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Published: October 10th 2008
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Hey all!!
We spent the last three nights camping at a beach in Punta Sal, Peru. It was a long journey from Cuenca, and we stopped three times for immigration and customs!! Our campsite is pure luxury in a beautiful setting, we pitched our tents on the beach right next to the hostel which was handy for toilets!!
The first night was good craic, the hostel cooked us dinner which was absolutely delicious; seafood fried rice, battered chicken and fish bites, and chips. Then we retired to beside the bonfire for the rest of the night making a good dent into our beers and rum. The next day we went into Mancora, the nearest town, to hire surfboards. Matt and I were going to share one, and the rest of the group get lessons from an ex-pro surfer. But when we got to the beach there was about half a foot of surf so I didnt bother, just went for a swim instead!! I fought off some seaweed and got stalked by a school of fish. Then we went back to the hostel and group B cooked up some very nice spag bol.
The next day was incredibly
lazy; Adrian, Laura, Pedro and Wes went fishing at 6 in the morning, so the rest of us lazed around and wrote in our journals. After lunch a few of us went into the markets to have a look around and I got stuck in conversation from a guy from Ayacucho selling some crafts!! We had a BBQ that night which was just incredible- fresh fish, steak, sausage, spuds, mushrooms, onions, salad, fruit salad... myum myum....
Yesterday we had another long travel to Huanchaco, close to Trujillo. We actually managed to leave on time at 7am for once. We visited the Lambeyesque museum to see some excavated Sipan tombs from the Moche civilisation. Today we visited the Chan Chan mud city from the Chimu civilisation. It is the world's largest adobe city and was the capital of the Chimu empire for about 300 years. We visited the Tschudi palace which is only one of ten and had taken 40 years so far to excavate. There were three sections; administrative, residential, and the cemetary. The Chimu people were masters of plastering, the walls had a multitude of designs. Repeated rhombus shapes represented fishnets, parallel lines represented the sea, a wave
pattern of fish with pelicans also represented the importance of the sea to these people. Even the way the built the city was impressive - the walls were built to withstand earthquakes (and did) by having a wider base and a gap between the bricks in the middle. The Chimus flourished around 1100-1450AD but then were gradually incorporated into the Inca empire. After the Chan Chan complex we were taken to the Mochina temple of the sun and moon. The temple of the moon was actually five temples - a new one was built on top of the old and made bigger as needed. The brightly coloured painted frescos were really well preserved and the whole area was still bring carefully excavated. The whole complex is believed to be the capital of the Moche civilisation, and one of Peru's mpst important archaeological sites. However in the north coast of Peru alone there are thought to be 15,000 archaeological sites so who knows!!
Tomorrow is a free day and then onto Lima on Sunday!!
Orla
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