Chiclayo and el Señor de Sipan

---

Our arrival at Chiclayo was relievingly uneventful and without drama we checked into the (somewhat strange smelling) Hostal Sican. We had decided to stop in the north of Peru to check out the ancient and supposedly incredible ruins that are even now still being excavated and discovered, and that receive far fewer visitors than Machu Pichu and the south of the country in general.

It was with this in mind that we set off on our first day in Chiclayo to meet the long deceased Lord of Sipan. His remains, and those of many other elite members of his society, were discovered in the 90's at a large crumbling site built entirely of adobe mud bricks. The corpses were found along with a huge quantity of offerings, from ceramics to gold and copper ornaments, amazingly preserved. We had high expectations but were not to be dissappointed.

Sipan itself was a fascinating site, and despite our less than fluent Spanish we were able to learn a great deal from our guide. So far archeologists have excavated some of the tombs although there are more yet to be examined. Each one contains the remains of one of the leaders of the society along with a number of human and animal sacrifices which were intended to help the dead lord in his afterlife. Some of it was pretty gruesome, as you could clearly see the evidence of people that had been buried alive - some of whom had their feet removed before burial as they were to be the "guardians" of the tomb. Their only consolation was that they were first doped with coca so they probably didn't have much of a clue what was going on.... Still pretty nasty though.

Next stop was the much larger and very impressive site of Tucumé, back up the Pan American highway. This site was much much bigger and took us some time to walk around. Tucumé is the remains of a vast city built of adobe mud bricks, which sadly don't weather very well as you can see from the photo. The Huaca Larga is the largest adobe structure in the world, at over 700m long, although we couldn't get very close as it's not open to the public. Despite Emma managing to roast her shoulders on the walk around, we both really enjoyed exploring this ancient city and trying to imagine what it must have been like when it was new and inhabited.

Whilst at Chiclayo we also visited the beautiful tranquil seaside resort of Pimintel. It was a bit of a last minute decision - I mean who decides to go to the beach at 5:30pm?? - but proved to be fun and interesting nonetheless. It turns out that Pimintel was in the past a major port for the export of sugar, and you can still walk along the wooden pier that carried the cargo to the waiting boats. To say it's not in good condition is an understatement - those of you that know Brighton, think West Pier! Was even more exciting after the sun had gone down.... You had to try and guess where the dodgy planks were!

We only allowed ourselves a couple of days in Chiclayo, which was a bit of a shame as it meant that we couldn't go to the museum at Lambayeque which was where all of the artifacts retrieved from both sites were on display. Determined to push on though we got ourselves some bus tickets and headed inland to the pleasant town of Chachapoyas, home yet more pre-Inca ruins....

---

Photos

Cross section of adobe pyramid
Showing mud brick construction inside