Ancient Ruins!

The journey to Trujillo and the mad scenery was not what we expected at all...all desert really interjected with real shanty towns and there seemed to be a marked difference in the poverty levels compared with Ecuador. Houses were literally built in the sand which must have been great for the kids! We had to go via Chiclayo to get there - a real bustling town with alot more atmosphere & energy than some of the towns we'd passed through in Ecuador. After getting ripped off for one of the most delicious hot chicken sandwiches we've had (so worth it!) and nearly getting on the wrong bus we were away and arrived in Trujillo late afternoon...just enough time to go for an explore! Trujillo has a great Plaza de Armes where everyone congregates and the whole town's got a nice feel to it! We celebrated our first full day in Peru with some lovely cake and looked at the oh so impressive old city wall! Hmmmm! Wait till you see the photo! Only other thing to mention is taht we'd got so used to people asking for money, shoe-shine, etc, we walked past this guy who asked us something, I automatically responded with 'No Gracias'...bless him he was only asking where we came from so I wandered back and chatted to him for abit!! Terrible!

An old & slow interent cafe we found !!

So the next day we got our fill of ruins & archeological sites at the Temple of the Sun & Moon and Chan Chan...our main reason for going to Trujillo! Our first stop was at the Temple of the Moon and a look at the outside of the Temple of the Sun as it was apparently closed! We had a bit of a pikey company who wouldn't even pay for the car to go into the main car park! Both temples stem from the Moche period in Peru's history (any wiser?) and have the most surreal setting in the middle of the desert...almost like a lunar landscape again! The complex is dominated by two huge adobe brick buildings: the Pyramid of the Sun and the artificial platform called the Temple of the Moon. On the quarter-mile-wide, open plain between them, researchers have found many graves, most of them looted by the Spanish! Tut! It's quite mad to think of this huge city now completely covered by sand...you wander round the site and find pieces of pottery everywhere! The friezes that are still been uncovered at the Temple of the Moon are majorly impressive and the latest lot to be revealed this year haven't even made the National Geographic! Another first for Team Smedders!! We really loved this place and found it fascinating that all these amazing paintings are still being discovered today!

At the Chan Chan ruins

We had a lovely tour guide for our afternoon trip to Chan Chan and spent the majority of the afternoon acting like 5 year olds messing around! Think it was being close the sea again that did it! The city of Chan Chan, part of the Chimu Empire, represents America's largest prehispanic mud-brick settlement. This huuuge city covers 7.7 square miles and is centered on a 2.3 square mile urban centre dominated by a series of huge enclosures - the palaces of the Chimu kings. It really is an amazing structure and some of the stone engravings (alot are marine themed...lots of fishes and the like!) and statues are still remarkably clear! One of the weird things found at the site are the bones of dozens of women which they think might have been a mass human sacrifice! Hmmm!

Hairless pooch

All in all a very cultural day with yet again hundreds of photos and topped off with half an hour at the seaside in Huanchaco where we got to see lots of Tortora reed boats which the fisherman still use today! This is also supposed to be a genius place for surfing and even had a pier! We sat & watched a crazy dog (literally!) run round and round in circles with a stone in his mouth and the local vendors persistently tried to sell us chewing gum...must be our bad breath!!!!! Always like to throw in a not so interesting fact about our travels! All memories though! Finished off with a hectic walk to try and find us a v early bus to Huaraz the next morning and then chilled with burritos, beer & kebabs for desert!

Reed boats by the sea

Wall Paintings at the Temple of the Moon