Tucan Travel Part One

Sorry for the long delay between post for those few loyal readers, but as one of my travel buddies pointed out, Em and I are spending far too much time writing our novel length blogs and missing out on the excitement of the countries that we're supposed to be exploring. So here's the long awaited middle to this year's great adventure (I was going to post the conclusion in this episode too, but I realised that this was getting really really long, even by my standards, so it's going to be broken up into two sections....hopefully I'll finish the second section and have it posted within the next week).

Lima Part Deux

My last entry left off with me sitting in a quaint hostel in Huarez waiting out the rain and the time till our night bus left for Lima.

We arrived in Lima a little after 7 in the morning and groggily hailed a taxi to take us to our hotel, The Muary. The Muary turned out to be a pretty swanky hotel with nice views, a central location downtown, hot water, and 24 hour service. They even had a door man that opened the door for you everything you wanted out or in. In addition to all of this glamor, they have a slight electrical problem.

Em and I get our room key which happens to be 513 and stroll to the elevator to get there. As we exit the elevator and head down the hall we notice that the lights only extend halfway down the hallway and after that it's like something from a horror film where you're waiting for something to come from the darkness and attack you. Besides noted this lack of light and seeing that our room is right at the cusp where the hallway goes from light to dark, we don't much care about this lack of lighting.

It's not until we've dumped our stuff in the hotel room and Em is thrown everything out of her backpack in search of shower materials that we realize there is a side-effect to the Red Rum hallway...the lack of electricity in our room. This doesn't bode well for Em and the shower seeing as it would be pitch black in the bathroom without a light.

So I head down to the front desk laughing at Em's predicament (cause at this point I just want to go back to sleep and don't much care about lights) and tell them in my halting Spanish that there is not electricity in our room. Some miming and confusion later the lady tells me she'll send someone up to look at the problem. So I return to relate this development to Em, who has gathered that the shower is now some time away.

About 5 minutes later a bell boy comes up, sees us in the doorway, sees the lack of light at the end of the hallway, smiles and rushes to the fuse box. The sound of fuses being thrown is heard, along with "Hay" (which means "is there?"). I reply, "No hay," and the bell boy smiles again as he runs past us saying he'll be back. A few more minutes and the bell boy returns with another smaller man, who both nervously smile and rush down the darkened hallway again.

We repeat our "Hay," "No Hay" dialog and then the phone rings in the room. I answer it and am asked whether we want to change rooms. "Of course." What I don't get is how the phone can work in the room if nothing else electrical does. So a few minutes later we are moved three doors down the hallway (whose lights they did manage to get on) and shown to a room with electricity (to the bell boy's relief). Em got her shower and I got my nap.

A few hours later, we left the hotel in search of exploration and Arroz con Leche (rice pudding basically) which Em was craving. We didn't find the arroz con leche, but we did find authentic Chinatown. That was exciting, they even had bubble tea there, which I really wanted but was too full from lunch to eat... next time.

At four there was a meet and greet with the rest of the Tucan people and a tour of the city with our representative, Miriam. Here we meet our travel partners for the next two weeks. Within the first 30 seconds I started talking to a girl named Hein, who became pretty much Em and my's favorite person on the trip. We all connected really well and ended up hanging out a lot together (this is not to say that we didn't like or hang out with the other travels...cause we did).

The tour pretty much covered ground that we'd seen the last time we were in Lima and earlier in the day, but it was nice to have the history that went along with it. We also got to try Piccarones which are like small fried donuts. They were made in a large vat of oil in the square of Saint Francisco's Church and took a few minutes since there were so many people that wanted them. So the man making them gave us a private tour of an old, burnt out church while we waited. That was pretty cool.

The rest of the evening went by pretty quickly as we explored some more, had dinner, and got more acquainted with our fellow travelers.

Amazonian

Bright and early the next morning we met in the lobby to await transport to the airport for our flight to Puerto Maldonado, way station for the Amazon Jungle. The transport never showed and another transport was called. This lead to the quintessential race through the airport, bags strapped to our backs, praying that the plane wouldn't leave without us. We were too late to check our luggage so everyone has to take their large backpacks as carry-ons, which resulted in us all losing our knives at the security check and pissing off everyone on the plane as we banged into them with our backs and threw other people's belongings around trying to rearrange the overhead compartments. One of the other passengers actually got so annoyed that he grabbed my bag and another girl's and found them homes.

Despite the initial chaos we arrived in Puerto Maldonado on time and met up with the other half of our tour group (they had been traveling for a week already in Arequipa and Nazca and other southern cities that we weren't going to have the time to visit).

From the airport we were loaded into a mini-bus, introduced to our jungle guides and then driven to the main office for the Explorer's Inn Jungle camp where we could drop off our big backpacks (there turned out to be a bunch of overnight excursions where you were only allowed a small backpack and since Em and I hadn't known this we were know as the bag people since we used pilfered plastic shopping bags...hey whatever works right?).

After relieving ourselves of our large bags, we headed to the market where our local guides broke us into two groups and showed us the different types of foods that were native to this area. They had something like 40 different types of bananas, papayas that were about 10 pounds each, starfruit, a fruit from the tomato family that tasted like nothing else I've every had, and the best two things...Brazilian nuts and coconut balls. I ended up buying a container of the Brazilian nuts covered in sugar and and another container of coconut balls. We wandered the market for a little longer and then got back on the mini-bus for an hour ride to the river. To get to the Jungle camp was like something out of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, except that it was planes, automobiles, and boats.

The boat ride was fantastic. We got to spend an hour and a half in a motorized type canoe traveling into the heart of the Amazon Jungle. How cool is that? It was beautiful, lush and green, with tons of different animals all around...we even saw a cayman or two (which are related to the alligator and crocodile family). Since we were entering the Tambopata-Candamo Reserve Zone, we had to register at this way station. We got a cool stamp in our passport out of it.

The camp was like something out of a picturesque postcard. We had a bamboo and wooden walkway that lead from the dock to the main campsite (after you climbed the huge hill), which consisted of a soccer field, a dining hall/research library, and multiple cabins. All of the cabins contained beds, mosquito netting (a must), a bathroom, and candles cause the only electricity in the whole camp was in the dining hall. It was all very quaint and comfortable and put you in a easy-going and peaceful mood from the get go. I think that if I had to pick one place from this trip that I liked the most, it would be a toss up between the Jungle and Cusco (which I'll expand upon later).

After a refreshing drink, more introductions to other staff members, and a few minutes to drop our stuff off and look around, we headed out on a short hike to the sunset spot to watch the colors blend and disappear into night. From there we headed on a longer, night hike. This was cool. We walked as silently as city folk can (about as loud as a stampede of spooked elephants) through trails that only our guide could see and scouted the vegetation for nocturnal life. There were these distance markers that consisted of poles placed in the ground that made perfect houses for tiny frogs. There were one or two living in each pole (which probably only had a circumference of an inch) and they were really cute. We also saw stick bugs (that like their name suggests, look like sticks or twigs), beetles, lots of ants (they have so many types, including fire ants, and one that will paralyze you for a bit if you get bitten....this led to a lot of looking on the ground with flashlights to make sure you weren't stepping in a nest of them. We did find one nest and a quarter mile line of worker ants exuding from it), spiders, and a number of other nocturnal creatures. It's pretty cool what comes out in the dark.

The next morning we rose early (before the sun...I think around 4am) and set out for a 5km (approx. 3 mi) hike to Lake Sachavacayoc. Once again we broke into groups and followed our guide on paths that only she knew the destinations of. We hiked, scouted for more creatures (this time the diurnal ones), and got to know each other better. It was a nice hike and you didn't realise that you were going that far cause it was just so beautiful.

Then end result is that 3 hours give or take later, we popped out at a bird watching hut on the lake. most of the lake is in a protected region so you're only allowed to explore some of it. The other section is currently the mating and living space for otters and off limits to the general public and inquisitive tourists.

We spent a little bit of time in the bird hutch feeding our snacks to the piranhas in the water (no swimming in this lake) and then headed out in joint canoes to explore the lake and look for a multitude of different birds. There was one set of birds that we saw that remind me of dodos, they were brown with colorful plumes on their heads and had small heads and long necks (sorry I don't know what they're really called).

A few hours later we headed back to camp to make it in time for a much deserved lunch and then a few hours of down time. In the afternoon, Em, Hein, and I challenged the Camp staff to a soccer game. They ran circles around us, we realized how our of shape we were, but it was all a lot of fun and it entertained the rest of our tour group who cheered from the sidelines.

Sometime during the game, Em lost our room key, so we ended homeless, flashlightless, and showerless for the rest of the evening until we could convince the laughing staff to give us a spare key.

After dinner, everyone in the camp wandered back down to the boat docks to explore the river at night in a quest for caymans (the alligator relatives). Pretty much this required one guide to shine a large and powerful flashlight across all the banks looking for a red reflection from the animals' eyes. Then she'd signal the boat captain to take us closer to that shore where everyone would diligently snap photographs that they will later look at and wonder what the pitch black photo was supposed to represent. Except for the first cayman that we saw moon bathing itself on a sandy bank, all the rest of the caymans were just an eye here and an eye there. Most of the people on the boat didn't really know if there was really anything there or whether the guide was making it all up.

The next morning we rose early and bid a farewell to our new home. It was a wonderful place, but there was much more to see and so little time.

Cusco and the Sacred Valley

My tied favorite place in all of Peru is Cuzco (tied with the Jungle). Cusco was known to the Incas as the "Navel of the World," and is currently a thriving tourist destination built in European colonial style upon the remains of the once great Inca empire. One of the Inca's largest and most impressive sites, Sacsayhuaman (pronounced Sac-say-woman), stands guard on the hill above the city and hosts daily throngs of tourists come to explore its mysteries.

Unlike the rest of Peru, you can really see the influence of the Spaniards in Cusco, as you walk the cobble stoned streets and peer out across the red tiled roofs (that are a requirement for everyone to kept the atmosphere) from the various hills that flow from the city in all different directions. Many times as I walked these various streets over the five days that I stayed here, I had trouble remembering whether I was still in Peru or whether I've actually flown to Europe and just blanked the plane ride from my memory.

Em, myself, Jaime (a Kiwi), and the two older couples (Joyce and Gary and Joan and Dale) (both from Canada) that had come on the trip all decided not to hike either the Inca Trail (the famous 39 km trek that deposits you at the Sun Gate of Manchu Picchu in time for the sun to glisten on the sight below) or the Lares Trek (a slightly shorter and much less crowded trek that leaves you in the town below Manchu Picchu) and therefore had another 2 days to explore Cusco and the Sacred Valley and one day to explore Aguas Caliente, that the hikers didn't have.

Em, Jamie, Joyce, Gary, and I spent one of these days on a river rafting trip down the Urubamba River. We met bright and early with ten other adventure seekers and set out for a relatively calm stretch of the river about two hours outside Cusco, in the heart of the Sacred Valley.

The tour operator outfitted us all with seal suits, Em's was slightly too small and well worn in to the point that you could see sections of her striped bikini poking through; parachute looking windbreakers (remember the red, blue, and yellow parachutes from elementary school PE?); bright blue lifevests; and Tonka-toy orange hard hats (that wouldn't save a stuffed animal from getting it's fur knocked out). Overall it was an entertaining picture to see us all decked out, especially since we were only going on 1 and 2 level rapids (and one 3). The water was nice and we amused ourselves with water attacks on other boats. There was one guide that was hellbent on attacking everyone and his crew would launch themselves on our rafts trying to knock its inhabitants into the water. It was all very fun.

The second free day in Cusco, Em and I decided to grab a tour of the Sacred Valley. You could spend weeks here just going from one site to another and hiking, but since we were in a very short time crunch, we took the pro-offered tour. This involved waking early to be ushered on to a tour bus that then circled the same square five times (each time stopping at the exact same spot to pick up another one or two people, why they couldn't have just stayed in that same spot for the half hour we were circling is a mystery to me). Oh and they picked us pick by asking for "Senor Robert." It took another three times of different people saying this to get through to them that I was NOT a boy. I know I dress like a boy for work and all, but come on!

Em and I turned out to be the only non-native Spanish speakers on this tour and had to constantly remind the guide to repeat what he'd said in English. To which we got a one or two sentence recap for every paragraph of information that he'd said in Spanish. I started listening to both explanations, hoping to fill in the gaps.

The tour visited two main archaeological sites: Pisac and Ollantaytambo. Pisac is situated on a gorge that controlled a strategic route connecting the Inca Empire with Paucartambo, on the borders of the eastern jungle. The site contains five different sections or sectors, all connected by a series of architectural and agricultural terraces (the Inca's were know for these terraces and they are seen in/at/and around all of their cities). We walked from on sector clear to the other sector, where we had a short amount of time to explore, before heading back to the bus and moving on. I would like to one day come back and more fully get to explore this site (along with the tons of other ones that I never got to see, or only scratched the surface on).

Ollantaytambo was built as an Inca administrative center rather than a town and is laid out in the form of a maize corn cob. While the initial site itself is large and impressive, the "ruined buildings" across the valley from it also attract one's attention. It's a toss up what these buildings were used for. Originally scholars believed that they were prisons (they're high up on the cliff with nothing much around them), this was later amended to universities (not sure where that idea came from), and lastly and most recently, the consensus is leaning towards granaries.

Aguas Calientes and Manchu Picchu

And now we're getting to the part of the trip that everyone has heard of (well at least the part that everyone should have heard of...and I will fault you if you're one of those that doesn't know).

A 4 hour train ride, leaving from Cusco at 7 am, deposited us in Aguas Caliente just in time for lunch. A note on the train, the backpackers train is not set up for comfort, each set of seats faces another, with about a foot and a half of space in the middle, so you get four hours to get cozy with a couple that you don't know and never really wanted to be playing footsie with, but at least the carriage staff flirting with everyone and entertaining you with their Pisco Sour making skills is entertaining. And it's probably the only train in the world that goes up a hill by leafing (go one way a bit, stop, reverse direction, go a bit, stop, repeat until you've made it up the hill). There isn't enough space to curve around in the same direction as most trains would do.

Aguas Calientes (Hot Waters) is also known as Manchu Picchu Pueblo and sits at the base of the mountains that hold the sacred city, that was once believed to be the lost city of Vilcabamba, the site of the Inca's l;ast refuge fro, the Spanish Conquistadors (this was later found to be Espiritu Pampa in the Amazon Jungle). The town is built on a hill and caters to the zillion odd tourists that flock to the majestic city everyday, and also the the alcoholic community as every restaurant on the hill offers 4 for 1 happy hours all day long. In addition to being the way station where one catches a bus to the site itself, Aguas Calientes is known for its natural hot springs that are captured in a series of cement pools. The townsfolk and its visitors trudge up the hill to sit in these brown, muddy, sulfuric waters and relieved their stresses. My only complaint is that the water was tepid instead of the scalding hot that I was hoping for.

Finally we arrive at that pivotal moment that you've all been waiting for when I intrigue (or bore) you with the details related to the past and present history of Manchu Picchu. Manchu Picchu means "Old or Ancient Mountain" and is the best preserved of the a series of agricultural centres that served Cusco in its prime. The city was concieved and built in the mid-fifteenth century by Emperor Pachacuti, the first to expand the empire beyond the Sacred Valley towards the forested gold-lands. The city was never discovered by the Spanish, but found in 1911 by American explorer Hiram Bingham.

The site itself is huge (but still walkable) and also includes Wayna Picchu (Young Mountain), with is another attached mountian that leads to a smaller settlement. Wayna Picchu can only be climbed by 400 people a day, in two shifts (200 and 200). Therefore in order to get a ticket, Em and I, as well as Jamie, Ian (who had finished his Lares Trek and met back up with us), and the rest of the Tucan group that Ian had hiked the Lares Trek with, woke up at 4 am to make sure that we were first in line for the 5:30 am bus up to Manchu Picchu. The site itself opened at 6 am and our first look at the ancient site was blurred as we raced from on side to the other to make it to the ticket office for Wayna Picchu which opened at 7 am.

Once we'd recieved our tickets to hike, we slowly wandered back across the site to begin our guided tour. The Tour started at the Warden's House, which is the spot from which all the famous postcard layout pictures are taken. It's at the northern end of the site and overlooks everything. We all took our pictures and cursed the mist (that while making the site beautiful, obscured most of the architecture from the camera's lens). From the Warden's House we walked around everywhere. WE passed through the quarry, the various temples, the priest's house, the Palace, the dwellings, and viewed the terraces. The views from here are just fantastic. You can see so far (once the mist lifted) and it's all lush green and rich blues of the river at the base. I can see why the Inca's would have considered this to be sacred and choosen to built here.

After our tour, Em, Jamie, and I broke from the group and comenced our climb of Wayna Picchu, crusing the whole time and wondering what possessed us to want to climb a 1000 odd crooked stairs, 300 m straight up. But when we reached the summit and saw the view, we knew that it was all worth it. I suggest that those that come here attempt the trip (as long as you're at least moderately healthy).

And this is where I will leave off. The next and last entry for this trip will explore Puno, Lake Titicaca, and La Paz. Stay tuned and hopefully you got something out of this edition of the travel novel.

El Norte

Trujillo

I'm back...finally had a minute to sit down and type a little. I think that I left off at the end of the first day in Lima and we were headed to Trujillo. Our hotel was kind enough to arrange for some bus tickets and a cab to the Cruz del Sur bus depot. In Peru one of the cheapest and most efficient ways to travel is via bus. There are a bunch of different companies that travel all over the country, you just have to figure out which ones are going where you want and which ones are the safest. Cruz del Sur, Movil and Linea seem to be the best from what we've been told and seen (and the most expensive, but at least the quality is good).

So we arrived at the bus station and it was like walking into an airport. There was a baggage check-in, security that checks each passenger before they board, a little restaurant, and clean restrooms. I took a picture for anyone that cares cause I thought it was funny. At 11:30 pm we boarded our "semi-cama" bus, which is a semi-bed and settled down for an 8-hour night trip to Trujillo.

The next morning, groggy and not too rested, we arrived in Trujillo and set out for Casa de Clara, our home base for the next two days. This hostel is in all the guidebooks and gets rave reviews due to the fact that one of the people that work there/own it, is English and gives tours. So we thought this a good idea. They gladly accepted our money, gave us a room, and told us that we were too late for a tour for that day, but could go on one the next day. When asked what we should check out that day, we were told Huanchaco, namely the beach. This was a Sunday and as such 90% of the city was closed.

We walked to the center of town and chilled in the Plaza de Armas (the central square that every city seems to have) and consulted our guidebook on the best way to get to the beach and on whether there was anything open on a Sunday. The book stated that there were two Archaeological museums that were open and that we should take a Colectiveo (think of it as a very crammed full bus) to the beach. The first museum turned out to be closed (so much for relaying on the book), and finding a Colectivo to the beach turned out to be fairly easy as the there is always one person in each whose job it is to shout out where it's headed. Then you just hail it and get on.

Huanchaco, is a small fishing village that gets over run by tourists searching for the perfect wave. It's a surfer town. The town also hosts a group of fisherman that are the last to know how to build Caballitos; rafts originally designed by the Mochicas and made out of four cigar-shaped bundles of tortora reeds, tied together into an arc tapering at each end.

After exploring Huanchaco, Em and I headed back to Trujillo in search of Casinelli's Museum. This museum is situated underneath a gas station and is supposed to play host to many artifacts and pottery from the Salinar, Viru, Mochica, Nasca, Huari, Recuay, and Inca cultures. Unfortunately, after spending an hour walking up and down one street after another and criss-crossing our path numerous times, only to realize that we'd passed the museum about two minutes into our search and just hadn't seen the entrance, we discovered that it was closed. Apparently our guide book needs to be upgraded. This little museum and it's jewels will have to wait until our next visit.

The next day arrived and Em and I headed out with Michael (the tour guide and partial owner of Casa de Clara), a girl from South Africa traveling for a year, and a couple from Holland for Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna (Pyramids of the Sun and Moon).

The Huaca del Sol was built around 500 AD by the Mochica and was constructed from anywhere between 50 million and 140 million adobe bricks. The Huanca was once open to the public and you were allowed to wander all over and across it, but now it's off limits.

Since you can't venture into the Huaca del Sol, you get to wander through the Huaca de la Luna, which is pretty amazing in its own right. This Huaca was built around the same time as the Huaca del Sol, and is part of an older complex that was built over the course of six centuries. Inside the Huaca it is possible to see amazing friezes, rhomboid in shape and dominated by an anthropomorphic face that is surrounded by symbols representing nature spirits. The people that created these works of art buried them behind new walls of adobe once they had finished. While this seems absurd (spend all that time making something only to cover it up afterwards), it's allowed the friezes to remain in great shape for present day cultures to view. It's believed that the site was used as a religious place as 42 sacrificed victims, as well as religious art and pottery have been found there.

In the afternoon our group headed to Huaca Arco Iris (The Rainbow Temple) (aka El Dragon). This is the most fully restored of the Chan Chan ruins complex. The Huaca gets its name from a Central motif that is repeated all over, that of a centiped-like creature, an image that some believe is a Dragon and some believe is a rainbow, both of which represent the creator divinity and the protector of fertility and fecundity.

While Huaca Arco Iris gave us a taste of Chan Chan, it didn't prepare us for the main complex containing the palaces of the nobles. Chan Chan was the capital city of the Chimu Empire, an urban civilization that appeared on the Peruvian coast around 1100AD. There are two local legends about how the city was crated: in one, Taycanamu arrives by boat with his royal fleet, establishes his empire, and then leave his son, Si-Um, in command and disappears. The other legend is that the city was created by a a creator deity called Chan Chan, that created the son and the moon and is represented by a rainbow. Either way, the complex is huge and contains many great reliefs, friezes, rooms, tombs, and a neat little sunken garden/water reservoir.

Our original plan was to stay in Trujillo another day and visit the ruins of El Brujo, but after talking to Michael, it seemed that it wouldn't be too feasible. Apparently you can't easily reach the ruins without a guide and Michael wasn't willing to do it without a few more interested people or a lot of money. So we scratched the idea and headed to Chiclayo that evening.

Chiclayo

Chiclayo is a three-hour (if you listen to the bus operator, four to four and a half if you look at your watch) trip north and slightly inland from Trujillo. The bus that takes you from the one city to the other stops in a bunch of towns on the way, the last big one before Chiclayo being Chepen. This is where the entire bus departed and Em and I were looking around like, "Should we be getting off here?" Even some of the passengers were kidding around and saying, "Vamos." The bus driver looked around and was "No one here." It was pretty funny.

I spent the next hour having a very halted conversation in broken Spanish with the bus driver, who was very nice. When we arrived in Chiclayo, my new friend made sure to find us a safe taxi that would take us to Lambayeque, which is a town about 12km and 15 minutes from Chiclayo. This was the hotel that Casa de Clara had recommended and set up a reservation for us at. As we were driving to Lambayeque, we looked out the window and realized that we were driving to the middle of nowhere.

We woke up the next morning and decided to check out the Bruning Archaeological Museum that was across the street from the Hotel and one of only three reasons to come to this little town. The other reasons were, the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipan, and a dessert called a "King Kong" that's comprised of some very sweet cream paste, mixed with a fruit (date perhaps), all smashed between two very dry crackers that taste like a cross between a biscotti and matza. It's interesting to say the least and I couldn't decide whether it was good or bad.

The Bruning Museum contained a nice array of exhibits on the different cultures of the area, including lifestyle displays, pottery, and pictures. The only thing it was lacking was English descriptions (or I'm just lacking a lot in Spanish).

After our quick tour of the Bruning Museum, we decided to find lunch. By now we'd become accustomed to the fact that there are Pollerias (or Chicken Shops) on every major corner (Chicken, rice and french fries seem to be a staple of the Peruvian diet) and went looking for one. Turns out that Lambayeque has to be difficult and we couldn't find a Polleria. Instead we ducked into a small local restaurant and decided to try one of their packaged lunch deals (this is a typical thing here and includes a soup, main dish, juice, and fruit usually). I decided to go for fried rice thinking it'd be safe and Em got some chicken that turned out to have a split pea sauce. When the owner (who was thrilled to have tourists in his restaurant) asked if we wanted soup, we said yes after learning that it was chicken soup. Chicken soup though, meant parts of chicken. My soup contained a chicken foot and a chicken heart. Needless to say, I didn't really eat much and my appetite surprisingly got smaller.

After lunch, Em and I headed back to Chiclayo and civilization. We tried to check in to one hotel that was in our guide book, but it turned out to be closed permanently. So we walked around till we found a nice Hotel and then bargained the price to what we wanted. Our bags dropped off we set out to set up a tour to Sipan the next day and then to explore the city.

Sipan tours was nice enough to set us up with a tour to the Temple of Sipan, the Ruins at Tucume, and a tour of the Sipan Museum that we'd bypassed in Lambayeque earlier in the day. That taken care of we set out for Ferrenafe to visit the National Museum of the Sican.

Farrenafe is a very very small town 18km from Chiclayo that is not accustomed to seeing tourists walking through it's streets. We took a combi (shared taxi) to the town where the driver let us off somewhere in the middle and told us to walk down a road and we'd eventually hit the museum. After walking for a half hour or so we asked a townie again for directions and were told to keep going. I think they were all enjoying the sight.

Eventually the slanted roofs of the mud brick dwellings ended and a giant, modern structure appeared. We'd found the museum. The museum contains many displays and models depicting Sican life (not to be confused with Sipan life). The major ruins in the area related to the Sican are Batan Grande (that we had hope to visit, but never did) and Tucume (where we were headed the next day). After a nice stroll around here and a little enjoyment from the air conditioning, we hailed a motor rickshaw (half motor bike, half seat for two passengers) and took it back to the center of the town where we caught another combi back to Chiclayo.

The hotel we were staying in gave us a nice wake up call at 8:30 am the next morning when they banged on our door and deposited breakfast with a smile. That's service.

We meet our tour group at 10:30 am back at the Sipan Tour office. Accompanying us were a couple from somewhere (I don't remember), Harald from German, and Daniel from Portugal, and our guide.

The first stop was The Temple of Sipan. This complex was discovered in 1987 by Walter Alva and was found to be one of the richest tombs in the entire Americas. I actually listened to one of the main archaeologists that worked on the site give a lecture on it two years ago when I was living in Colorado. The site served as a burial ground for important nobles of the Mochica between 200-600 AD. These nobles were found with sacrificed victims to serve as slaves and servants in the afterlife, as well as pottery, gold, shells, jewelery, breastplates, headdresses, and a whole host of other treasures. The site has replicas of all the graves (there are the graves of the Lord of Sipan, the Old Lord of Sipan, and the Priest's Tomb) that use real human bones, but fake pottery and jewels. Not sure how I'd feel about being dug up 200 years from now and used to represent someone else...Maybe that's why I'm so set on the whole cremation thing.

From The Temple of Sipan we headed to lunch back in Lambayeque (we seem to be ending up here a lot) and then in the opposite direction to eventually arrive in Tucume, the once great city of the Sican (the people whose history was told at the museum that we had visited the other day in Farrenafe).

Tucume is also known as the Valley of the Pyramids, seeing as it contains twenty-six known and discovered pyramids to date. These pyramids, many of which contained burials are clustered around Cerro Purgatorio (Purgatory Hill), where it was said that the people climbed to lose their sins (each step for a sin).

The area was taken over by one culture after another in it's later years: first the Chumi, then the Incas, and finally the Spanish.

Unfortunitly, the only thing that you're allowed to visit at Tucume is Cerro Purgatorio. The rest is not open to the public yet and remains up to your imagination (helped of course with some of the diaramas in the small attached museum).

The last stop for the day was to the Museum of the Royal Tombs of the Sipan. This is another modern building in the middle of an otherwise small, unremarkable town, namely Lambayeque. Having a guide that spoke English made the experience that much better. He was able to explain what most of the items were, although you could have probably figured it out. It was nice having the history explained though. This museum houses the funerary finds from the three main tombs that were uncovered at Sipan, including the real human remains of the rulers and their sacrificial victims. It was really amazing to see some of the items that these people were buried with, although I don't particularly like the idea of when a king dies a bunch of people have to die with him. There are certain people, the guards, that have their feet cut off when they're sacraficed so that they can't run away from their duties in the afterlife, which is just an extension of this life.

Harald, Daniel, Em, and I decided that we wanted to go to a nature preserve called Chaparri the next day. Originally Em and I had planned on going to Batan Grande and the National Santuary of the Pomac Forest, but after being informed that Batan Grande was like Tucume (you can see, but not enter) and that Chaparri is a much nicer reserve we settled for that.

Chaparri can only be visited with a guide and takes some finaguling to acquire a tour on short notice and with only five people (we picked up Julia from France in our search for people to come with us), but we managed to set everything up for the next day at 6 am for 60 sols a person (they originally wanted 85).

To get to Chaparri you take a car two hours down small dusty roads through villages that don't see tourists often (Chaparri isn't in all of the tour books) to a nature preserve that is set up like an outdoor school. The guides only speak Spanish and normally school groups from Chiclayo or university students and professors are the only ones that come here. The only people that can work in the preserve are those that live in the small town just outside it. This made the experience all the better.

Daniel and Julia were nice enough to translate the guide's information when I mis-translated it for Em (understanding only 40% of what you hear tends to lead to incorrect translations, who knew?). The preserve helps to rehabilitate wild animals or give homes to those that can no longer support themselves in the wild. The coolest thing there were the bears. They're a type of small bear that looks like a cross between a black bear, kaola, and a large dog.

The other cool thing about the site is that they have a pet deer named Maria. She was one of 3 deer that were recused and lived on the preserve, but wolves ate two of them. Maria loves food and followed us around for two hours after we feed her cookies and crackers.

Upon arrival back in Chiclayo, we had a final meal with our new friends and headed to the bus station for our night bus to Huaraz.

Huaraz

There are many different ways that you can travel in Peru and many different version of bus travel and comfort. For our trip to Huaraz we'd decided to take the cheaper, Economico class, thinking that it was like a normal tour bus without the fancy seats that turn into beds and the meals that no one really wants at 11 at night anyways. We were correct in part of our assumptions in that there weren't the nice beds or the food, but what we hadn't counted on was that the weather striping on the windows was gone and cold air and dust blew in all night. Em had her sleeping bag on her lap the whole time and refused to open it. I almost killed her for that.

Cold, sleep-deprived, and not thrilled we arrived at 7am in Huaraz and pulled out our tour book to find a place to stay. There was another backpacker that came up to us and ask if we wanted to share a taxi to Caorline Hostel. This wasn't in our book, but he said it was good and well known. So we went.

The hostel turned out to be great. Caroline Hostel is a hostel in the truest sense of the word; there are people here from everywhere (although this one seems to trafficed quite frequently by Isrealis), everyone shares dormatories, there are computers, common rooms, book exchanges, really happy owners, and free breakfast. After dropping our stuff in a room, the owner dragged us up the stairs and deposited us at a table before shoving breakfast in our faces. The day was looking up.

At breakfast, we meet a very nice couple (one from Belgium and one from France that had meet each other in medical school in Belgium...unfortunetly I couldn't remember where my uncle had gone to medical school so I couldn't ask if it was the same place) that told us they were going on a tour to Chavin de Huantar, which conincidentally was just where we wanted to go, in an hour and asked if we wanted to come.

Finishing breakfast and running out the door we were ushered into a van by the Hostel owner, Teo, along with the couple, and two friends from Germany (lots of Germans in Peru). Teo drove us into town (about two minutes away) and deposited us on another tour bus where there were multiple different groups (Peruvians, Swiss, an Aussie, and those of us from Caroline Hostel). This is about the point that we realized that the whole tour was in Spanish (go figure). Our friends from the morning tried to explain some stuff, but for the most part Em relied on my translations, that may have been correct or more than likely were way off the mark. They went something like: "This is a regious center and is the same one both sides. Something happened here. Something is important about that over there. You can hear around this whole thing from here. Underneath us is a series of tunnels that might be for garbage or fresh water or sounds....didn't understand that part."

The tour took us to a lake that is shaped like a hand, where we got to pet a llama and a baby sheep; to a nice tourist resturant, to the Chavin de Huantar, and finally to another museum.

The Chavin de Huantar is a temple associated with the Chavin cult that started buliding the complex between 800 BC and 400 BC. The cult was very much into duality and diety. Much of the temple contains a sun/moon, man/woman, light/dark, good/bad dichotomy and there is a lot that is related to astromomy. The coolest thing about this complex is that there are a series of labrinthyins underneath it. The guide wasn't able to tell us what these were for though, but they did contain the Lanzon, which is a block of craved white granite.

Our last day in Huaraz (unfortunetaly we only had the two). We took a Colectivo to Wilkawain, which is about 8km from Huaraz. Wilkawain is similar in design to the Castillo (burial chamber) seen at Chivan de Huantar and contained labryinthine passageways underneath it. This complex is related to the Huari-Tiahuanaco culture that was in the area between 600 and 1000 AD.

Em and I decided to walk back to town and took off down the hill. There was a sign that lead to the pathway (different than what the cars take), but this path diverged many times. We followed the rule of keep going down and towards the left and eventually made it to a main throuoghfair. The cool thing about the path was not only was it beauiful to walk down, but it passed through many small towns (two or three houses each) and the people thought we were very curious. Once back on the main road we head west towards the center (we'd come off the mountain somewhere about two miles from where we'd wanted), grabed some lunch and then dashed through the rain back to the Hostel.

Tonight we catch a bus for Lima and meet up with our previously booked tour.