Culture Vulture (1)

Hola all, seems an age since I last posted and lots has happened, for a start I'm now in Ecuador but more of that later.

I left Huaraz on a night bus to go to a city called Trujillo on the coast. I had rather hoped that it would be far enough up the coast to escape the grey fog that is a feature of the Peruvian coastal winter (something to do with the cold air from the sea, courtesy of the Humboldt current, hitting the coldish coast and ... not really sure, but basically you end up with grey mist all winter, possibly slightly more depressing than English winter drizzle but there's not a lot in it!). Anyway it wasn't sunmy, although it did clear sometimes in the afternoons.

Trujillo is famous for the fantastic archaeological sites in the area, apparently there are over 100k known sites in Peru and lots more as yet unrecorded! I was really keen to get a good guide here, one with lots of information and Lonely Planet came up trumps as it described a hostal run by a Peruana (Peruvian woman) and her English husband who are both guides. Casa de Clara was memorable - great chocolate cake - and despite sleeping in something that resembled a shed on the top floor of the house, comfortable.

Michael White, Clara's husband, is a great and enthusiastic guide. He's lived in Peru for 15 years or so, doing various things and it was a joy to be shown round by him. In the morning we visited the Temples of the Sun and Moon, which are Moche temples built over hundreds of years as they were refurbished and redecorated. We walked round one of the temples which was substantially damaged by the Spanish conquistadors when they washed away a lot of it to loot tons of gold and silver contained within the structure. It's made of adobe brick so water destroys it, which is posing interesting challenges for the archaeologists in protecting what they uncover from El Niño. It is an amazing structure and even more breathtaking is the art on the walls of the temple which is gradually being uncovered, and in combination with the ceramics that this culture produced, it is enabling archaeologists to understand more about this culture. From our point of view it was very blood thirsty with human sacrifice - as a prisoner, the good news was that you were going to participate in a very important ceremony and have a portrait made of you in ceramic....the bad news was that you were going to be executed! If you're interested in seeing some photos, this site has them and more information: http://www.huacas.com/index.html

In the afternoon, we went to Chan Chan, an enormous site from the Chimu civilization, after the Moche and then conquered by the Incas. It is basically an enormous area on the outskirts of the city of melted adobe palace. There are 9 palaces/compounds from different periods and we looked round one. It was vast and complicated. Once it was highly decorated but it was hard to imagine how people lived there. They've only found one wooden post which would support a roof and from that have decided that some key areas had roofs but most of it didn't. It is a very dry area - 0.6mm rain per year (or it could be 6mm I forget now but very little) - so I suppose it's possible to live with no roof, just difficult for us to imagine.

The other great thing about my time in Trujillo was meeting up with some like minded people who were travelling the same way as me. They were Rob (Roberto in Spanish), Louise (Louisa) and Fernando, the first two from London and Fernando from Nasca in Peru. After 5 minutes of meeting in the hostal we'd "clicked" and I spent the next week and a half travelling with them, which was constantly funny and pleasurable. Amazing how many "in jokes" you can develop in that time.

We moved onto Chiclayo the day after all the sites and the day after that went to a world class museum in Lambeyeque nearby. This the Lord of Sipan museum, which is effectively Peru's Tutankamum. It is just amazing, we spent half a day going round it. The Lord of Sipan was a Moche leader whose tomb was found undamaged in 1987. The most incredible objects in gold, turquoise, coral, silver and other materials have been found and are well displayed in the museum. In the same funerary monument they have found other high status burials and have established that some of the figures depicted on ceramics are not mythological as anticipated but were real (they can match the pictures of headresses and costume to those found in graves).

Although this is such an important museum it is not that visited by gringos (foreigners). That became obvious when a visiting school group of teenagers asked if they could their photo taken with us (after a lot of giggling and whispering!). It's a shame that everyone heads off South, because this deserves to be on the standard tourist route.

We left Chiclayo the same night (this was a speedy bit of travelling as Rob is a teacher and so had limited time in Peru) to go inland to Chacapoyas....more in the next post.