Hotel Central Chiclayo

... are full. Just as we are really staring to relax again the front door of the minibus swings open and a local guys throws himself out. In my naivity I think "poor chap has fallen out" in reality he wanted to escape the 20p charge. We spend the next 15 minutes looking for him in the minibus, "buggar" we all sigh, back in a predicament again. Luckily the driver doesn´t find him and we get home safe and sound, exhausted from another day of random happenings.

First up, some news. Whilst dying of whatever disease I had in Cuenca I sorted out my flights to come home! I will hopefully be arriving at Heathrow on 11th December – just in time for Christmas!

So, as the title suggests, things haven't been going too well recently. After a long and painful bus ride to Chiclayo we (myself and Steve, the English musician) found ourselves in an utter dump of a city. Still, we found somewhere cheap to stay. My plan was just to ...

We started off with breakfast at Don Benny’s, an absolutely great local restaurant that should be put into the Lonely Planet. It’s a simple bakery with great empanadas and cakes-everything we ordered was good. Anyone who goes to Chiclayo should stop there.
We booked our tickets to Chachapoyas for later that night and then headed off to visit El Museo de Sipan, or the Sipan Museum. The Sipan ...

Le matin, nous prenons un combi pour la capitale de la region, Lambayeque. Ici nous visitons le Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipan (photo interdite) ou sont exposes les tresors retrouves dans une tombe royale Mochica. En effet en 87, le Dr ALva denote une augmantation de nombre d'objets anciens sur le amrche noir. Il mene son enquete et decouvre que des huaqueros (pilleurs) ont decouvert un tombaux. La police met fin a ce ...

... in this beautiful museum in Lambayeque. My only complaint about the museum is that they don't allow photos and don't sell postcards. I would've bought a bunch, too, because really the items in this museum are beyond belief! Even the building is a work of art! You have to put this on your must-do list if you're in northern Peru and it's worth going out of your way ...

... a 2 sol mototaxi to the bus stop and then paid for a S./1.20 bus to Lambayeque, where the museum is located). Before going to the museum, we walked around the historical Plaza de Armas (city center) of Lambayeque which was quite nice, with a beautiful church (cathedral?) and then visited the longest wooden balcony in South America, pretty cool. Anywho, couldn't take pictures in the Sipan museum, but they had loads of great Moche metallurgy and ceramics stuff from ...

... pisco sour en un restaurante super lindo, fuimos a cine. Hay mucha influencia gringa en los centros comerciales que hemos visto. Hay MacDonalds en todas partes, restaurates gringos por doquier, casi igual que en Guayaquil. Pero Guayaquil ya era el colmo. Era como estar en un mall en Gringolandia. NO mas Chiclayo...ahora Trujillo!

... Peru, but that's the place where you can find ruins of plenty of pre-Inca civilizations, so I really wanted to see them. We started in the morning with Túcume, a city of 26 adobe pyramids built more than 1000 years ago by the Sicán (or Lambayeque) people. Those pyramids have been quite damages by time (and El Niño's rains!),, but it's still an amazing and terrific sight. After that we went to the Sipán site and the Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán. Twenty years ago ...