To Trujillo 24-26 Jan

Sunday
After a walk along the beach again and breakfast with the waves crashing onto the side of the building just below us, we set off south towards Trujillo at around 10.30am. The journey is about 650km and the car has a top speed of about 110kph, the roads are in pretty good shape but with speed bumps at the entrance and exit of every village and town we expected our journey to take around 9 hours, and we were just about right, we arrived in Trujillo at around 8pm.
We passed miles and miles of the driest desert you could imagine, with absolutely nothing growing at all, but then occassionally it would be interspersed with a pool of pink water surrounded by a few scraggy and spindley trees. (we´d love to know why they were pink if anybody has any ideas!) At times there were perfect crescent shaped sand dunes, some of which were encroaching on the road; and, all the time, there was a hot wind blowing from the west, from the sea, and the sun beating down from a nearly cloudless sky. At one point we drove 200km with not a town or petrol station to be seen, just occassionally there was a little shack of a house made from some sort of reed or bamboo with a donkey tied outside; and sometimes there were a few people sitting on the edge of the road waiting for a bus but without any sign of how or why they were there.
We could always tell when we were approaching a village or town of any significance by the sudden appearance of phut phuts on the road and the piles of rubbish on the east side of the road (never on the west side presumably becuase of the wind that would blow the rubbish accross the road), but then the urban area would pass and the desert would return. How the people in most of those villages survive, and what they do is beyond me; there seemed to be very little being farmed and apart from a couple of shops there seemed to be no commerce at all. Occassionally we would come across a town that was a little green oasis; crops of sugar cane or maize were being grown with even enough water to grow rice; where the water came from is a mystery because the few rivers that we crossed were either a trickle or completely dry. Apparently this year they are expecting El nino so perhaps it is drier than usual?
As we drove into Trujillo the whole world and his wife seemed to be returning from a weekend away and it took us over half an hour to arrive in the center of town. We found a hotel that charged us a reduced rate because we would need to be out by 8am because they had a reservation, left our bags and went out to eat in a rotisserie chicken restaurant and to wander the streets after our long day in the car.
On Monday we had our early start and drove out west to Huanchaco about 8km outside Trujillo to find a hotel on the beach. Here the prices are more reasonable than in Mancara with the cost for all 3 of us at about $30 (about 20 pounds) still about 50% above Ecuadorian prices but better than in North Peru.
We left our bags and went for breakfast in a small cafe on the beach and then walked along the beach which is covered in purple sea urchins and small black shells. Some of the sand is really dark, volcanic I assume, and some is really, well, sandy. The two colours seem to come in patches, very strange (presumably one is heavier than the other.) At around 11am we drove to Chan Chan, a Chimu palacial complex on the edge of Trujillo dating from between the 9th and 15th centuries. There are 9 (known) palaces each one was built for a different Chimu king from adobe bricks with an adobe plaster and fine carvings or paintings on the plaster. The carvings depict the important symbols of the culture, fish, pelicans and fishing nets and the palaces had ceremonial areas, residential areas, consultation areas, offering areas and a funerary area where the king was finally laid to rest, mumified and sitting in state in an open grave so that people could come to visit. As one king lived and ruled the next palace would be being built for the next king, when the king died the court moved to the new palace with the new king and the old palace became an open tomb for the old king.
It was very, very hot as we wandered around but amazingly there were people working away, digging and carrying huge wheelbarrow loads of material from here to there.. I don't know how they did it, even Celso had to stop in the shade. Afterwards we visited another small site called the Huaca Esmeralda (the Emerald Temple or Pyramid) which the Chimu built on top of a pyramid from an earlier culture and again had carvings and paintings on the adobe plaster...... it was far too hot by this time so we stopped off in a shopping centre to see what some of the locals were up to then returned to shelter in our hotel to hide from the heat. At around 3.30pm we visited another Huaca, this time Arco Iris or Rainbow Temple / Pyramid. This temple had quite well preserved carvings of a two headed snake in an upside down U shape (this is where the Rainbow name came from as the first people to discover the carvings described what they had found as a rainbow), deities with open mouths and sticky out tongues (which were originally described as dragons), and warriors guarding the site with spears or clubs at the ready. Again this temple was built over a pyramid from an earlier culture (probably Moche).
We took another walk along the beach to try to find the Caballitos (little horses), reed boats used for centuries by the locals for fishing (and now to transport tourists out into the sea and then surfed back in on the waves amongst the modern surfers). We found a couple of guys plying for trade amongst the many tourists on the beach but none being used in the traditional style. They look a bit like a very stylised clog, with an open back and a pointy front which allows them to balance as they ride up over the waves as they head out to sea propelled by a long bamboo pole used rather like the double ended paddle of a canoeist.
Then we were lucky enough to find a little local restaurant in the back streets that wasn't charging huge touristy prices and ate a wonderful chicken soup; strangley enough with ginger in, that I don't normally like; pearl barley (I think), celery, herbs and Yucca, followed by a huge plate of rice, fried beef and lentils. Tristan's lap was taken over by a very friendly cat, and Tristan's craving for boiled carrots was sated after much confusion in which the cook couldn't understand why someone would want plain boiled carrots and kept on offering to mix them with something!
We are feeling a little bit burnt and fairly tired and I'm looking forward to taking a lie in tomorrow morning.

Tuesday 26

After a bit of a lie in (but the locals here just don´t know how to keep quiet in the mornings - and the windows are all open because of the heat!), we got up and went to find a laundry. The people here are even worse than the Ecuadorians at giving directions and they haven´t a clue how to use a map so you can´t even get you to show you on one. Worst of all, if they haven´t got a clue where it is that you want to go they won´t tell you that they don´t know, they just make something up... more frustrations.
Anyway, we finally found a laundry in the very next street only about 3 blocks away and on the way we passed a small hostel with a Union Jack flying from its roof so we returned and had a ´sort of´ English breakfast. The guy is a hippy type who has been living here for 19 years, he is married to a Peruvian woman and has a couple of kids. They moved here when they escaped from Venezuela with nothing after Chavez took over and have built up a little hostel business. He has found a local man who was willing to take instructions from him and cut and smoke pork to make bacon, and along with eggs, tinned mushrooms, a fried tomato and some toast it made a passable English breakfast that was just what the doctor ordered!
Today it was not nearly as hot as yesterday so we set out to find the Temples of the Sun and the Moon from the Moche culture (around the time of Christ to 800AD) that is situated on the far side of Trujillo from where we are staying on the beach. There are absolutely no signs and so we would stop to ask for directions, drive a couple of miles and then stop again. Finally at around 11am we arrived.
The two pyramids look just like piles of rubble from the outside, with some visible adobe bricks but mainly covered in a fine wind blown powder. They were named the temples of the sun and the moon because the discoverers thought they resembled temples of those names from the Aztec culture, but in fact there is no evidence that they are temples to the moon and the sun.
The temple of the moon is being excavated but the temple of the sun has not been touched due to lack of funds. We were guided in English, just the 3 of us, and we were completely amazed by it all.
For some reason the Moches kept on building on top of previous levels of pyramid, completely filling the previous level´s rooms and chambers with adobe bricks. This means that the lower levels of the pyramid are nearly perfectly preserved with the original friezes, paint and all. No restoration work has been done at all, only preservation, so it is like a window back into the past. Many of the friezes are repetitive but no moulds were used so each is unique. The fifth and final level has been nearly completely destroyed by the elements and there is a 16th century hole through the centre of the pyramid where the Spaniards paid locals to dig in to find treasure. The looters tunnel through the front centre of the pyramid is now used as a walkway for the tourists! Fortunately the looters dumped all their rubble in the front square covering all the decoration on the front of the pyramid and accidently preserving it from the elements. The rubble has been removed from about half of the square revealing images of dancers, warriors, their captives and the deities. Of course they will never be able to find out what all the old levels are like because in order to investigate each level you have to destroy the level above, but that which has been exposed is incredible, you can just imagine how awesome it must have been in those early times.
There is evidence of ritual sacrifice with around 87 decapitated skeletons just on the top level, and also of burials of the important priests or kings with grave goods for the after life.
Out, between the two temples (of the sun and the moon) the excavation continues of the Moche city with evidence of metal work, ceramics,trade with mountain tribes, agriculture, weaving and water canals bringing water in from the Moche river. Here there are also people buried with grave goods, but of a much lower standing than those in the temple.

A tad awestruck we left to find our way back to Huanchaco. We stopped at the Chimu museum near Chan Chan, which had been closed yesterday, and met a couple more Peruvian hairless dogs. It was an interesting museum about the rise of the different cultures in the area. The theories at the moment about the fall of the Moche and the rise of the Chimu are either that there were a few drought years that forced the Moche to abandon their city, or, that there was a change in the beliefs so that human sacrifice was no longer acceptable (there is no evidence of it in the Chimu culture), though they do know, from genetic testing, that the Chimu are descendents of the Moche and that there are many people in the area that are descendents still.
The museum had examples of pottery and textiles from each of the eras showing a definite refinement in technique from plain, through symetric designs to detailed depictions of daily life or deities.
One thing that did strike me about their beliefs about their world was that they thought it was semicircular (like a small bowl sitting on the side). This semicircle was filled with water with the dry land floating on the top, then above this was the sky, the stars, the sun and the moon. It seems so much more advanced than our earlier thoughts that the world was flat.... they seemed to take into account that the sea was deep and that if you dig down there is water in the earth.

We have actually found some decent apples to eat which are crispy and a little sour, like Cox apples, delicious after our long apple drought through North America and Ecuador. So later we went down to the beach again, munching on apples as the sun was setting and taking some more amazing pictures as Tris built a tide trap and stacked stones for the waves to splash over.