"TORO MUERTO" The desert ravine of Toro muerto, in the valley of Majes, contains the most important collection of petroglyphs in Peru. The traveler who wants to reach Toro Muerto should go to Majes, which means passing through Camana with its green fields of rice, its characteristic camanejos and its seaside houses destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in 2001. This zone pays tribute to one of the foremost reasons for traveling in Peru: that of good eating; in this case, the good eating of prawns, prawns of Majes, the inexhaustible, excellent and versatile crustaceans that still today continue to be extracted from the river with a pre-Colombian technology, the isanga. Recommended is a taste of capiska, a recipe prepared with prawns that has been passed down from pr-Incan times and consists simply of prawns steamed with mote. Toro Muerto is an immense, open ravine in a desert of volcanic rock that suddenly collides with the very green remnants of one of the most fertile valleys that are spread out over the Peruvian coast. Scattered over a 5 km area are rocks of sillar corresponding to the Plyocene era and certainly deposited there in a violent manner by the eruptions of Coropuna. In these great rocks of porous material, men of antiquity gave testimony, for purposes of ritual, of their way of looking at life, their productive activities, their relations with the gods and even their everyday and elemental existence. "It is the expression of the subjectivity of men dedicated to trade between the altiplano and the coast", explains Lucy Linares, an on-site archaeologist. "They traded chrqui, ceramic pots, chuño and quinua from the highlands for food products like potatoes from Chivay and Huanca, lucumas and chirimoyas of the valley of Siguas, Vitor and Majes, as well as fish, shellfish and cochachuyos". Standing in Toro Muerto, we can imagine the arrival of a long line of llamas through the sandy ground. Thirsty and tired men come to spend the night in the valley after crossing the mountain range. Close to the largest of the sillar rocks, on the slope of a barren hill, a green spot stands out; it is a spring of water from which they drink and stock up, just as the small villages near the archaeological site still do today. First they were Wari men (1,300 years ago); then the Chuquibambas (800 years ago); and finally the Incas (500 years ago) who moved in these caravans that in Toro Muerto found a place to halt, to pick up water and make offerings to the gods through the carving of images in white-colored rocks. When they stopped using the pre-Hispanic road, this tradition of herding disappeared but their mark remains on more than 500 rocks carved in styles as different and varied as were the three civilizations that came and went. There are carvings in a realistic style, corresponding to the Waris, in which cameloids, birds and herding scenes abound; but there are also the Chiquibamba carvings, abstract and geometric in their attempt to symbolize rivers, mountains and the cosmogonic fields. Finally, the Incan icons, symbolic and rhetorical, in which the repeated representation of the condor stands out. Depending on the light of the day, Toro Muerto changes in color and message. The landscape, throughout the day, fills up with shadows that reinterpret the sacred rocks. Sleeping there on a full-moon night is a great experience.