Barranca - A pleasant city with a nice beach and no tourists

 


The main reason to visit Barranca is that you can get colectivos from here to Caral, "the oldest city in the Americas" featuring several pyramids, as well as to the lesser known pyramid (called fortress) of Paramonga. But Barranca itself is quite pleasant and it has a big sandy beach without any tourists. Probably sometimes it gets local tourists, but when I visited there were only a group of schoolchildren and some of the local police force engaging in a beach-side exercise. To reach Barranca was not that easy though as there aren't many buses from Lima: after searching all over La Victoria in vain, finally I managed to locate 2 companies on the internet. 

One of them is Movil, the other is Turismo Barranca, with stations far apart from each other. I had a ticket (25 PEN) for the Movil service but it was cancelled due to a strike. I got a refund and took a taxi (15 PEN) to the Turismo Barranca station and luckily they had a bus for the same price, although the bus itself was much more worn. The 3-4-hour trip turned out to be 6-7 hours - just getting out of Lima was 2,5 hours. Then the bus broke down at Huaura, the last city before Barranca, and instead of waiting more I took a colectivo for 7 PEN. It might not be that easy to get to Barranca, but if you want to visit Caral, you either pay 300-400 US dollars (!) or put up with it. At the end, these are the things that make a trip a real trip, not taking a hop-on-hop-off bus that only carries dumb tourists visiting only the most touristy places without ever experiencing local life. 

Map of Barranca and surroundings


1. Plaza de Armas (main square); 2. Colectivos to Supe (on main road, near the Police); 3. Colectivos to Paramonga (on main road, opposite the Metro supermarket); 4. Barranca beach; 5. Christ statue.














































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