Paracas

The shores of Paracas Bay were home to one of the earliest cultures of the Peruvian coast. The Paracas people, who lived in the region between about 800 BC and 100 BC, farmed, fished, traded and wove textiles. Their shaft tombs on the hill of Cerro Colorado and the necropolis of Wari Kayan, where hundreds of the dead were wrapped in layered textiles, have yielded some of the finest textiles produced by pre-Columbian Andean societies. The Candelabra geoglyph on the peninsula is dated by nearby pottery to about 200 BC, and is related to the Nazca lines further south.

For centuries afterwards the bay was a quiet fishing coast beside the port and vineyards of Pisco, founded in 1640. The shallow, sheltered waters of the bay and the wildlife of the islands later drew visitors, the national reserve came to protect the peninsula and the sea, and Paracas grew as a small resort.

On 15 August 2007 a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck the central coast, killing at least 595 people and devastating Pisco. The tsunami that followed reached about 5 metres at Lagunillas and destroyed its fishing village. In the years since, the town has rebuilt, and many new hotels and resorts have been built along the bay.

Paracas is a resort town above all, aimed mainly at Peruvian and Latin American holidaymakers, who fill its seafront in the summer. The town is the starting point for boat tours to the Ballestas Islands, and the local economy is built around boat tours, the national reserve, fishing and seafood. The national reserve was created in 1975 to conserve the coastal marine ecosystems and their biodiversity.

The legacy of the Paracas culture gives the town its name and much of its identity. Its textiles, considered some of the finest produced in the pre-Columbian Andes, and the tombs found on the peninsula are central to the archaeology of Peru, and the site museum in the reserve explains them to visitors. The Candelabra on the peninsula is large enough to be seen 19 kilometres out at sea.

Nearby Pisco shares the name of Peru's grape brandy, and the bodegas of the Pisco and Ica valleys distil it in copper pot stills.

Paracas is the capital of the Paracas District in Pisco Province, a small port town that lives mainly from tourism. Boat crews, guides, restaurant staff and the hotels and resorts on the bay provide much of the work, and the town has no slum districts, only beach houses and resorts beside the older fishing settlement. Small fishing boats moor in the bays of the peninsula.

The pace of the town follows the boats and the seasons. The tour boats to the Ballestas Islands leave from the jetty, the restaurants and bars on the malecón fill at lunchtime and in the evening, and the town is busiest when Peruvian families come for the summer holidays.

The desert and the sea frame local life. The national reserve that surrounds the town protects desert and marine ecosystems, and the shallow, sheltered, warmer waters of the bay are rich in life. The memory of the 2007 earthquake and tsunami, which destroyed the fishing village of Lagunillas, remains strong along this coast.

Seafood is the food of Paracas. Restaurants along the waterfront serve fish so fresh that it was often caught the same morning, and the set lunch typically brings a soup and small dishes such as ceviche, raw fish cured in lime juice with onion and chilli; causa, chilled layers of seasoned potato; and fried rice, the Chinese-Peruvian arroz chaufa.

The wider Pisco and Ica area is grape country. Pisco, the clear grape brandy, is made in the bodegas of the valleys, and the pisco sour is the drink of the coast. Ica's tejas are sweets filled with manjar blanco and coated in fondant, or in chocolate as chocotejas.

Menus in town offer little beyond seafood, and fish dishes make up most of what is served; the very cold upwelling waters off the peninsula are exceptionally rich in plankton, fish, crustaceans and molluscs.