Peru's 5,000-year-old city

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Christine Sarkis is an SATW-award-winning journalist and executive editor at SmarterTravel. Her stories have also appeared on USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. Her advice has been featured in dozens of print and online publications including The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and People magazine. She has also shared travel tips on television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Marketplace, and Here & Now. Her work has been published in the anthologies Spain from a Backpack and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. She is currently working on a travel memoir.

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Though it’s been open for a number of years, it was only last week that Peru’s sacred city of Caral was officially named a tourist destination. The 5,000-year-old city is the oldest in the Americas, and among the oldest in the world. It’s far less known than Peru’s other major archeological site, Machu Picchu, and is still somewhat off the main tourist track, though that’s expected to change in the coming years.

It will be interesting to see if visitors whose primary destination is Machu Picchu incorporate Caral into their trips. It seems that these two sites complement one another, since they tell stories of civilization in different periods of history. And, Caral isn’t as difficult to get to as Machu Picchu, so it can be a day trip from Lima.

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