A Whirlwind Tour of Peru Trivia Quiz

Answer: Peru is south of the equator.

The equator passes through Ecuador, Peru's aptly named northern neighbor, so Peru itself is a southern-hemisphere nation. Thus June 21 is the winter solstice, storm systems rotate clockwise, and northern-hemisphere visitors will find the constellations and lunar phases different from what they're used to.

Answer: Iquitos lies deep in the Amazon river basin and is surrounded by jungle.

Founded by Jesuits in the 1750s, Iquitos spent a century as a quiet river port, before the rubber industry turned it into a boomtown and funded the beautiful mansions that you can see downtown. The rubber money is gone now (it's easier to harvest natural rubber from plantations than from virgin jungle), but with the discovery of oil in the area Iquitos is booming again.

Answer: The bird droppings (guano) make one of the most effective fertilizers in the world, and are harvested for export.

The Islas Ballestas, which you can see on boat tours organized from the coastal city of Pisco, are rocky, barren outcroppings inhabited by sea lions and over 150 species of birds, including Humboldt penguins, pelicans, and cormorants. This area of the Pacific does indeed teem with fish (thanks to the cold Humboldt current), but industrial fishing is forbidden because the fish are more valuable as food for the guano-producing birds. Local fishermen ply their trade the old-fashioned way, with small boats and nets, and every five to seven years laborers come out to harvest the accumulated guano.

White grapes for pisco are grown relatively nearby, in the dry Ica valley a two-hour drive from Pisco.

Answer: Take an aerial tour in a small airplane.

The Nazca lines are so shallow, so narrow and so long - the geoglyph of the condor has a 130-meter wingspan - that they can only be seen from the air, so they were "lost" for hundreds of years. In fact, the Pan-American highway cuts right through the middle of the lizard geoglyph because no one knew it was there! The skill and precision displayed by the ancient Nazcans, who created the lines by removing dark-colored topsoil to make trenches only two centimeters deep, is simply astounding. No one knows why the lines - which include over 70 pictures, 200 geometrical shapes, and 800 straight lines - were made, but a number of theories argue that they were meant to be seen by gods who lived on nearby mountaintops.

Answer: Many of Arequipa's buildings are made of a local, white volcanic rock called sillar.

Arequipa's volcanic neighbors, the most famous of which is El Misti, are both a blessing and a curse for this growing city. Volcanic ash has made the surrounding valley incredibly fertile, contributing to the city's importance; the region has thus been continuously occupied for over seven thousand years.

At the same time, however, earthquakes have leveled much of the city six times in the last four hundred years. This violent history leads to some interesting sights in old buildings, as the architecture was rearranged to compensate for earthquake damage. Stairs leading nowhere are a common sight.

Answer: Lake Titicaca

Straddling the border between Peru and Bolivia with an average depth of 107 meters, Lake Titicaca has long been an important port and a cultural touchstone for local peoples. The founder of the Inca civilization, Manco Capac, son of a god whose identity varies from legend to legend, is supposed to have been born on Isla del Sol, on the Bolivian side of the lake.

Answer: From totora reeds, which grow in the lake

While the Uros' method of isolating themselves was innovative, in the end it was not effective: after centuries of intermarriage with Aymara-speaking people on the mainland, the Uros' language and many of their customs have been lost. Several hundred Uros still live in reed houses on the floating islands; with a thriving tourist industry and no property taxes, it's not a bad arrangement.

It is hard work, though: the islands must be continually rebuilt, with new reeds added on top as the old ones rot underneath. Rethatching takes place as often as twice a week during the rainy season!

Answer: Cuzco

Cuzco sits on an ancient lake, the old city describing the rough shape of a puma (with the plaza at its heart, and the fortress Sacsayhuaman at its head. The Spanish did their best to cover over most traces of the Incas, razing palaces and building churches atop temples, but the city's geology has been undoing their work.

A 1950 earthquake leveled the church of Santo Domingo, revealing the major Inca temple complex Qorikancha which had lain intact underneath. Incan stonemasons had earthquakes in mind when they perfected their craft: walls lean slightly inwards, doors and windows have trapezoidal shapes, and stone blocks interlock like puzzle pieces. No wonder the temple survived when all around it did not!

Answer: Terraces

Many civilizations have used some variant of terracing to claim steep hills for irrigation, but the peoples of the Sacred Valley took it to an impressive level. Each terrace is perhaps four or five feet wide and four or five feet higher than the last one; they're separated by stone retaining walls. By breeding plants on successively higher terraces, farmers were able to gradually adapt numerous plants to high altitudes and cold weather (the temperature between one terrace and the next can differ by as much as a few degrees Celsius).

Answer: Old Mountain

Machu Picchu is named for the mountain it sits atop. In the most widely-published photographs, you can see other peaks just past the city limits, vaguely sketching the profile of a sleeping Inca. (This aspect is often emphasized in depictions on souvenirs.) The tallest of those peaks, the Inca's "nose," is Huayna Picchu, or Young Mountain. Four hundred people a day are permitted to climb that peak, an ascent that takes about an hour.

Thank you for coming to Whirlwind Tours for your trivia needs! We hope you've enjoyed the quiz.