DISCLAIMER: This is possibly the weirdest blog I've written: we reached the end of our trip a whole month ago now and are well and truly returning to the real world, albeit slowly. We've spent time with family and friends in Manchester, Paris (for Chris) and finally Copenhagen but we're determined to immortalise every last day of our trip so here goes our attempt to reminisce about our last few weeks of the adventure... (Luckily we had written some notes along the way that have helped us remember).
Chris > Up we drove along the Pan American highway skirting along cliffs where the desert meets the sea. It was one of the most scenic drives and we were even lucky enough to be taking it in from the "panoramico seats" at the front of the top deck - definitely the ones to request during a day time journey.
We had just finished our gruelling trip down and up the worlds' deepest canyon... Chris and I were now about to focus our attention on those tribes and cultures that came before the short lived Inca Empire which most people (including me) can't believe only lasted for about a century in total. Chris and I forgot to even mention this but the Incas were just a small tribe who ruled the valley of Cusco until 1438 when they began a rapid military expansion in every direction. They certainly conquered cultures from central Chile all the way up to Southern Columbia but of course their reign over this vast empire was cut short by the arrival and invasion of the Spanish in the early 1500s. Neither of us had known before that such a world famous and vast Empire as the Incas' had been so shortlived. There was thus an awful lot of history before this and we set out to explore Peru's Northern coast, beginning with the Moche Culture.
Past ranches we then drove through and through sugar ane country, all the way up to northern Peru's City of the Eternal Spring. Trujillo was Peru's first independent city. I can't say that we were appreciating thecolonial buildings with ornate wrought-iron window grates, while searching for bed at midnight after nearly 30 hours of bus travel from Arequipa.
An awfully expensive Cruz-del-Sur bus took us overnight from Arequipa up to Lima where we changed buses and continued on up to Trujillo, an additional nine hour journey. This was a lot of travel all at once but we were keen to get it out of the way and not waste one day - we hoped to spend a week in the sun at the beach in Huanchaco.
From Trujillo we visited the Temples of the Sun and Moon, incredible pyramids built in the sandy desert centuries ago. We took a collectivo out there and as Chris said, 'It's guaranteed entertainment when you take one of these'. We took many collectivos that week, with the drivers yelling Huanchaco-huanchaco-huanchaco!
This time, there were two and a half men in charge of the little mini-bus (one man had his young son helping him). After a bumpy ride out to the 'Huacas' (temples), we were greeted by the obligatory hair-less dog, the case with all ancient sites in Peru. The first time I saw one of these I had thought it was a statue. These crazy dogs literally are, well, hairless! Stroking them, their skin feels like I would expect a rhino's to feel.
The hairless dog's body temperature is a steady 47 degrees while it's skin feels like a rhinoceros. This version of man's best friend is believed in Peru to be a healing dog whose touch can help cure most ailments.
The Moche region, home to so many archeological sites from the Moche culture, is dominated by deserts and the coastlines of the North Coast. Between the first and seventh centuries AD, this 600KM stretch of desert was full of solid, social structures - there were around 600 000 people in the Moche Empire. The usual thing in Peru is to have a guide to show you around a museum or site; it was the same this time and we were again lucky enough to have our own personal guide. There are two huge, majestic monuments: one political (Temple of the Sun, 35m high and currently un-excavated) and one religious (Temple of the Moon, 25m high) and in between, you can see where the archaologists have begun to excavate the town that lay there. It's absolutely amazing. Walking around the Temple of the Moon, you really can't believe how it's maintained such good condition. Each different 'platform' or layer of the pyramid took a number of centuries to build and completely covered the last one, hence why the artwork underneath each new layer has retained it's vibrancy and colour.
Workers made personal etchings of their family symbol in bricks so they could be sure to be paid for each one they made.
The freizes depict Gods and the lifestyle of the time.
The colours on the artwork are original from 100AD.
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