I've found Tantonine now wheres Obi-Wan?

Second quick blog in succession, but due to timelines need to be on the road again tonight and ready for Lima tomorrow.

Aerial View of the city

I'm feeling quite battered with all the travel and had a long day today of local buses and trekking around ruins.

I awoke to the sound of Rocky in Spanish in the room next door at 7am, god knows why they would be wanting to play that in the morning, but it got me up ready to call my Mum on her birthday.

After packing my stuff up for later I jumped on a local bus, cost 20p for Chan Chan. I'd seen Chan Chan on programmes before and read about it in guide books, however I was not ready for the size of the place. A short ride out of the city and the road starts to go through the old city. The place was built by the Chimu before the arrival of the Inca and is roughly 1000 years old.

Chan Chan 1

Most of the ruins have weathered over the years, mostly because the city was made from mud, however the central ruins are still intact. From the main road it took me about 20mins to walk through the ruins to the central tombs. Its hard not to be impresses about the scale of the city and within the central area is a 10 to 12 meter high maze of walls and chambers. Most of the carvings still in the main plazas and you can get an idea from reconstructions on how it looked. The city looks like Tatonine the desert city from Star Wars, I can imagine George Lucas or one of his mates must of been here when coming up with the idea. I was expecting to find Han Solo or Luke Skywalking hanging out here.

Chan Chan 10

On the walk back to Trujillo I stopped off a pyramid, not much to look at but the site stands in the middle of the towns back streets, which is a bizarre sight in itself.

Later in the afternoon I tried to get to the Moche pyramids on the other side of town. After catching two wrong buses I arrived at the site late, a pain because these are another 700 years older and new paintings have been found inside. Even though I didn't enter I did get to appreciate the scale of the two pyramids of the sun and the moon.

Northern Peru done on a whistle stop, if I had more time here I would probably stay at the beech for a while, but the weather is not great here at the moment, apparently November to February are the best months. At the beech fishermen still use boats made of reeds, which also turn into surf boards, they use these to surf the waves back to the beech.

Chan Chan 2

Lima next stop

Chan Chan 3

Chan Chan 5

Chan Chan 6

Chan Chan 7

Chan Chan 8

Chan Chan 9

Chan Chan Carvings 1

Chan Chan Carvings 2

Chan Chan Carvings 3

Chan Chan central plaza 1

Chan Chan central plaza 2

Chan Chan central plaza 3

Chan Chan Plaza

Hodge

Plaza de Armes

The Road to Chan Chan

Trujillo Cathedral