Before you go to Peru: eras, customs, phrases and what is still there

Eras in a line

Before 1492 (15000 BC–1492) — The central Andes, today's Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and northern Chile, produced a long line of cultures before the Inca.
Empire and the colonial Americas (1492–1808) — Spain governed its American lands through viceroys who represented the king: New Spain from 1535 (Mexico City) and Peru from 1542 (Lima), joined in the…
Revolutions and new nations (1808–1898) — When Napoleon imprisoned the Spanish king in 1808, towns across Spanish America formed juntas to govern in his name.
Democracy and today (1975–) — Since 1990 almost every Spanish-speaking country has chosen its governments at the ballot box, though democracy has been tested by economic collapse (Argentina…

La Candelaria de Puno — Two weeks of February at 3,800 metres: tens of thousands of dancers in devil masks with light bulbs for eyes, brass bands on every street, costumes that cost…

La fiesta es de la Virgen de la Candelaria, cuyo día es el dos de febrero, aunque el baile se extiende por más de dos semanas. — The festival is of the Virgin of Candelaria, whose day is the second of February, although the dancing spreads over more than two weeks.
El ceviche, sin duda. Es el plato nacional del Perú. — The ceviche, without a doubt. It is the national dish of Peru.
El quechua no es una lengua muerta ni una sola lengua: es una familia con unos ocho millones de hablantes. — Quechua is neither a dead language nor a single language: it is a family with some eight million speakers.
Cuzco está a tres mil cuatrocientos metros, y el soroche no avisa. — Cuzco lies at three thousand four hundred metres, and altitude sickness gives no warning.

The Nazca draw on the desert — Near Nazca, on the southern coast of Peru, the hummingbird, spider and monkey figures are best seen whole from the air, and the lines are a World Heritage Site.
Pachacuti and the rise of the Inca — In Cusco you can see Inca stonework fitted without gaps, including the walls of Coricancha and the fortress of Sacsayhuamán, and visit Machu Picchu; see Cusco and Machu Picchu.
Lima, the City of the Kings, is founded — Lima is the city that made Peruvian food famous: try a midday ceviche, raw fish cooked by lime juice, with sweet potato and toasted corn; see ceviche.