Bienvenidos a Peru - Lima to Huanchaco

Day 1 - 7th December

After a surprisingly restful night in the Easy Hotel (think ship's cabin with no window!) we boarded our flight to Miami at 9:40. God bless BA, everything was great, the food was tasty, not just passingly edible, and i finally managed to see the last Harry Potter film. The fiasco in Miami aiport reminded me why I hate the USA so much! We had to clear immigration and customs just to make a connecting flight and, thanks to the inordinate amount of time it takes them to protect their borders, we very nearly missed our flight! This was the first time I've flown American Airlines and I'd happily make it my last. The airport staff were really unhelpful and some downright rude. The only way we managed to get anyone help us get through check-in in time to make our connection is because I started crying in the ticket hall until someone took pity on us. The plane was then over an hour late to leave and we had good old fashioned one-screen-at-the-front-of-the-cabin entertainment. Disney's Cars was the only film shown for the whole of the 5 1/2 hour flight. Never again! We arrived in Lima at midnight and finally got to our hostel at 1:00. Time for a well earned sleep!

Day 2 - 8th December

Today we headed out to see a bit of Lima. The hostel owners told us that it has been the hottest spring for many years but, as today is a bank holiday, the weather has turned cloudy and grey! We were staying in a residential area of Miraflores and wandered to the nearby ruined adobe pyramid Huaca Pucllana. Not much to see now, just a pile of collapsing mud bricks, so we did't pay to go in. We had our first experience of a Peruvian supermarket - quite similar to a French one, with lots of complicated systems for getting fruit and items from the counters. Somehow we managed to get out with lunch and some snacks for the night bus.

We caught the metro bus up the newly built express way into central Lima. The man at the ticket office took pity on our English uselessness and lack of Spanish and gave us his own travelcard! The outskirts of central Lima are still pretty rough but the area around the Plaza de Armas (Plaza Mayor) is really rather nice with lovely small shopping streets and grand old colonial buildings. We went to the Franciscan monastery and had a guided tour. It was lovely to see what our monasteries would have once looked like, with brighlty coloures walls and ceilings, before Henry VIII had his way. We also visited the catacombs, which were very interesting, although Jon hoped for more bones. As it was a religious festival we exited the monastery to find a procession of local men and women, dressed in robes, carrying a huge statue of the Virgin Mary into the church, accompanied by a brass band. A very latin sight!

Procession of the Virgin Mary, Monasterio de San Francisco, Lima 

After an Italian meal (there seemed to be lots of Italian restaurants in Lima) we boarded our bus for the nine-hour overnight trip north to Trujillo. The Cruz del Sur bus was the fanciest bus I've ever been on, with large comfy seats that recline to 160°, although unfortunately the chosen film was 'Tree of Life' dubbed into Spanish – very trippy and extremely hard to work out what was going on. We gave up and went to sleep - night night...

Day 3 - 9th December

We got off our night bus at 8:00 in Trujillo, a former colonial town north of Lima on the coast, and get a taxi to the nearby beach town of Huanchaco. Huanchaco is a small town, clustered along a road that runs beside the sea, and is a year-round hang-out for backpackers, surfers and holidaying Peruvians. Everyday local buses bring groups of Peruvian day-trippers looking for a bit of sun, sea and sand. We booked into Hostel Naylamp,on the recommendation of the hostel owners in Lima, and it was a great recommendation. Naylamp has a collection of double en suite rooms clustered around a lovely sunken courtyard complete with hammocks and two wandering tortoises (oh, and a small French Canadian boy called William, who likes to play with everyone!)

Jon with the tortoise at Naylamp

After a snooze we headed out for a wander along the beach, although most of the cloud had burnt off, the west coast of Peru is constantly buffeted by a north-easterly wind coming off the pacific so it gets a bit chilly when the sun goes in. The surf is pretty huge, even Jon has second thoughts about the sanity of hiring a surf board in the next day or two. Huanchaco is famous for its reed fishing boats, which are still made in the traditional Chimu way and are still used by the local fisherman. They are very impressive at slicing through the surf and it's easy to see why the tradition has remained until this day.

The Peruvians love the Beetle - at Huanchaco beach 

Reed boats, Huanchaco 

Day 4 - 10th December

It rained rather heavily last night and the local area is in a state of total shock and near gridlock as it barely rains at all here and the infrastructure is not able to cope. There are no gutters and no drains so local roads are flooded and some buildings damaged. Still we managed to get out on a day trip to see some nearby ruins. We started with the Moche pyramids Huaca del Sol y de la Luna (Temples of the Sun and the Moon). These date from 200-700 AD and are built of mud bricks. The larger temple, Huaca del Sol, was all but destroyed by the Spanish when they re-routed the Moche river to flow through the middle of it in an attempt to dissuade the indigenous peoples from worshipping pagan Gods.

Ruins of Huaca de la Luna

Looking over the ruins of the Moche city to Huaca del Sol

The smaller temple, Huaca de la Luna, is better preserved and open to tourists. The pyramid is in fact 5 pyramids built one on top of the other.  As each ruling dynasty ended with the death of a King, the new King ordered a bigger pyramid to be built on top, with a new step-wise façade at the front, laid over the original façade Archaeologists have so far uncovered parts of the 4th and 3rd levels, the 5th (topmost) level was mostly destroyed by erosion. Because each level was carefully filled in with bricks in order to create a solid foundation for the next level, the walls and their colourful carvings have been incredibly well preserved. They are cautious not to disturb or damage any of the temple so have only excavated small areas thus far. They are awaiting funding for sophisticated equipment to analyse the structure of the lower levels before going down into the 2nd and 1st temples. The interior walls and external façade of the temple are elaborately carved with recurring geometric patterns and images of the Moche God of decapitation, as well as other minor gods and cultural scenes. It is amazing to think how well these images have survived, thanks to the Moche tradition of burying old temples under new ones.

Inside Huaca de la Luna - the lower levels
 were filled with bricks before a new temple
was built on top.  This is the 3rd level.

The façade of Huaca de la Luna - there are 4
more façades bricked in behind this one

Jon with a very Peruvian lunch of Cuy and Pisco Sour

We stopped for an entertaining lunch at a tourist restaurant. Jon had guinea pig and we both had our first Pisco Sour, followed by a floor show with traditional Peruvian dancing, as well as some less traditional dancing involving a scantily dressed girl and a washing up bowl (!) We then headed on to the great Chimu city of Chan Chan. The Chimu came after the Moche, and may have come to Peru from Polynesia. At its height their empire covered the whole area from Lima to Ecuador and Chan Chan was home to about 100,000 buildings and several million people. The city originally covered about 20km² and contained 9 separate citadels. Only one of these is open to the public and another one is being preserved for archaeological heritage. The rest are covered by sand and may not be uncovered. The great mud walls were originally 12m high and all the interior walls were covered with designs carved into the mud. The archaeologists are using a technique of preserving some areas and reconstructing others, to give the visitor an idea of how the city would have looked. Many of the walls are covered with blue plastic to protect them from rain damage, so unfortunately most of the carvings are not visible, although they have uncovered enough to give a good idea of what it would have looked like. The plastic sheets do nothing, however, to detract from the sheer size and scale of the place, which is truly breathtaking.

It has been very interesting to visit these sites while they are still at the early stages of conservation. I hope that the Peruvian agencies can raise enough money and continue to bring in enough skills to continue their work and preserve these amazing structures for future generations to marvel at.

The birds and fishes gallery, Chan Chan.  The carvings at 

the bottom are real, the neater ones near the top are

 reproductions

Chan Chan - these walls would have been 12 metres high!

Chan Chan

Chan Chan - famous grid pattern on most of the walls.
These walls were originally 3 metres high

Day 5 – 11th December

We were supposed to be leaving Huanchaco tonight but have decided to stay another day as we're having such a great time here. Today was given over entirely to relaxing. We spent a good many hours sunning ourselves or reading in the courtyard of the hostel and on the beach. In the afternoon I had a surf lesson and Jon hired a board to try out the scary Pacific waves. It turns out I’m not a natural surfer (surely not I hear you cry!) my instructor, Carlos, was very patient and I managed to catch 5 decent waves and stand up! Of course there are too many waves to count that I didn't catch and I must have swallowed gallons of the Pacific! Jon attempted the big scary waves for a while and then came to join us in the more sheltered area when he got too tired to battle any more. I am glad that I at least managed to get to standing up but I have to say I'm not a convert to surfing and I think I'll stick with my body board for now.

Day 6 - 12th December

 Another chilled out day in Huanchaco. We reluctantly checked out of our hostel and spent some quality time reading, writing and relaxing in the hammocks and on the beach. We then boarded another night bus back to Lima to continue our journey south...