Catching up on Peru...

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Hi everyone!

Its been a little while since we´ve written anything, so this entry is going to cover most of our 4 weeks in Peru. We´ll try to keep it relatively brief, hitting the highlights from each spot, but there is a lot to talk about. We also attached a lot of pictures to this entry that range from the farm up until we arrived in Cuzco.

After leaving Mancora, the Northern Beach hotspot in Peru, we headed towards Lima, stopping for a few days a piece in the major Northern towns of Chiclayo, Cajamarca and Trujillo.

Chiclayo is a city very near to the coast that is surrounded by several archealogical sites including the tomb of Sipan the (the second richest tomb ever discovered, second to King Tut.) which was very impressive-floor after floor of gold jewelry, etc. We managed to get a guided tour of several sites and museums in Chiclayo, Ferenafe and Tucume. At most of the major archealogical sites in the country the Peruvian government has put Peruvian dogs, which are currently endangered. The Peruvian dog is a pretty funny looking type of dog that are bald (except for the occasional mohawk), have black skin and long thin tails. The city of Chiclayo itself was not too impressive; however there was a huge market which had a special section dedicated to Witch doctors. People were selling all sorts of herbs, animal skins and voodoo dolls. At the time Sam had a bit of a stomach bug so he inquired around at the market and bought an herbal remedy made of 36 plants from one of the vendors. (the remedy did in fact work and Sam felt much better the next day) The other very exciting thing about Chiclayo was that there was a movie theater and we were able to see the movie Tropic Thunder (Sam for his 3rd time and Anna for her first, mainly due to Sam´s insistence...) Being in a movie theater really transported us back to the states for a few hours.

After Chiclayo we took an awful overnight bus to Cajamarca. Cajamarca is a beautiful mountain town inland from the coast and high up in the Andes. The city is full of cobblestone streets and is much greener than the coastal towns. One of the really cool aspects of Cajamarca is that it is a very well preserved Peruvian town and a lot of the women still dress in their traditional clothing: long colorful skirts, sweaters, tall straw hats, intricately embroidered scarves and no shoes. In Cajamarca we able to visit Cumbe-Mayo (fine-river) where there are ancient pre-incan aquaducts and large rock formations. The tour guide kept pointing out rocks that supposedly looked like animals, but some of them were quite the stretch, such as the, I quote, ¨Face of the Fat China Man¨... One of the highlights of Cajamarca was that Anna ordered a traditional guinea pig dish. However, instead of the expected filet of guinea pig, the plate arrived with a full guinea pig, doused in peanut sauce, that appeared to have been caught in action while running and brandishing its little teeth and claws. Despite its appearance Anna attests that it was quite delicious, though she gladly gave the head to Jared to eat.

We took our first luxury bus (full reclining seats, little meals, movies, and fingerprinting before boarding), to Trujillo, another coastal desert city full of ruins. In Trujillo we managed to find a great tour guide who had literally grown up with two of the temples in her backyard. She brought us to the Huaca de la Luna and Sol, both wonderfully preserved Moche temples. It was amazing to see beautifully painted and carved reliefs, which covered every wall of the Huaca de la Luna, that dated to the precolumbian period. The Huaca del Sol has yet to be excavated and while it looks like a mountain of dirt now it is expected to be even richer of a find then the Huaca de la Luna; however, it is not being protected very well and we saw crowds of Peruvian tourists climbing up and down its eroding adobe bricks... From there we saw the Chan Chan ruins. Chan Chan is the remains of one of the largest port cities discovered in Peru. We visited the 8th of the 9 Palaces, which is also one of the bigger ones. While much of the site has been reconstructed (45%) it was still incredibly impressive in size. It took us several hours simply to walk around the Palace. At the end of the tour our guide told us a pretty bizarre story about how one time when she was the last one to leave the ruins at night she had seen a series of ghostly shadows following her (four servants carrying a female on a litter.) When she told one of the night guards, he told her that they see the ghosts every night and it was nothing uncommon.

After Trujillo we decided to take a break from sight-seeing and headed to the beach of Huanchaco to relax for a few days. Here we ate tons of incredibly fresh seafood and spent our days finding the best coffee milk shakes that we could. One night at one of the restaurants Jared made friends with the cook, who, while we were eating invited him outside to smoke in the street and then apparently proceeded to lecture him on the benefits of Viagra and other similar drugs. That being said the food was amazing, with upwards of 10 different kinds of seafood in our rice dish, including a whole crab, all for 5 dollars.

From Trujillo it was a 9 hour bus ride to Lima. In Lima we stayed with a faimly friend of Anna´s. It was great to be living in a house for a few days and having access to the internet, a washing machine, a kitchen and a bathroom with a toilet seat. The family was incredibly nice and gave us a key to their house to use for the week. Their dog Jack, the spitting image of Jock from Lady and the Tramp, was another story. He apparently had not been housetrained, despite there being a courtyard in the house at his disposal whenever he wanted. He especially liked to pee on new things that appeared in the house... aka Sam´s things... great. Despite having been warned that Lima was a very dirty and unsafe city, we had a great time there and really never felt in danger. We saw a number of cool museums, including one with life size wax statues demonstrating the multiple methods of torture employed during the inquisition. We also saw a set of ruins that were located right in the middle of a city block, went to a huge artisan market, saw the new bond movie and ... went to STARBUCKS! We mainly stayed in the Miraflores district (the upperscale area of the city) which was beautiful and great to walk around during the day and at night.

Another 14 hour bus ride later we were in Arequipa, the second biggest city in the country and a place to get acclimated before heading up to Cusco (Machu Piccu). Arequipa is a nice desert city set between snowcapped Andean Mountains and Colca Canyon (the second deepest canyon in the world, two times as deep as the grand canyon). We stayed at a great hostel with a kitchen, allowing us to cook dinner one night and make friends with some other travelers. The highlight from Arequipa was seeing Juanita, the Ice Princess. Juanita was a human sacrifice of the Incans to appease Apu, the god of the mountians. Because she was sacrificed on top of an icy mountain peak her remains were very well preserved until they were recently discovered. We got a tour of the museum and... were able to see her in a glass freeze chamber that looked like something out of Star Wars (Hans Solo?)


From Arequipa we made our way to Cuzco. In an effort to keep this entry from becoming a chore to read we are going to stop here for the moment and pick up with Machu Piccu next time we write. Hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving and is doing well!

Much love,

Anna and Sam

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