo left for Europe in 1923 under threat of another spell in prison and never came home, dying in Paris in 1938.

Which surf town on Peru's north coast has the world's longest left-breaking wave, the first wave protected by law?

Chicama's point can, on a rare big swell, carry a surfer about 2.2 kilometres to the pier on a single wave.

Which psychoactive brew of Amazonian shamans is legal in Peru and formally protected as cultural heritage?

Ayahuasca is made by boiling pounded sections of a jungle vine, usually with the leaves of a second plant, and recipes vary from one shaman to the next.

Peruvians have made which crimson dye for over a thousand years from insects that live on prickly pear cactus?

Cochineal gave way to synthetic dyes in the 19th century, then became profitable again as fears about artificial food colourings grew.