Hola chicos y chicas. ¿Cómo estan? Muy frio, ¿no? Okay that´s enough of that. So we are in Huanchaco, getting ready to leave for our overnight bus to Lima (yipee). Huanchaco and Trujillo have been awesome. The beach in Huanchaco is beautiful, much more so than in Mancora. However it is much more quiet here at night...Mancora seems to have gotten the reputation as the party town. Carnaval officially started two nights ago, and the only sign of it that we saw was a very somber parade of about 50 people down the main street with several priests carrying a huge statue (of the virgen Mary I presume) and a band playing what sounded suspiciously like funeral music. Other than that, it was a regular night in Huanchaco. We are not complaining though, it is nice to have quiet nights once in a while.

Our first night in Huanchaco passed rather lazily. We met two girls at the bus terminal who were also heading to Huanchaco, so we shared a taxi and ended up staying at the same hostel, Casa Suiza. We were all starving, so we went in search of a ceviche restaurant that one of the girls knew, but we were unable to find it without wandering into the dodgey end of town. Ceviche seems to be the national pride of Peru...every restaurant in every city on the coast is a ceviche restaurant. Ceviche is a seafood dish with a rather odd preparation. The fish is cooked not with heat, but with the acid from the juice of lemons. It is extremely spicy (Braden cried when he ate it because it is made with aji peppers....haha). So anyways, we wound up at a rather expensive restaurant across the street from the beach with no ceviche. Oh well. Interestingly, one of the girls (Sarah) is living in Lima at the moment working on a project to bring water to the surrounding shanty towns. She advised us against drinking all the bottled water here except for the brand produced by Coca-Cola, as purification processes are not regulated and some water companies draw their water downstream from mining companies.

The next day we had breakfast at the hostel down the road from our own (their breakfast menu was way better than ours) and caught the combis (a "bus" that is actually a minivan with way more seats than they are supposed to have) to Trujillo. (The van is actually a mid 1980´s Toyota - similar to a Westphalia - but stripped of all its camping gear and rigged with 16 seats plus 3 more in the front) We drove around town for 20 minutes, realized we had forgotten both our passports and visas which we needed to book a flight, got off the combis (luckily it had just driven in a circle for 20 minutes and we wound up back in front of our hostel and retrieved said items from the hostel, got back on the combis, and headed to Trujillo. After several phone calls and wandering the streets of Trujillo (and getting nailed by water balloons in the process) we found the airline office close to the main plaza. We booked our tickets from Lima to Iquitos which have been about a month in the making, and headed out to see Trujillo.

Trujillo is a city of almost 800 000 people with beautiful colonial architecture. Many of the buildings are well preserved and maintained. Unfortunately, it was a Saturday so all of the churches and interesting looking buildings were closed. We meandered around the main square for a bit, found some lunch at a local hole in the wall restaurant (named El Vegetariano, but curiously the entire menu was meat...we had to ask for a vegetarian plate) and went in search of the city´s soccer stadium. Not surprisingly, this was also closed. (We found out later the season doesn´t start for another 2 weeks). After a few hours of looking at the outsides of buildings in Trujillo and buying bus tickets to Lima, we flagged down a combis and made our way back to Huanchaco. We headed out that evening in search of some Carnaval activity. Only finding the aforementioned parade, we settled on a litre of cheap wine ($3) from a nearby corner store and a seat by the beach to watch the waves. While we sat on the beach we were approached by two young Peruvian guys, who wanted to know if we were interested in surfing lessons for the next day. We made plans to surf the next day and spent the rest of the evening enjoying the company of our new Peruvian friends at the nearby pub.

Monday began with a lazy hour lying on the beach which we came away from with burns in random spots where we forgot to put sunblock (for example, behind Braden´s knees and on Maya´s eyelids). For lunch Braden gave ceviche a try, as discussed above (the crying etc...). His face was numb for 5 minutes, prompting the nice gentleman at the next table to offer him a mint to cool it off.

Surfing began at 2:00 with an unwelcomed run down the beach in our wetsuits (supposedly to warm up...we think it was just to parade all of us foreigners in front of the locals who were crowded onto the beach staring at us). We practiced surfing techniques such as paddling and standing up on the sand for about 15 minutes, grabbed our boards, and paddled out to the waves. On the first few attempts neither of us was able to stand up (the waves in Huanchaco are actually quite big...about 6 to 8 foot swells). After a quick break on the beach we gave it another shot and Braden made it up onto his feet and rode a wave into the shore. After the lesson, Maya packed it in while Braden stayed in the water for another hour. In the end Braden caught four or five waves and Maya swallowed lots of salt water (yummy). That evening we had dinner at the surf shack with our instructor and went to bed early as we were both exhausted from the sun and surfing.

Today we woke up early to get a good start on seeing the ruins (los Huacas del Sol y de La Luna, and Chan Chan). Running late as always, we didn´t make it to the first site until 1:00. However, we made it just in time to catch a free English tour of la Huaca de la Luna, given by a student volunteer. The ruins were incredible (it is a Moche temple built around the same time the Egyptians were building the pyramids). There are actually five temples, each built on top of the last. This allowed for excellent preservation of all but the fifth which the Spanish destroyed looking for gold. It was then covered with sand until around 1991. So far, they have only excavated the 3rd, 4th, and 5th temples. Unable to go further as they risk the collapse of the upper temples, they are unsure of what lies beneath in the 1st and 2nd. Amazingly the temple was built to be earthquake proof, with all the bricks stacked in columns (roughly 4ft by 4ft). In the event of an earthquake, individual columns might sway or fall but would not bring the entire structure down. 200 meters across a sandy plain from la Huaca de la Luna (the religious temple) lies an even bigger, but unexcavated, temple called la Huaca del Sol (the administrative temple). In between the two temples you can see the foundations of houses that once stood. In this area 20 000 people once lived.

After the tour we rushed off to find a combis to try to make it to Chan Chan before closing at 4:30. We arrived at 4:00, however the walk in to the ticket booth is a good 15 minutes down a desolate road in the middle of the complex of ruins. We stumbled upon two security guards who pointed us in the right direction, and took the long walk as an opportunity to finish off our jar of peanut butter. At the ticket booth we again experienced the unwillingness of vendors to exchange large bills (100 soles etc). It wasn´t until the vendor saw that we were considering skipping the tour that he relented and quickly produced a $50. Once inside, we tagged along with two Argentinian girls on a guided tour (the deal was that it would be 1/2 Spanish and 1/2 English). The complex we saw was amazing, but only was one of nine palaces that existed in the area. This walled palace enclosed 11 acres complete with three squares, 17 administrative offices, 3 wells (2 of which were the size of Olympic swimming pools), the private rooms of the lord, and the lord´s tomb. The guide told us that a new palace was built every time the existing lord died. The old palace was declared a mausoleum and no person was permitted to enter. During the reign of the 9th lord, Chan Chan was attacked by the Incas in 1470 and wiped out. Interestingly this led to the Inca army becoming fragmented and susceptible to the attacks of the Spanish 70 years later.

The guide explained the many symbols found on the walls inside the palace and the significance behind the number of entrances, exits, walls etc. For example, four doorways symbolized the phases of the moon. The fish reliefs on the walls symbolized the currents that flow off the coast near the city. The guide also told us of the singular dog that lives in every temple in Peru (this type of dog has a body temperature much higher than most mammals, and when held close supposedly cures bronchitis, colds, and arthritis). At the end of the tour we saw the burial site for the lord, which included 44 tombs altogether (for the concubines, children, animals and government officials).

We should be off to catch the bus now. Will write again from Lima. We are staying in Miraflores, which is supposedly the safer part of the city. They have four Starbucks´ there. When our bus arrives at 7am tomorrow morning we are catching a cab directly to one.

Hope this blog finds you all well. Missing you lots,

xoxoxo

Maya and Braden