After spending less than twelve hours in Piura, I caught an early bus down the coast through the desert to Chiclayo for the first stop of what became something of an archaeological mini-tour.
Chiclayo
Chiclayo is a pretty standard town. Very busy and bustling due to national holidays and bringing in visitors due to the fact that it is the closest settlement to a number of important pre-Inca sites developed by the Moche people; Tucume, Sipan, Sican, Batan Grande to name the main players. The Mercado Modelo, what has to be the largest market, anywhere, ever was fun to get lost in. Apparantly you can buy San Pedro at the curandero stalls on the south-west side but I wouldn´t know anything about that. I spent a couple of days in Chiclayo treating myself to a private room in a little hotel with (shock) cable TV as it seems the idea of hostelling hasn´t quite taken off there as yet. My little routine went something like this: Get up, eat bread and jam, pack lunch of sarnies and fruit and take a taxi to the randomly scattered combi stops, walk around the sites and visit the obligatory museums, return to hotel, drink beer and watch films. It was definately interesting but after a couple of days you get a bit historied-out and one mud-brick pyramid begins to look much like the next:
Combis are mental however. They are tiny little white vans that act as the main bus servoice around most Peruvian towns and whilst dirt cheap, they cram as many people in as they can so you are literally squeezing your buttocks against those of your neighbour. It was mostly fun though as I chatted to some really nice Peruvians doing the same sightseeing trips as me. I had managed to arrive in Chiclayo for the main national holidays of the year in Peru and consequently loads of people were out taking in some national heritage. Tucume was first and its sprawling mounds of eroded adobe pyramids impress through sheer size alone, Huaca Larga claiming the much sought-after title of largest single adobe structure in the world:
In the afternoon I went to the Sican museum at nearby Ferranafe. I bet you didn´t know that the Sican dude was the founder of CND did you now? Way ahead of his time that guy.
The original maskz were rather impressive:
Afterwards I had a picture taken with this looney tune:
The next day I went to the site of the Sipan musuem and yes, another large series of adobe pyramids. It houses the well preserved remains of the Lord of Sipan, supposedly a great past leader of the Mochila people in that area. He had a pretty cool tomb:
On the combi there I got talking to a lady from Lima who was up there on holiday and we ended up wandering around the museum together (with me sporting some typically scatty spanish) attempting to converse about each others lives. It was a nice bit of cultural exchange even if some of it was lost in translation.
Huanchaco
Next stop down the coast was the little beach town of Huanchaco, famous for its reed boat fishermen who surf the waves back to shore after a hard day on the ocean and stack their boats up on the beach as the sun goes down:
Met a couple of really nice Kiwi brothers, Chris and Alex, and Will from the USA. We spent a few days hanging out at the really rather cool Hostel Naylamp, complete with two rather speedy Tortoises...
...although I managed to develop my first head cold of the trip and consequently didn´t feel like doing much apart from sniffing into tissues and drowning myself in Vitimin C and good old Lemsips. I was cheered up by the antics of one of the Artesania guys who I got talking to. His name was Winston and he told me my spanish was pretty good and then, much to my amusement, proceeded to energetically mime blow jobs with his penis-shaped ´back massagers´!
The next day Will and myself made it out to another famed site, the Huaca De La Luna just outside of Trujillo and this time I was actually suitably impressed. The friezes, original patterns and paint were all ridiculously well preserved from what must have been an utterly mindblowing temple in its day. This stuff is over 1500 years old!
After checking out the tastefully lit church that overlooks the town...
...we made it back for an evening with the Kiwi boys and woke up the next day feeling pretty rough so spent it just hanging out, nailing more health-boosting chemicals and eating as much fruit and vegetables as my body could handle. It seemed to work as by the next day I was beginning to feel better. A good job too as we had an eight hour bus ride up into the stunning Cordillera Blanca mountains to deal with! It was busy and cramped but I did chat to a lovely primary school teacher from Huaraz who´d spent the weekend visiting her friend in Chimbote. Nothing unusual about that you might think but hells bells michelle, its only a 14 HOUR round trip!
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