The mountains that surround Arequipa continue to show signs of the eruptions of volcanoes.

The white ash blends in with the sand and stone, looking like snow in the distance. It is this white pathway that marks the start of the road to Toro Muerto. This area, which gets its name from the unique shape of the surrounding hills like a bull lying on its side, is home to a unique jewel: the world’s largest collection of rock carvings. It is made up of five square kilometers covered with some five thousand rocks that were carved by travelers between the years 700 and 1500 A.D. Toro Muerto is situated in the province of Castilla and is very close to the River Majes, home of the incomparable shrimp that are the main ingredient of a good number of culinary delicacies prepared in the White City. Condors, foxes, alpagas, large serpents and fish are among the hundreds of drawings of animals that are mingled among geometric figures and dancers carved in stone and which, despite the centuries past, still look as if they are dancing.

There is a lot of speculation about the origin of the carvings. Some say they are drawings of flying sauces and men from outer space while others see suns and masked dancers. The only thing that is known for a fact is that the area was crossed over by travelers seeking a route to the River Majes, the continuation of the River Colca. Also, the ease with which carvings can be made on dacite, a stone probably scattered across the terrain by one of the volcanoes, made the area an ideal place for ancient carvers and artists, who used axes and knives with various techniques such as scratching, chipping, hammering and beating.

Century after century, this archaeological jewel faces the implacable wind that erodes the stones of their carved history. However, it faces an even greater danger from some of its visitors, who think nothing of breaking the stones to take some of the drawings home as souvenirs. Today only the guides to the area can remember that on one rock alone there were 152 drawings. Chips and broken pieces of stone close to the entrance are proof that thieves have been by. The plundering, however, has not taken away the magic of the desert and the wind, which seem to tell the ancient story of the stones that look upwards towards the Majes Valley.

The dinosaurs of Querulpa. A fall is one of the most important things that has ever happened to Elvis Paria, 17, who was looking for honey on the arid hillside of Querulpa when he tripped and landed sitting down on one of the most valuable discoveries in recent times in Arequipa: dinosaur tracks. Querulpa is a hill just a few minutes from Toro Muerto, and visitors have now made both places part of a circuit that should be a ’must’ for anyone who visits Arequipa. Elvis and his friends, Oswaldo Martínez and Marcos Choquicondor, were the first to report the find of the dinosaur tracks, which belong supposedly to a mother and her suckling that inhabited these lands when this mountainous terrain was a tranquil beach, some 150 to 200 million years ago.

After observing the strange formation of the stone, the young men’s curiosity led them to keep moving the soil to find the path that these animals had followed. When they were sure of their find, the teenagers reported it to specialists. The tracks are 60 centimeters wide and 10 centimeters deep, and they would presumably belong to the Plintosaurus, huge animals weighing between 8 and 10 tons. The area where the tracks have been found is small, but there are many paw marks and many more are believed to continue hidden.

The National Culture Institute is in charge of the investigations in the area but the property belongs to Mr. Ricardo Acero, a farmer who has quickly become an agile guide, with his walking stick in hand, to lead visitors across the hill where the tracks are found. According to Acero, the area holds many other treasures which he takes his visitors to see, including fish fossils and even a crocodile fossil, as well as gravesites and mummies that are hundreds of years old.