Trujillo and Chan-Chan

I took an extremely uncomfortable night bus (which included babies, too many big bags and odd smells) from my beach paradise to Trujillo, a city nested in the middle of the coastal region of Peru. The main point of interest of the region are the many pre-inca sites. I arrived exhausted, left my backpack in a hostel and decided to go look for a one day tour that would allow me to see the sights and take a night bus over to Lima. I know, I was aiming to be extremely efficient.

As I walked into the center of town I felt a little like the weather, tired cold and grey. The main square was pleasant (even at 8 am). In the space of 1 hour I was accosted 5 times by tour sellers, saw a funeral procession for a policeman that had been shot as well as the first communion of many little peruvian kids. Not bad for a morning´s walk around the block.


I joined my tour late morning and was happy to see that I wasn¨t the only solo traveller. While the other foreigners were rather unfriendly, I was be-friended a group of Peruvians who could also speak english. Two of them had jobs on cruise ships and had travelled around the world and the other lady was a psychologist. We first went to Huacas del Sol y de la Luna, two pyramids that date back to the Moche era (500 AD). It was interesting and fascinating to see how they managed to build these huge pyramids using mud bricks (aka adobe) and how the colours and sculpted figures had been maintained. We then moved on to Chan Chan, the ruins of the imperial city of the Chimu people. It is supposedly the largest adobe city in the world.


I was at the bus station on time for by night bus and luxury of luxuries I travelled on a CAMA bus (ie. think business class in a plane..but on a bus!) all the way to Lima.