5 great reasons to visit northern Peru

Northern Peru has been neglected by Western visitors for years, often overlooked for the more developed south, and the lure of Machu Picchu. But the times they are a-changin’, and Peru’s little-known north is rapidly becoming one of South America’s up-and-coming destinations.

Some of Audley’s Peru specialists recently took a trip to the region, and here they have attempted to define — in no particular order — the places and experiences which particularly spoke to them. Think barely excavated and impossibly remote ruins, a quaint colonial town to rival Cuzco (without its concomitant busyness) and untouched, raw landscapes where birdlife thrives.

The temple complex of El Brujo

An hour or so out of Trujillo, you turn off the Pan-American Highway onto a minor road that winds through waving seas of sugar cane and stubby asparagus plantations. Suddenly, the greenery transitions abruptly back into desert, and the Temple Cao — a stepped…