I'd like to start this next post by sending out a congratulations to the little sister. Rumour over the net (unfortunately I wasn't able to be there myself) is that she had her last provincial exam yesterday and will have her grad ceremony on the 28th, which means she'll be completely done with high school. Congrats Teres!

Well, I'm sure by now most of you have realized that I haven't been able to write as much as I would have liked, but I guess that's just because I've been keeping fairly busy. Either way, I'm pretty sure this'll be another long entry, full of highlights and Lucuma smoothies (see last post).

So when I finish off last, we were all in Carhuaz, a city northeast of Lima in the mountains, with Juanca and his dad. After writing the post Juanca, Jacquie, Preeti and I caught a bus to Trujillo, the third largest city in Peru that lies along the northern coast. We arrived to Trujillo early in the morning and made the mistake of going to a hotel run by a crazy lady. The lady accused us of being on drugs that night when we went out and kept insisting that we take her guiding services and buy our meals at the hostel. Then she charged us a ridiculous amount to leave a bags at the hostel the next day, usually a free or extremely cheap service. Fortunately the rest of Trujillo wasn't like this lady and we ended up having a great time. The highlight of the stay is by far the city of Chan Chan. The City itself dates back to Incan times (although I believe it was actually around long before the Incas) and fell victim to one of the many Inca Conquests in northern Peru. After 10 years of war with the Incas, the city fell and the men were dispersed as slaves to other cities, so as to avoid a major uprising. The city was then more or less abandoned until archaeologists began excavating and restoring the city. Seeing those ruins really puts things into perspective.So many people look down on what the Spanish conquerors did to the Inca empire and way of life, and yet the Inca empire was created through a very similar violent history, as they conquered cultures, destroyed their belief systems, and assimilated them into Incan ideology. As for the city itself though, it must have been huge. The entire city is build from desert sand as is thought to have held almost 35 000 people at its height (although of course there are always people who guess more). Each new king was expected to build his own palace, while the previous king's palace was to be sealed and I think they said the largest palace was over 8 hectares. It was quite a sight, even with only a small portion of it uncovered.

After visiting the city of Chan Chan we went around to a series of smaller sights built by some of the other groups that went back as far as the first century. The highlight of the other sites was La Huaca de la Luna, a massive temple built by the Miche (I could be wrong about the name) and dedicated to the worship of the moon. The temple actually consists of 5 temples, each on top of the preceding temple and one century later. Archaeologists are still in the process of excavating the temple, but from what they've already uncovered, it's pretty clear that it was probably quite a glorious sight in its time. The sad thing about these ruins, is that there still isn't the money needed to excavate them. It seems to be a theme throughout at least the ruins in Northern Peru, although I get the sense the problems's far more wide spread. There's so much that still unknown about these cultures and so much still left to be uncovered in the ruins, and yet not the funding to do it. At the same time though, that fact also makes it kind of exciting to visit these sites, knowing that if I come back in 20 years, the understanding of the culture/civilization may have changed dramatically.

Right, so the final thing we did in the Trujillo area was head up 3 hours to CHiclayo where we visited the museum that houses the remains of the Lord of Sipan. We were hoping to visit the actual site, but since time was short and since most everything was actually in the museum, we headed there. So far only one of the three major ruins has been excavated?and even that one is still undergoing excavation?and yet the museum is absolutely filled with all kind of artefacts. Some of what they had on display was actually quite impressive, although I have discovered I'm not too interested in simply looking at ceramics and icons from ancient civilizations. I'm more of a fan of the social aspects and structures than simply the artefacts, and I find museums sometimes forget to make the connection?or else just don't know enough about the culture to make the connection.

After our Visit to Chiclayo we headed back down to Lima for one last time before we said bye to Juanca and his family and headed to Cusco. Now before I get to the bus trip, I just wanted to say an interesting note about Lima. As you drive around the city you notice rocky hills covered by shantytowns that are all over the places. As it turns out, and I'm assuming this is probably a common occurrence in big, developing cities like Lima, the land on these hills, which obviously appear to be unstable and not prime housing land, is free (mainly because no one else wants it). People who have migrated to the city in search of work have flocked to these hills and set up their houses in the only affordable area they could find. The interesting part, is that with their culture and hardship, comes a strong sense of unity within the family. So what happens, at least in some cases, is that the family works hard and sticks together for years, the sons and daughters get a better and better education, and eventually some people end up moving from the poorest parts of town, to the richest. I imagine the extreme change isn't that common, and yet the trend, at least to a small extent, seems to exist.

Now, so far in this trip we have had some long bus rides (16-18 hours), but this one took the cake. It was 22 hours, of which I think I slept about 5, and the movies were AWFUL. They put on a WWE movie called The Marine, about a wrestler who is heart broken about being kicked out of the military (being a marine was his life) and rediscovers meaning in his life when his wife is kidnapped by criminals, and he is forced to beat up most everyone in his path. The "highlights" were when he saved himself from machine gun fire with a handheld bullet proof jacket, jumped out of an exploding car and off a cliff with only a few scratches, and throws a guy THROUGH a cement pillar during a fight "scene". If that wasn't enough, they also showed some Kung Pow mock karate movie and a few others I have chosen to erase from all memory so as to hold onto the morsel of sanity I still hold. The only good part about that whole trip was the arrival in Cusco.

As for Cusco, the city is absolutely gorgeous.Unfortunately we had to spend most of our first day getting things organized for the Machu Picchu/Sacred Valley trip, so we haven't had much of a chance to see the sites, but we have another 3 days there when we go back, which will be great. The colonial architecture is gorgeous and the people there (especially in our hotel) have been excellent. To try and make this post a bit shorter, I'm going to leave out most of the Cusco stuff until later, but I will say one thing. These days, in preparation for the big Inti Raymi festival (happening on the 24th?we'll be there), there was a parade of floats going through the main square. Most of the floats were pretty average, depicting culturally important figures or representations, but two of them definitely stood out. In trying to describe them I've realized they're something that really needs to be seen, so I'll try and attach the photos at some point over the next couple days. I will however, say that they were clever, though blatant portrayals of anti-American sentiment.

Alright, well I'm almost out of money and kind of tired of writing, so I will leave the part on Machu Picchu and Ollantaytambo for the next post. Take care and thanks for reading.

Taylor