We spent a couple of days in northern Peru, in Chiclayo. Northern Peru is a desert, but it hasn´t always been that bad. The Incas moved through here and took it over in the 1400s, and there were actually several civilizations living in the area before that.
Chiclayo was a good place to rest for a few days, get our bearings for Peru (getting money, cell phone SIM card, checking out the local situation, etc), and to visit a few places. It was a little crazy though – Chiclayo has about 500,000 people, and in all of our walking around the city, we only saw three stoplights. Traffic was busy here – almost every intersection has a few cars arriving simultaneously, slowing down, and basically playing slow chicken with each other to see who gets to cross first. It’s one thing to watch this, and another to figure out how to cross while it’s happening!
We also saw a few really interesting pre-Inca historical sites. We went to the museum of Tumbas Reales in Lambayeque, and saw the collected excavations from a site that’s estimated to be about 1400 years old. It’s really impressive because the main graves had all been untouched by grave robbers, and it was found in the last 30 years. You can read more about the culture and museum on wikipedia. They are still working on the site; in face, in the past few months, they found another tomb, bringing the total to 14. The museum is modern (constructed about 5 or 6 years ago), well-lit inside with air-conditioning, and apparently cost about $4 million to build (according to the Peruvians we met there). The museum was really interesting, and all in spanish (so it took some effort to understand); they don’t allow cameras so the only photo we have is:
In the afternoon, we took a collectivo bus to Tucume, which is about 20km north of Lambayeque, and visited the museum and the site there. This site is about 1,000 years old, and the big difference is that you can tell that the museum isn’t as well-funded as the one in Lambayeque (although, as they mention several times, the museum was started by funding from Thor Heyerdahl, of Kon Tiki fame). It’s much smaller, all open-air, and uses sky-lights to light the displays. There are a few very cool dioramas of the site and how it might have looked when it was in use, like this one:
The site itself is also really interesting, as it is all built around a large hill (probably the source of their construction materials – mud and clay, primarily). There is a walk that goes from the museum outside the site up to the top of one of the hills; it’s a great place for photos. Check out more of them below!
