Huaca del Sol y Luna; Chan Chan, Huanchaco

Huaca del Sol y Luna; Chan Chan, Huanchaco

Trujillo, Peru, South America

I had a great day checking out some archaeological sites today. I met three people at breakfast at the hostel this morning, and we all wanted to do the same thing, so we stuck together, and it was great. Karen (Canadian), Kris, Jimmy (both Belgian), and I grabbed a taxi at 9:30am and headed off to Huaca del Sol y la Luna. This was a pair of temples (Sun and Moon), that were used for sacrifices back between 100 AD and 800 AD. It was pretty impressive to see because there are some bricks that still have the original paint colors on them and you can still make out a lot of the original designs. These were built as inverted pyramids, which I’ve never seen before. They would build one level, cover it in sand, expand out, and built the next one on top of it. It’s a pretty interesting way of constructing it.

We got a guide there, which was very helpful, and since there were four of us, it was pretty cheap. We got a combi-taxi from Huaca del Sol y la Luna back into town, and then had to get a taxi from there to a vegetarian restaurant. I am not really into vegetarian restaurants, but it was recommended by the woman at the hostel, and both girls were veggies, so we went with it. It was okay, not terrible, and I was starving, so it did the job.

We got a taxi out to Chan Chan from the lunch and got to see the second archaeological site for the day. This was built after Huaca del Sol y la Luna, but the next civilization that took over. It is a bit more well preserved and you can see what a massive complex it was. We only got to see one of the palaces, it was number nine, and there were ten that had been built. It was huge. It reminded me a bit of the Forbidden City in Beijing, because there were a lot of big open squares within the palace for ceremonies to take place, and there was a 30ft wall surrounding the entire compound.

This would have been a pretty cool place to visit, but there was a group of about fifty young teenagers that were brought to Chan Chan at the same time, and I just found them too annoying to even enjoy myself. They were really loud and kept trying to be annoying when I was trying to hear our guide. This guide also didn’t have as good a level of english as the one in the morning, so that also didn’t help my level of enjoyment.

We finished up at Chan Chan and I was pretty happy to get out of there. We got a taxi over to Huanchaco, which ended up being my favorite part of the day. This is a small beach town about 10km (6m) outside of Trujillo, and it’s best known for it’s boats made out of reeds, and the fisherman use cormorant birds to do their fishing for them. It’s a really nice little town.

I think it helped that we were there on a Saturday because it was pretty busy and there were people selling things up and down the boardwalk. We ate our way down the boardwalk trying different fried things, and fruit ice cups. Kris did some shopping and we all just enjoyed our walk and watched some people surfing, some pelicans chilling on the beach, and then went for a drink. We went to a restaurant with a terrace and had some beers and just watched the sunset, which was stunning.

We got a taxi back to Trujillo around 7:30pm and we got back to the hostel so I could pick up my bags and get onto my night bus. I’m on my way south again toward Huaraz where I’ll be doing some hiking. Laura and Alyce (who I met in the Galapagos) went here a couple of weeks ago and their pictures looked amazing, so I’m really looking forward to checking it out. Now let’s see if I can get any sleep on this eight hour night bus…

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