But on this overcast morning Caral's celebrity status was hardly in evidence. As we waited by the empty ticket desk, Alejandra, a tour guide based in Lima, told me I was the first visitor she had brought to Caral in 2008, and it was already June. "Everything about Peru is Inca, Inca," she said. "Everyone goes to Machu Picchu. They don't stay long enough to come up here." She was right. In a week spent among fragments of dead civilisations, haunted by phantasmagoric deities, we met just a handful of tourists. The shape of the trip was neatly chronological, starting with Caral and ending in the city of Cajamarca where the last Inca king was killed by the Spanish in 1532 – and ancient Peru, in its successive manifestations and outlandish beliefs, was made extinct.