Chan Chan

On the road between Trujillo and Huanchaco is the huge ancient ruins of Chan Chan. A bit like the pyramids in Mexico, or the volcanoes in Central America, visiting lots of ancient ruins makes me become a little blasé and under whelmed at the thought of seeing another. In fact, I was tempted not to go to Chan Chan, but to break up our lazy beach days, we did. And I’m so glad we did. After all, it’s the largest adobe city in the world – to quote another statistic from our book – so it is bound to be good.

It is pre-Inca ruin, that was built and belonged to the Chimu, before the Incas kicked them out and copied there building style in Cuzco. Chan Chan is in great shape. It is not a group of stone foundations where walls used to be, it still has proper high walls meaning you can walk around inside an ancient city. Not bad, hey? And if you don’t want to take a guide, you can buy a leaflet, which describes what you are seeing each plaza and courtyard, and what they got up to in each place.

The walls have engraved pictures of birds and fishes that are in excellent condition - they´ve done a good job of restoring them. The whole site is under restoration at the moment as they are trying to protect and strengthen the walls and paths. And it is so vast. The city walls once contained palaces, temples and houses, plus rows of storerooms stretching 1000km up the coast where they kept their agricultural wealth. It certainly beats another day on the beach!

Huamchaco - a surfers spot, don´t you know?

We had a dramatic start to our time in Huanchaco. Arriving in Trujillo, seven hours after leaving Cajamarca, we decided that we would go a further twenty minutes onwards to Huanchaco, a quiet beach town. It seemed a more inviting prospect than another city stay.

We flagged down one of the many minivans that shuttle people from city to beach and back, and sqeezed in on the half-width bench, right behind the driver that they sometimes use if the van is getting really full. Somehow our back packs were hauled on and placed practically on the other passenger laps. They didn’t seem to mind. Balanced on this half bench and clutching onto as many of our bags as possible, the driver went about accelerating and breaking as hard as he could between passenjer pick-ups and drop-offs. He seemed to be trying to set a new world record for time taken to get to Huanchaco! Its not the first time we’ve experienced this mad dash to pick up passengers while at the same time trying to counter the lost time in actually having to stop to pick someone up, but its usually best to have a proper seat and something to steady yourself with.

After getting into the spirit (of being thrown around in the back of a van after a seven hour bus journey) – its your only option really – we arrived in Huanchaco and, as quickly as possible, hauled our belongings out of the van before it sped off again. Unfortunately, there was an old lady waiting to get on after we were out of the way, but the driver had not seen her. In a miscommunication between the conductor and the driver, the van accelerated off with the lady half on. The sliding door knocked her to the ground in dramatic fashion and then the van stopped, the driver realising what had happened.

We helped her to her feat and seeming unhurt – these old Latin American ladies are made of strong stuff – she made another attempt to climb in, while her friends outside the restaurant gave the conductor an earbashing about it. I was left feeling surprised I had not seen this happen before.

It was already dark and we didn’t want to traipse around for too long, so we checked into a very cheap hostel called My Friend. The good atmosphere and the equally cheap food offers in their restaurant - it was all about the pasta dishes for under $3, including drink and garlic bread – meant we took a room and ordered some of the aforementioned pasta.
After a walk along the sea front we returned to our room and discovered a newly hatched nest of cockroaches. But at first I thought it was the odd one or two and as they were fairly small, I went on a killing spree. Sophie then noticed Mommy and Daddy cockroach hiding in the gap between the door frame and the wall. We then realised our efforts to kill were futile, there were plenty more babies where they came from! During my stay at My Friend, I didn’t want to have to befriend these guys too.

We found another hostel. It wasn’t as cheap, but it was clean and had a distinct lack of crawley “friends.” I explained to the staff at My Friend that one or two you can expect, but lots of cockroaches isn’t what anybody wants and they understood. It wasn’t a bad place. The restaurant really was great there and, to a certain degree, there isn’t a lot you can do if cockroaches come to stay, until after they’ve been noticed.
We decided to stay in Huanchaco for a few days, which quickly turned into a week. The place was very relaxed and it was an ideal temperature, hot in the sun, but cool in the breeze. It wasn’t the best beach you’ll ever find, but it wasn’t too crowded, especially being low season, meaning you could always get shade if needed. But Huanchaco is very much a surf destination. There are some really impressive waves, and some equally impressive surfers on them. The waves break at a left hand 45 degree angle to the shore, meaning they can surf down the coast in one long stretch. One surfer couldn’t understand why we had come to Huanchaco if it wasn’t for surfing. Sorry to go against the grain on that one!

Sipan and Tucume

Peru isn’t just all about the Incas, I’m discovering. I’m looking forward to Machu Picchu further down south, but in the meantime there are some things to explore made by some folks who were around a little earlier, namely the Moche people – 100-800AD. These guys were big on diverting river water into canals for irrigation and well known for using mold technology for their pottery, if you didn’t know.

 From Chiclayo you can visit the archaeological sites of Sipan and Tucume that have been excavated for the past twenty-five years or so. You can do a day tour that takes you to both these places, plus a viewpoint or two, but we decided to break it up and go ourselves. 

It worked out well this way. When we arrived in Sipan, one of the other passengers in the minivan happened to be a guide and offered to show us around for whatever sum we were prepared to pay. I’ve decided that getting a guide really is the best thing to do when you’re visiting ruins or tombs. Unless a place has been decked out with plaques explaining everything or your guidebook explains a lot, you won’t get much out of it without a guide. It also worked out as a bit of a language swap too!

We learned that there used to be a village on the Sipan site. But much like the Chinese at the last Olympics, they weren’t going to let a few peoples homes get in the way of the ‘bigger picture’!

At Sipan there are three pyramids, one formerly used for burials, one for ceremonies and the other for administrative work – literally bean-counting activities. The burial pyramid consisted of layers and, so far, the lowest layer excavated contained remains dating back 1800 years. All the remains, ceramics and gold have been moved to museums, however they have created detailed reconstructions of what they found for you to see. The Sipan site museum, although not containing the majority of artefacts found, is really impressive and I was excited to find that what they had kept the original 1800 year old remains for us to see – human and llama.

The Moche certainly gave their important folk a good send-off. Found in one of the tombs was a priest clad in gold, with some wives, a llama and a dog thrown in for good measure! A total of eight human remains were found in this tomb, presumably seven of which were sacrifices.. there to keep the priest company in the afterlife.

The following day we visited Tucume. It was a hot day and we arrived at the entrance to pay the admission fee. The woman behind the counter offered us insect repellent for an additional 1.50 Soles. Having not seen any mosquitoes since the border entering Peru we politely declined. Then on cue there suddenly appeared a dozen mosquitoes aggressively trying to extract some of our blood. We quickly changed our mind, purchased the repellent and slapped it on. It was a funny situation and I couldn’t help thinking the woman must have had a tin of trained mosquitoes and opened them with perfect timing!

Having already learnt about the pyramids at Sipan and a bit about the Moche people, we decided to have a wander around Tucume without a guide – not that we were offered one anyway! At the 1000-year-old ruins of the city here, you can climb up one of the pyramids and get a spectacular view of the twenty-five others, the walled citadels, and the ancient cemeteries. Although there is something slightly unnatural about the pyramids, you wouldn’t immediately assume that they’re man-made. Certainly the Spanish didn’t. They left them alone thinking they were just mountains and hills. But from a high position, and no doubt due to the excavation work already done, it is easy to see what the ancient culture created.

The knowledge and perception of these ancient cultures will keep evolving with each new find, and at Tucume they reckon that there is still much more to be discovered there. We were able to see some of the work in progress and it really is a painstaking process.

Chiclayo - Peru

As soon as we left the bus station I was struck by the energy of Chiclayo. Forget being awake all night on a bus, I felt ready to go for a plod around the city. Perhaps a shower was in order first though!


On all our travels, I can’t recall a place giving such an overall feeling of happiness. Peruvians, so far, seem to be the friendliest people we’ve encountered on our journey south from Mexico. Here people seem to spend much of their time with a smile on their face. I’m yet to find out if this applies to the whole country, or if it is a special combination of a pretty city and many hours of sunshine that keeps people in good spirits. And they all want to strike up a conversation, even more so than Colombians. They’ll take the chance that you might well turn out to be from the US and come up for a chat. Whether you’ll understand them is a different matter - its almost like a different language from Ecuador. But anyway, for whatever reason (no doubt a political one) I’m pretty confident I won’t see any “gringos go home’ graffiti here.

The other striking thing about our first day in Peru was the food. We had heard rumours that the set menu cuisine varies a great deal more when you get to this country. Apparently it is not always the standard dish of rice, a small piece of fried meat, fried banana and salad/beans – apart from Mexico serving everything with hot sauce to try to make it interesting, most countries haven’t strayed from these ingredients, and trust me, it gets pretty boring. But that’s a sacrifice you make if you want to eat cheaply.

No, Peru (so far) has torn up the script when it comes to cheap set menus. They have introduced two things; higher quality food, and choice. I’m not so sure how they’re managing it, but they are able to provide four or five different main dish choices. And they’re serving up things like chicken fillets, fish fillets, things in sweet and sour sauce…amazing! They also have an alternative for starters too. For example, you can have something called Papa a la Huancaina which comprises; a bed of lettuce, on top of which is a lump of mashed potato, covered in a hollandaise type sauce and on top, a piece of hard boiled egg. Maybe that description doesn’t sound all that nice, but it really is. It certainly beats a hot soup when its 30degC outside!

Oh and just a word on soups. It’s nice that they use animal parts for stock - for the flavour and all that. But do they have to leave it in the soup when they serve it? Can anything spoil the appetite more than delving into your soup bowl to bring up a chicken foot on your spoon?

Anyway, perhaps I’ve ranted about food enough. It is something I have felt strongly about while travelling though. I don’t function well when hungry and sometimes what you purchase can be so disappointing, you find yourself eating solely to fill a hole. I enjoy my food. Yeah, I know, it’s a tough life hey!

It seemed there is at least one taxi for every person in the Chiclayo. The streets are full of these little yellow Daewoo things, with the drivers constantly beeping their horns believing every person on the street to be their next fare. And I don’t know how we didn’t see a crash every five minutes either. The driving is so terrible and risky it’s comical!
So, enjoying the food, the weather (hot but with a cool refreshing breeze) and the people, we felt right at home in Chiclayo. The city seemed to buzz at all times of the day and especially at night. We’ve been so used to city centres being pretty dead in the evenings unless it’s the weekend. But this was Chiclayo on a Monday night, and we could hardly move down the pavement for people going out to eat and drink.

To Peru!

First a word on Loja. We decided to break up the journey south with a stop off there, in southern Ecuador. While it has some pretty enough sights, there really isn't much to do there. Looking at the photos I took now makes me think we got to stay somewhere quite cool for a night. It really didn't seem cool at the time. There just wasn't a great lot to do there. No harm done though - except to my back courtesy of the banana-shaped mattress the hotel gave us!

Our first overnight journey in a long while: I looked forward to seeing if I’d be any better at sleeping on a bus. No, as it turned out. But a bus journey in the Andes is never going to be tranquil. There are far too many twists and turns. The bus itself didn’t have generous legroom and no matter how far the seat reclines, if you can’t move your legs you’re never going to get comfortable.

 So, the first half of the journey to Peru didn’t involve much sleeping. At 3.30 am we came to the border at Macara. Here everybody disembarked to stamp out of Ecuador and stamp into Peru. It was a strange experience. The border crossing was shrouded in darkness and the immigration huts had minimal light, presumably so as not to attract the masses of mosquitoes hanging around in swarms. But nonetheless it was probably one of the smoothest crossings we’ve had.

Back on the bus, the terrain had now changed to desert. But it was pretty flat, which meant I was able to get in a position for twenty minutes sleep or so. Once you accept that you’re not really going to sleep much, the experience is a whole lot less frustrating.

 We arrived early in the morning to the bustling streets of Piura. The air was surprisingly fresh and cool and we were greeted and welcomed to Peru by many a stranger in the street and they pointed us in the direction of the bus station for Chiclayo. Yep, we were hopping onto another bus, but this journey would only be three hours – a piece of cake! Despite the lack of sleep, I found myself enjoying the atmosphere of Peru already.