Blogs from Trujillo, La Libertad, Peru, South America - page 11

Well Claires Mom (Pat) arrived as planned in Lima airport and this is an account of what we did next which will particularly interest the archaeologically minded amongst you…(you know who you are!) After a day acclimatising, recovering and eating churros (lovely caramel, chocolate and crème filled doughnut sticks) in Lima we thought it high time that Pat got to discover what this travelling lark is like first hand. As we boarded our bus to Trujillo we were excited by our 8-hour journey up the PanAmerican highway ahead. How wrong could we be? Hundreds of kilometres of sand dunes and chicken farms with nothing but desolate landscapes in between punctuated by fishy smelling towns along the route! 8 hours on a bus and 30 mins in a taxi later we arrived in Huanchaco, a bay on ... read more

Arriving back in Huaraz after my trek, I had to sit down and have a think about what I was going to do next. Ever since Cusco I have been wandering a bit. Everything to that point had been carefully planned but the second half has been mapped out entirely on impulse. Often I just make up my mind about the next spot and go and buy a bus ticket to travel that same night. Prior to leaving for the Santa Cruz Valley I had been panicking a bit about getting to Ecuador and booking my Galapagos cruise. I had almost decided to bus back to Lima and fly up to Quito, something that makes me laugh now (due to the cost of the flights and how simple it is to get there by bus). Luckily ... read more

Ruins, ruins and more ruins Trujillo provided a taste of things to come in Peru with some fascinating Moche and Chimu ruins (these guys were pre-Incan civilisations). We decided to stay at the beach outside of Trujillo called Huanchaco, our first beach in South America. It was a pretty nice place, lots of fish restaurants and surfers. They seem to be doing some work to the beach front at the moment and are putting in extra flood defences - possibly in preparation for El Niño. The fishermen use the same boats made out of reeds that the fishermen on Lake Titicaca use. They are almost like canoes with one side cut off and rather than sailing in them (these boats have no hollow to sit in), the fishermen sit on top. On our first day we ... read more