Trujillo and Chan-Chan

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Sept 14th, Saturday - Currently in Huarez, Peru!

We arrived in Trujillo in the late afternoon and took a taxi to the Hostel El Conde de Arce, which is just 1/2 block off of the very beautiful Plaza de Armas and which cost us what I could have sworn he said 60 soles/day but he demanded 70/day when we paid him 2 days later! The Arce is very run down and it´s really too bad because it could be very, very nice!! But it was clean and in a great spot so it was OK with us!

We first went to the Vegetarian Restaurant a few blocks away (it was about 4pm) and had a nice meal (the ensalata mixta was great!!). Trujillo is beautiful!! We haven´t been to Cuzco yet but to us Trujillo seems to be the Cuenca of Peru! The Plaza and it´s Cathedral is just very well kept and pleasant.

We had a very pleasant chat with Annie, a woman from Florida who is spending a few months cycling in Ecuador and Peru and possibly into Chile. We sat outside our room and spent about 2 hours talking with her!! Good luck, Annie! Sorry we didn´t connect with you later...

The next day after breakfast, we walked out towards the way to Chan-Chan and eventually got on a little Combis minibus going to the beach town Huanchaco and got off at the Chan-Chan stop and walked all the way down to the ticket office/entrance, which was a very pleasant walk amidst the beautiful ruins! We paid our money and after taking some pix with some very friendly Peruvian elementary school students and their teachers we entered the site!! All I can say is "Wow!". Chan-Chan is very, very impressive! What they have excavated was stunning in its size and beauty! We took a lot of pix and really enjoyed walking around the site. A tour was going through and a couple of Peruvian guys were playing a drum and flute for them so that added to the niceness of our time in there. We then walked back to the road and over to the museum which paled before what we saw in Lambayeque but was still nice. We then caught a combis back into town.

We wanted to try some seafood while we were on the coast so we went over to the Mar Picante Restaurant that they recommended in the book and pigged out on the cerviche and fried mixto seafood!!! Absolutely delisioso!!! That cerviche is really good and I´m not really a big seafood kind of guy! But I dug into it wholeheartedly!!!

Later that night we went out to the Casona Desa cafe that was just down the street from us for a small snack before going to bed. Those buildings down there in the center of Trujillo are just sooooo beautiful. Rumi had a great Hot Chocolate (like melted chocolate candy bars!!) and we all shared a chocolate and a Tres Leches cake....Yum!! Rumi and I walked over to their Banyo and it was so elegant and nice just walking through the courtyards in the back!!

The next day, we finally figured out that to get to our next destination (Cazma) we had to first go to Chimbote and the American Express company was the best bus for that so we took a taxi out to their terminal and hopped on their next bus. Luckily, when we were going through Chimbote, I mentioned to the driver just in time that our destination was Casma and we stopped the bus pronto and we got off and walked not more than 30 yards to the Cazma colectivo office and in the wink of an eye we had our luggage on the top of a minivan and we were off on the 45 min. journey...

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