A few hundred meters behind the visitor complex on Cerro Colorado are the 5000-year-old remains of a necropolis related to the Paracas culture, which predated the Incas by more than a thousand years. A stash of more than 400 funerary bundles was found here, each wrapped in many layers of colorful woven shrouds for which the Paracas culture is famous.
There’s little to see now; indeed signs warn you off the site. Lima’s Museo Larco and Ica’s Museo Regional de Ica exhibit some of these exquisite textiles and other finds from the site.
Beyond the visitor complex, the tarmac road continues around the peninsula to Puerto General San Martín, which has an odoriferous fish-meal plant and a port on the northern tip of the peninsula.
