After a looooooong bus ride to Peru and a stopover for one night in Piura we got off the bus at Lambayeque, a small town with a very good museum, showing excavations of a nearby moche king tomb including all the grave goods. It was discovered in 1987 – undisturbed (i.e. non of the exquisite gold items had been stolen) – a major archaeological sensation at this time. See some impressions of the oversize gold and turquoise earrings, necklaces, pottery, etc. of Senor de Sipan (the moche king):
The Moche people also built adobe pyramids Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna (see blog ChanChan – still to be written) – those two pyramids were the biggest buildings being built in the old South America.
After this superb cultural experience we squeezed us including our backpacks in one of those overfilled minibusses heading to Chiclayo to catch another bigger bus to Trujillo. As the bus company was somewhere else then the minibus stop, we asked another fellow passenger for the way – a woman who then walked the whole 15 minutes way with us and showed us half of the city – as it is her hometown and she was proud to show it to foreigners
At the bus company there was the big surprise: buses where all booked out for the day with the exception of the last two seats in the last bus of the day… not imaginable in Ecuador!! So we booked those two last seats and had dinner in Chiclayo before almost choke on exhaust emission in the bus (it was coming in from the back somehow). After an hour or so people from the front where leaving, so we could change… Of course, the bus took more than one hour longer than predicted
The next day we discovered that Trujillo is a city with some very nice colonial houses – painted in all different colours – and a good choice of cakes…
… and Thorsten tried his first Inca Cola…
It’s like Marmite – love it or hate it (I hate it)
And of course, Trujillo has its Sunday parade. Peruvians love parades, every Sunday there is one in each provincial capital! I got up early the next day to see it (it was starting at 8am). They sung the Peruvian hymn (everyone on the plaza was singing – except me, I think I was the only tourist), nicely finished with a loud “Viva Peru!”. Someone explained me a bit what was going on: For every parade there is something special, this time the police got hundreds of new cars, all shown on the street!!
Back in the hostel I tried hard to convince my fellow traveller to get up for breakfast…
Yes, it was nice in Trujillo, stay tuned to check out the next blog – “Naked Hot Dogs at Iris Temple”
(coming soon)
