Northern Peru.... yes we're getting lazy!

Huanchaco (Trujillo) - Chachapoyas (Kuelap) - Mancora
I must warn.... this is written at least a month after being there! So it really isn´t one of my best!
From Lima we took the 10hr journey heading north to Trujillo, which is the Peruvian town our Melbourne based Spanish teacher is from. Trujillo itself had a cute square and a lively park on the weekends, but otherwise nothing much was happening.... so we caught a taxi 12km NW to Huanchaco (a fishing village). Huanchaco is known for it´s 'high-ended, cigar-shaped, totora (reed) boats called caballitos´. Fisherman use these to paddle beyond the waves to fish and then surf back in with their catch. We found a cute cafe there that also did a cheap bed and breakfast , so we settled in for a few days.... relaxing in between visits to the local eateries, so that Paul could have his daily intake of Ceviche!
We were at a point in our trip where we wanted to keep going, with the plan to spend time on a warm beach later on.... so off we went to Chachapoyas. This was about 16hrs away, including a bus change and wait, and after travelling overnight on the worst bus we had been on thus far, we arrived! The lonely planet map was all wrong, so we found ourselves wandering aimlessly around the small town at about 5am asking a taxi driver for directions to the cheap hotel we wanted! We were here to see Kuelap, which is a pre-inca city perched at 3100m on a ridge about an hour or so out of town. It´s fairly remote within Peru so there weren´t many tourists there at all, which was great and Kuelap itself ended up being one of the more interesting ruins sites. The archeologists are still excavating and repairing, so we got to see it before they completely beautify it! Although, there are already areas where the huge wall is repaired and they have rebuilt an example of the circular housing. The protective wall surrounding Kuelap was particularly interesting as there are only 3 entrances to the inside and these entrances go from wide to thin so that only one person can pass into the city at any one time.
From Kuelap we did another overnight journey, and then some, to a beach called Mancora (about an hour from the Ecuador border). Mancora wasn´t busy when we were there, so the many, many shack restaurants that lined the beach seemed a little out of place! But it is at one of these that we met Larry! Larry is a Peruvian running one of the restaurants and after befriending him he made us a special entré, off the menu, and made us fresh fruit cocktails all night! Larry made us feel our spanish was terrific as we somehow kept the conversation going for hours! Mancora was a nice beach that we got to enjoy in the mornings, but was cloudy in the afternoons. However I was thrilled to see, and come within 1-2m of, a pod of dolphins! There must have been 20 of them! Swimming so close for so long! That, I think, was one of the best moments of the trip! But alas, the clouds kept coming and I was being attacked by mosquitoes everynight, so we left our room that cost us $3pn each, with a bed that smelt like straw and a cold shower with sea water, and headed to Ecuador!

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