So, more exciting adventures happened this past weekend, beginning Wedesday. 9 of us, including Rosa, our Peruvian friend, got on Cruz del Sur from Lima to Chiclayo, a 12+ hour bus ride. Luckily it was a night bus so I popped a couple pills of this Peruvian brand Dramamine, which is more like horse tranquilizers if you ask me, and slept through the majority of the ride. Fortunately, I didn’t pass out before viewing the best movie ever made, “Wrong Turn 2” in which a bunch of young, attractive reality TV stars with poorly developed personalities get hacked to bits and eaten by a family of mutated hillbillies in the middle of the woods. Surely on it’s way to becoming an American classic.
We arrived in Chiclayo on Thursday morning and found a decent and cheap hostal called Hotel Emperador where we put our stuff then arranged for two taxis to take us to breakfast, the adobe pyramids of Túcume and then to the Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán. Our breakfast was a very unsatisfying mix of turkey sandwiches, tamales and soup. It’s really hard to find good breakfast places with eggs, pancakes, waffles, etc… in Peru. Usually they offer only bread, jam and juice. We got a tour of the adobe pyramids which are part of a huge complex of 26 pyramids that was a cultural center for the Lambayeque (or Sicán) culture, but there are many different cultural layers that all lie on top of each other including the Chimú and Inca, so the actual Lambayeque layer is still buried. The site itself was just a bunch of mud mounds that you could tell have been worn down from erosion and no longer keep their original shapes, and it was really only the appetizer to what we would see at other sites in northern Peru. There was an interesting story that went along with the site, however. Apparently, the founder of the Sicán dynasty, upon death was deified and placed in a tomb with a golden idol. Many, many generations later, one of his descendents, who became the ruler of the site, decided to move the idol to another location. Just after this, the region suffered from 30 days of rain as a result of El Niño, which damaged a great deal of their mud edifices. The people were outraged and blamed the ruler for angering the gods by moving the idol. They tied him up and tossed him off a cliff and thus ended that family’s dynasty.
Next we went to the Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán, the main attraction in Chiclayo, which houses the discoveries from the tomb of the Lord of Sipán, a tomb which was discovered in 1987 and is considered the most significant discovery in Peru in the last 50 years. The museum itself is very cool and modern and shaped almost like an adobe pyramid (with a ramp leading up into the entrance of the museum) but the whole building is a flashy red and gold. The tomb was of a Moche ruler (dating back 1700ys) who was buried underneath layers and layers of treasures, especially jewelry, such as beaded necklaces, gold and silver, along with ceramic vessels, a few women, a boy, a guardian, and some animals. There was also an older burial of another man called the “Old Lord of Sipán” which was found underneath the main burial. They also exhibit the gold finery such as the headdress, shoulder pads, breastplate, ear ornaments, etc… It is basically the equivalent of the tomb of Tutankhamen for Peru. The wealth of the findings was overwhelming and everything was so beautiful and well preserved. It made you wonder what might be hiding inside of those pile-of-mud pyramids we had seen earlier.
After the museum we headed to the beach outside of Chiclayo called Pimetel. Unfortunately, it was the afternoon and had gotten chilly so we couldn’t lay out on the beach. Also, Peru really isn’t known for it’s beaches and for good reason; they are just not that pretty. The only nice ones are all the way north on the border with Ecuador, but a beach is a beach and we enjoyed it. This funny little kid came up trying to sell us stuff and we talked to him for a bit before we got a late lunch. I wasn’t feeling well so Rubie and I went back to the room to rest and sleep early. This was only the beginning of me not feeling great on this trip.
The next morning we found a decent breakfast spot then caught the 9am bus through Emtrafesa to Trujillo. They played the first actually good movie I’ve seen on a bus in Peru (and I’ve been on my fair share of long bus rides) – The Holiday ;o) We arrived to Trujillo then taxied to Huanchaco, a chill little beach town frequented by locals from Trujillo, surfers, and hippies, right outside of the city of Trujillo. We searched around a little for hostals with vacancies and followed some random nice Peruvian guy who showed us where one recommended in Julia’s book was that told us they had space. It was called Huanchaco Garden and only had available one small room with four beds, one bathroom and a mini-kitchen. We got a cheap price (10 soles for people on mattresses and 15 for those on beds, so $3.50 and $5 US for the night) and they agreed to bring in mattresses for the rest of the people to sleep on the floor. So picture the nine of us in one room – it was crowded, but we figured we wouldn’t be spending a lot of time in our room anyway. The people running the family-owned hostal were also so sweet and accommodating that I would definitely go there again, although one downside was no hot water.
We got some lunch and spent the day just goofing off on the beach, which was warmer than the last but we still went too late to be able to lay out in bikinis for long. Matt donned his wetsuit and hit the waves, finally getting a chance to use his surfboard which had been carried around the streets and been through multiple buses and taxi rides. We also got to see these cool reed boats called caballitos del mar (little sea horses) that were used to fish by the Moche 1000 yrs ago and are still being used to this day by the local fishermen. That night, after playing on a playground near the beach, we went out to this surf shop turned Mexican restaurant with a cool ambience but bad service and food that was “mexican” but used pita instead of tortillas and queso fresco, a Peruvian cheese which has a distinctive flavor and does not melt or mix well with other foods. We found a lounge where we hung out and watched Rosa try to teach Kurt and Kevin to dance salsa (totally hilarious). It turned into a group salsa lesson with everyone standing around trying to copy her feet.
That night I turned in early again (I know, lame), but woke up bright and early with Kurt and went to the nearby store to purchase breakfast supplies – 1.5 kilos of eggs, 2 bags of bread, butter, juice, water, and half a dozen bananas. Kurt cooked the eggs and we made scrambled egg sandwiches for everyone for breakfast. So much yummier and cheaper than eating out. After breakfast we took cabs to Chan Chan, which is something like the largest adobe city in the world, located in the middle of the desert between Huanchaco and Trujillo. It is a center of the Chimú culture, which began about 1000A.D. There are nine palaces in all at Chan Chan which are the products of different emperors, but we only went to one, called the Tschudi Palace, which has been restored the most. It was a palace for select nobility where they built ramps, open plazas, corridors, a water reservoir, a sanctuary, living quarters, a meeting room, etc… The walls were mainly plain but had some relief decoration of aquatic themes, fish, birds and connecting diamond shapes that altogether look like a net. The reliefs would have been painted in antiquity and the walls of the palace would have been almost 60 ft high but have been badly damaged and eroded by rain and sun and are much shorter, even with the extensive reconstruction. It was neat to imagine what life would have been like there in ancient times, although I don’t think I would have liked to be the wife of the emperor. After his death, he was buried in a tomb within the palace with all of his wives, many of whom are thought to have been buried alive. After the ruler died, his successor would have built a new palace nearby for his royal family, thus there are nine palaces in the complex and some temples, which we didn’t visit.
After Chan Chan we went to the Plaza de Armas in Trujillo, which is charming and beautiful with Spanish colonial architecture and all of the buildings of the plaza painted cheerful colors. There was also an impressive neoclassical statue and a gorgeous cathedral in the town square. We visited la Casa Urquiaga (also called Calonge) which was pretty colonial mansion where Simón Bolívar lived for two years after declaring Peruvian independence from Spain. His ornate 19th century desk is still there. After that we wandered around until we found the famous Trujillan shoe market where I bought a cute pair of boots for real cheap. We found a great spot for Peruvian food where we had the best Lomo Saltado and Tallarín Saltado that we’d ever eaten. We also finally tried cuy (guinea pig) which was hard fried on the outside and wasn’t particularly tasty in my opinion. Now we’ve tried it at least to know never to order it again.
From lunch we went to the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna (temples of the sun and moon), which was one of the highlights of the trip. Unlike Chan Chan, this site is comprised of two large temples which date back much later, to the Moche culture (around 500 A.D.) The Huaca del Sol is the larger of the two, and possibly the largest man-made structure in America in its day. The Huaca de la Luna, however, is the only one that has been excavated. The most fascinating part of Huaca de la Luna that set it apart from Chan Chan is that there has been no restoration on the temple, but the relief sculpture and the paint pigments have preserved beautifully and are still vibrant and numerous. Many different layers of temple construction have been revealed through excavation and it is wonderful to see each of the layers perched on top of one another, belonging to a different time period. The main decoration is a diamond with geometric patterns and the head of their primary deity: Ai Apaek, also known as the Decapitator. Other decorations were spiral wave patterns, other gods, captives, warriors, the Peruvian rat-dog, spiders, snakes, and the catfish. The yellow, black, white, blue and red colors were all pigments made with minerals. From the top of the temple we were offered a nice view of the imposing Huaca del Sol in the distance.
We caught the last combi back from the Huacas to Trujillo and then another combi to Huanchaco where we grabbed our stuff and relaxed in a really bohemian joint called Otra Cosa. The décor was really cool with bright colors on the walls but the food was (God forbid) hippie “all natural” crap and was no good. As for me, I was confirmed sick and just drank tea pretty much for the rest of the trip. We left Huanchaco, cramming in a combi to Trujillo and found a cute café (Café Amaretto) to grab a bite to eat near the Plaza de Armas. We caught our 9:45pm bus back to Lima and arrived this morning around 7am. The trip provided a very interesting look into pre-Incan cultures, and I really enjoyed Trujillo and Huanchaco. I can imagine Huanchaco being a fun place to vacation, relax, and meet people during the summer. However, I would have enjoyed the trip more if I hadn’t been exhausted and straight up sick for a lot of it. Now I’ve got a cough and a case of the runs – my only souvenirs from the journey.
