We realized in Chiclayo that, while we loved traveling slowly and without a plan, if we continued at our previous pace we would need about 8 months to get to Patagonia. By then it would be the middle of winter there and we wouldn’t be able to do anything. So we put together a schedule, and started pushing through Peru. We’re hoping we can come back in early 2010 to spend more time here. Hence, we spent about 29 hours in Trujillo, and most of that was on tours outside of the city!
- We went to Huaca de la Luna in the morning, and saw an amazing site of the Chimu people. It was a huge temple (a bit larger than a football field), built out of mud and clay over the course of a few hundred years. Every time there was an El Nino storm (about every 50 years), the temple would fall apart. Instead of rebuilding it, they would build a new temple, almost twice as big as the old one, on top of the old one. After 5 rounds, they basically got assimilated by the Incas (I think). The designs are pretty intricate; and you can see some of the patterns in the photoset…
- In the afternoon, we visited Chan Chan, a huge (like the geographic size of Philadelphia) site just outside of Trujillo. Again, mud and clay construction, but the interesting thing is that the palaces and temples were combined here (this group came after the chimu, I think). Chan chan sprawls all over the place (the Peruvian Panamerican highway actually runs THROUGH it), and we saw the third-SMALLEST of the palaces there. Pretty impressive – designs representing the different forces in the people’s lives (fishing nets, waves, lizards, cats, etc), and really interesting to visit. There was a museum too – and I have a few photos from there as well…
