We woke up a few minutes before the bus rolled into the Trujillo depot just outside the centre of the city. Avenida Espana circles the old centre of Trujillo in place of the old city walls. Founded in 1534 at the mouth of the Moche valley, the town was besieged during the Inca rebellion of 1536 and later, in 1820, was the first Peruvian city to declare independence from Spain. To add to its colonial buildings, churches, and cobbled streets, Trujillo boasts proximity to ruins from two different pre-Columbian cultures: the Moche and the Chimu.
After a morning stroll through the old city we located a hostel, dropped our stuff, made for breakfast, and figured out where to go to hop a combi headed for the ruins of nearby Chan Chan. Built around 1300 C.E. and covering 36 square kilometres, Chan Chan is the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas, and the largest adobe city in the world. At the height of the Chimu empire, it housed an estimated 60,000 inhabitants and contained a vast wealth of gold, silver, and ceramics. The wealth was left more or less undisturbed after the city was conquered by the Inca, but once the Spaniards got there the looting began.
During our explorations we discovered a desert plant in the form of ground covering with long, strong thorns - long and strong enough to skewer my shoe and foot. We also stumbled upon a huge collection of desert wasp nests nestled in the shady parts of some of the ruins´ walls... beautiful, but a little scary. After a while, perhaps a little too close to a restoration site in progress, a friendly conservationist approached us and explained that the sites would likely be open in a year´s time once more funding was found. So we made our way back to the highway and flagged down a combi headed for Huanchaco and some lunch. After food we made for the Chimu museum before trekking to another nearby archeological site. In the museum as we passed a tour group a hand grabbed me by the arm... I turned around to see the face of Petra, a Swiss traveler I had met four days earlier on the bus from Machala to Mancora. We exchanged Trujillo hostel names, turned out we were staying one block away from each other.
Rui and I continued on our Chimu trek and walked the five or so kilometres to the Huaca Esmeralda. Ever since its accidental discovery and uncovering in 1923, little restoration work has been done, but it is still possible to to make out the characteristic Chimu designs of fish, sea birds, waves, and fishing nets in the adobe friezes.
With dark settling in and us in a less than safe neighborhood, we hopped a local city bus and got some food in the old city centre. With some time to kill before sleep, we went and found Petra at her hostel and the three of us checked out some of the Trujillo night life. Many of the older colonial structures were lit up to wonderful effect.
The next morning I woke up sick with a fever of over 39 degress celcius and a knot in my gut that I would have gladly traded for a few kicks to the head... my first bought of travelers´s diarrhea... ugh! Lucky for me I came prepared and as a bonus I had Rui there, a doctor only months from completing a specialization in infectious diseases. So after a day of cramps, fever, and lots of... sleeping I was back on my feet.
Recovered enough to walk and keep food in me we continued our exploration of pre-Columbian cultures around Trujillo. Thirty minutes in a colectivo got us to the town of Moche and the site of the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna, ruins of the Moche culture. The Moche existed from around 100 B.C.E. to 800 C.E. and created ceramics, textiles and metalwork, developed the architectural skills to construct massive pyramids, and still had enough time for art and a highly organized religion. When archaeologists first discovered Moche artifacts they speculated a lot about their meaning and uses. Coincidentally one archaeologist visiting the area noticed some locals creating almost identical pieces to what they had found at the ancient site. After some questioning they discovered that many of the Moche´s cultural practices had been passed down for over a thousand years and were still alive with the locals who lived there. They soon had all the explanations they needed for their findings in the ruins.
We were allowed to tour the Huaca de la Luna as it had been mostly excavated. The temple was the religious complex of the settlement where they worshiped mountain gods using the San Pedro cactus as their sacrament and making human sacrifices of slaves and enemies. The temple had many stunning friezes, some with their original paint still in tact. The Huaca del Sol, the largest single pre-Columbian adobe structure in the world, was off limits as they had not yet properly excavated it.
Back in Trujillo we found a pool hall to kill some time until our night bus to Lima departed. We lucked out and got the whole back row of seats to ourselves so we were able to lay down and sleep for the 8 or 9 hour trip... In Lima Rui was renting a place in the neighborhood of Barranco and he invited me to stay for a couple nights while I did some explorations around the Lima area and had my laundry done. Spent the rest of the day relaxing and figuring out how to get to the ruins of Caral 200 or so kilometres north of Lima.
Got up early the next day knowing only where most of the bus companies going north were located. Once there, in the center of Lima, I had to try six different companies before I found one heading for the town of Barranca. Four hours later I was wandering around the streets of Barranca trying to find a colectivo to take me to the town of Supe where I had to catch another colectivo headed up the Supe river valley to the village of Caral. Throughout the journey I was enthralled by the desert landscapes which featured massive sandstone cliffs and sand dunes bizzarely topped with carpets of green at the height where the ocean mists hung. As I neared the village of Caral I spotted several small sets of ruins along the valley before getting a glimpse of the larger pyramids at the archaeological site.
The ruins of Caral originated with the oldest known civilization in all of South America having existed between 4,500 and 5,000 years ago. This ancient culture was a conglomeration of 18 city-states and controlled the three valleys of Supe, Pativilca, and Fortaleza. The people of Caral-Supe were experts in agriculture, construction, public administration, and making calendars and musical instruments. Evidence of elaborate religious ceremonies among elites suggests a highly stratified culture in which classes were organized according to their labor in society; achaeologists at Caral believe that men and women may have enjoyed considerable equality. Among the many artifacts found at the site was an example of Peru´s oldest quipus - a system among Andean cultures of tying cords and knots to convey information.
After a tour of the site I walked the 2 kilometres or so back to the village to begin the trek back to Lima. I made it back to Rui´s place around 10 pm and we went out in bohemian Barranco to take in a live jazz show and toast each other farewell after ten days of adventuring together. The next morning I went back to the bus stations and hopped onto a bus headed for Ica on my way to Huacachina for a little sand boarding excursion.
Something the tour guides do not really prepare you for is the dune buggy ride out to the good boarding dunes. We had a crazy, but good driver, who took great pleasure in making the six girls in the vehicle scream their voices away as we plumeted over dune edges into seemingly verticle drops, rode on two wheels taking sharp corners, and, my favourite, getting serious airs flying off the top of some of the dunes. We got out of the dune buggy shaking with adrenaline and proceeded to join a tour of a local Pisco distillery... Pisco is the national drink of Peru. Suffice to say, it was a night to remember. The next day I woke up early and hopped a bus to Nazca for the next leg of the journey....
I love the picture of the chili peppers drying in the river bed. Awesome!!
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