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Published: April 7th 2010
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After a night bus from Lima, I arrived in the city of Trujillo - Peru’s third city and the capital of the north. 12km north west of the city centre is the small fishing village of Huanchaco, and as this is where all the budget accommodation is located, I decided to stay here. The village itself is very nice, with clean sandy beaches and a pier stretching into the pacific, but away from the sea front it seemed a bit grotty. The hostel was nice enough though, and the sunsets over the beach and sea were spectacular. All the main attractions were however in Trujillo, but there were frequent enough buses (albeit rather slow ones). I thought the centre was nice enough; the main square is very ornate, as are the main thoroughfares that form the city’s grid shape. There were a couple of interesting museums as well as some large colonial houses open to the public for free (also useful as they have free toilets). During the middle of the day however, the temperatures got unbearable hot in the sun. Luckily after my first day, there was quite a bit of haze in the sky and it didn’t get nearly
so hot. As it was so hot, I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon trying to read my latest book (Tess of the D’Urbervilles), but in the end spent an hour or so talking to a friendly Peruvian-American who lived in one of the large colonial houses. Quite bizarre - we went from talking in English to Spanish and then to French, as he wanted to practice different languages with me.
I liked most of the restaurants I went to in the city - unfortunately I am unable to try the national dish of ceviche, which is a plate of seafood marinated in lime and chilli, but the tourist information office gave me a list of vegetarian restaurants to choose from, and they were all good value and tasty (typically a salad, a soup, a main course of rice, soya and lentils and a juice for just over 1 pound). I also tried a dessert which was being sold everywhere - leche ahorrada, or roasted milk, which I though looked like a crème brulée, but in fact it was more like a milk jelly. I prefer the cremoladas, which are made only from pureed fruit which is then
frozen and then blended. A bit like a sorbet.
To explore the main archaeological sites around Trujillo, I had decided to book tours as it wasn’t that much more expensive than doing it yourself, plus you get a guide thrown in. All the sites were crammed into a one day tour, starting in the morning at the Sun and Moon Huacas (temples) just outside the city. There date from the Moche culture, which existed roughly between 200 and 800 ad in the northern half of Peru’s coast. It only died out due to 2 years of continual rain in the area, which resulted in the leaders sacrificing more and more of the Moche people in an attempt to appease their god and stop the rain; instead they ended up wiping themselves out. The two huacas formed the capital of the empire - the Sun huaca was the seat of government whilst the Moon huaca was their cathedral. The Sun Huaca is in fact the largest adobe structure in the world, but isn’t open to the public. Fortunately the Moon Huaca is. These huacas are basically pyramids with each level representing a different generation - as soon as a leader dies,
he or she is buried in their level, which is then sealed off and their successor will build on top. The Sun Huaca had 12 or so levels and the Moon Huaca 7. In the afternoon, we visited the city of Chan Chan, which was the capital of the Chimu Empire, which was at it’s height around 1200AD. The site is absolutely enormous - originally it covered 25 square kilometres, or roughly the same size as modern day Trujillo, but a lot of the land has been reused. The centre however is still relatively intact, and is still the largest adobe city in the world. We visited one more huaca - the Rainbow Huaca, and then the palatial complex in the centre of the old city.
Back in Trujillo, the Plaza de Armas (main square) was absolutely bursting that evening, all because of the Easter celebrations. The whole week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday is filled with special masses, concerts, processions etc, and on this evening there was a procession whose focal points were 2 large floats carrying Jesus on the cross and the Virgin Mary. Absolutely hectic, but an electric atmosphere.
On my last day in Trujillo I
visited another archaeological complex, El Brujo (or the wizard’s or witchdoctor’s complex). So named as one of the huacas was known as a centre for wizardry and ancient medicine. The guide described one of the most common cures witchdoctors prescribed (probably the equivalent of using leeches in medieval Europe) : strip the patient naked, lay him or her on a table with some herbs, and then place a dozen or so guinea pigs next to the patient. Not quite sure what this was supposed to cure or how effective it was! One of the huacas in the complex dates back to 3000bc, but the only one you can visit is from the Moche culture, like the Sun and Moon Huacas. The difference here is that in 2006 they found an intact tomb, that of the Senora de Cao, a female ruler from about 1500 years ago. In the museum you can see everything found in the tomb, from the gold artefacts to the ceramics and the linen her body was wrapped in. The body is also on display, and as before she was buried she was covered in Mercury, her skin has been preserved, which was quite an eerie sight.
After returning to Trujillo, it was dinner then an overnight bus to the city of Cajamarca, back in the Andes where I’m happy to say it’s much cooler. Cajamarca isn’t even in my guide book, but in my hostel in Huanchaco I swapped one of my old books for a near-new Rough Guide for Peru, which has a lot more information than my guide book which covers the whole continent. Consequently I’ve read about all these places I now want to visit that before I didn’t know existed, mostly in the less touristy north of the country, so I’ll be sticking around here longer than I thought.
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