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.