Peru Facts for Kids

Welcome to Peru! Sunny beaches, wild rainforests and magic mountains mean that Peru is a very exciting country to visit. Our world is made up of the sea and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 areas of land which are called continents. Peru is on a continent called South America. It takes about 13 hours to fly there from our country, the UK. People in Peru are called Peruvian. This is the Peruvian flag. In the middle there are some pictures of things that are important in Peru. This is a picture of a vicuna. It is an animal. It's like a llama, a bit like a camel. Vicunas and llamas are very important in Peru. They are lovely animals. They are very friendly but be careful. They sometimes might spit at people. The next picture is a cinchona tree. This is a special type of tree that grows in Peru. It can be used to make medicine. The third picture is a horn shaped basket called a cornucopia. This one has coins coming out. Many years ago people called the Incas lived in Peru. They lived high in the mountains and are sometimes called the sky people. They built roads, made chocolate and invented many things including pan pipes. That is the musical instrument that you can hear now. The Incas built a city which you can still see today. It is called Machu Picchu. People sometimes say the lost city or hidden city because nobody had been there for hundreds of years. It is high up on top of a big mountain. It's so high that it's up in the clouds. Rainforests, huge rivers and mountains can make it hard to explore parts of Peru. The forests are so big that there are groups of people living deep in them who have never met anybody outside of their village. They have never seen a car, TV or phone. They are undiscovered in their own world. How exciting is that? Traditional Peruvian clothes are often made from bright colours and they wear lots of hats. That hat must be good for keeping the sun off of her face. Potatoes grow all over the world but it is believed the first country to have them was Peru. In Peru they also eat lots of guinea pigs. There are a few languages spoken in Peru but most people there speak Spanish. Spanish is a really useful language because it is spoken in lots of countries all over the world. To count to three in Spanish you say uno, dos, tres. Time for you to try, nice and quietly. Uno, dos, tres. Now a little louder. Uno, dos, tres. And now shout it as loud as you can. Uno, dos, tres. Excellent. To say friend in Spanish they say amigo. Let's say it together. Amigo. Let's wave to all of our amigos here. Hello amigos. Well in Peru they don't say hello. Instead they say hola. Hola.