Huaca Pucllana is a huge brick mound in the Lima neighbourhood of Miraflores, dating back 1500 years. A very impressive site, still being excavated and restored. It’s difficult to do justice to the sheer scale — in both extent and height — of the thing in ground-level photo such as the ones below, but check it out in Google Maps.
There’s a fancy restaurant (which must offer a spectacular setting at night), a pretty conventional artifacts shop and a small museum. The museum does say a bit about the history of food and agriculture at Pucllana, though not really very much.
But there is a little menagerie at one end of the site, with llamas and cuys (guinea pigs).
The guide — you have to have a guide to see the site — explains a bit about the history of livestock keeping by the inhabitants. But I was disappointed that she said nothing at all about the crops. That’s despite the fact that there is also a little botanical garden, with small plots of sweet potato, cassava, canna (see the picture below), maize and some medicinal plants. That’s a missed opportunity to engage tourists. There are archaeological remains of maize cobs displayed in the museum, so interesting stories of change and continuity could be spun.
Did you eat at the restaurant? Spectacular, but not as good as some in Lima!