Huanchaco

Huanchaco - Beach Time!!

 

We had visited quite a few cities so decided it was time to hit the beach as we made our way towards Ecuador.

 

We had managed to secure the bus tickets from Cruz Del Sur (The best buses in Peru) online. However, the confirmation showed a much earlier time to the website. Erring on the side of caution, we headed to the bus station at the earlier time and glad we did. It turned out the later time was from another terminal on the other side of town.

 

We boarded the bus for our 10.5 hour journey, settling into our comfy seats. You get your own entertainment system (a bit like you do on planes) so Glenn quickly found a rock channel and settled back to listen to music. Because of this, he was totally oblivious to the 2.5hr gruelling but white knuckle ride out of the city. The driving here is awful! On two occasions we played chicken, once with a local bus and once with an articulated lorry!

The rest of the journey was uneventful but very slow with traffic jams at each large town. We did get fed twice with aeroplane type meals which were edible. Why is it that if you know you are being fed on a plane or bus, you spend your whole time impatiently waiting for the meal to arrive regardless of whether you are hungry or not? The meal arrives and you excitedly rip off the foil and attack the grey/brown meat and veg lying underneath? You then spend the next 20 minutes impatiently waiting for your tray to be removed. Or is that just me?

 

The bus terminated at Trujillo which is a largish and reportedly dangerous city. As we were arriving in the dark I had booked a transfer with the hotel. Unfortunately due to the traffic jams, we were  around 1 .5 hours late and the poor driver had to wait for us.

His name was Douglas, a very friendly grandad type fellow who we were later to take an excursion with. Feeling guilty, we have him a tip when he deposited at our hostel.

The hostel was close-ish to the beach and had a really laid back vibe with hammocks and beanbags. It also had an upstairs bar belting out salsa music which is where we headed after locking up our bags.

We had a few cervezas and got chatting to a Czech guy who was an agricultural student who studied in the jungles of Peru. An interesting if somewhat intense guy who shared some amazing stories.

It was a long day traveling so it wasn’t long before we hit the sack listening to the sound of the waves (and Salsa music from the bar).

Day 2 – Chilling

It was quite overcast so we had a lazy morning, having a bit of a lie in and relaxing before heading out for some brunch.

We found a vegetarian place and ordered some eggs and bread which honestly took around 45 minutes to turn up! We were the only people in the café too! However, when it did arrive it was served on homemade rye bread which was a nice change.

Still over-cast, we decided not to go for a dip and instead wander along the seafront. We stopped and watched various spear fishermen coming in with their catch. Also, ladies collecting seaweed which is edible and they add to ceviche.

There was a ramshackle pier where we had to pay a small entrance fee. On it there were a number of stalls selling fishing gear (a bit like what you use to catch crabs) and a few people successfully catching fish. Well apart from one guy who had a full-on rod and didn’t catch a thing! We spent some time watching them to get our monies worth from our entrance fee.

We then carried up along the front until we quickly came to the end and had to turn back. Still not fancying a swim we headed for a cold drink and a bit of people watching.

Earlier we had seen a really funky surfers hostel which was belting out tunes so we headed there next. We were greeted by Julie who was a really gregarious Texan in her 60’s. there were murals adorning the walls and it wasn’t long until she was explaining the stories behind them.

The first was blond in a car with lots of luggage on top, this showed her journey from Texas to California. The second was a car with a blond head and a dark headed quiff with their feet on the dash star gazing. This, she told us, depicted the time she met Elvis, they didn’t ‘make-out’, just watched the stars and listened to music. The final one was again of a car with a blond and dark head, this captured the time she met Sly Stalone (I believe they did make-out!). I like Julie

The bar emptied as the surfers hit the waves so I asked her to play some rock music for Glenn. Perhaps the wrong decision as we didn’t move for the rest of the day/night.

We met a really nice couple from Canada, Anna and Paul who were around our age. I don’t know if it was the beer but Anna quickly became my new best friend! And I kept telling her so in case she forgot! At one point, I popped out god knows where only to return to see Glenn doing a very loud full blown rendition of a guns and roses track with his new best friend, an Irish guy he had met.

After promises to our bezzies that we would join the surf classes the next day and pouring ourselves in a taxi for the 2 minute journey home, we said our goodbyes.

Day 3 – Ouch!

Our heads hurt, I was a mess! Deciding we weren’t going to do anything more ambitious than eat and breath today, and certainly not surf! So, we lazed around and Glenn did some blogging until hunger got the better of us. 

We found a place a few doors down for some food before quickly returning to our room where we read and slept. As it was a Saturday night we felt obliged to leave our room in the evening but could only make it as far as the upstairs bar.

There we found a South American band setting up for the evening. The boys were from Argentina and had spent the last 3 years traveling around South America, funding themselves through gigs. The guitarist was excellent and we were treated to various songs from different genres across South America.  The band was a good idea as it meant we could sit and listen and not make conversation, we did this until it was time to turn in.

Day 4 – Time for some culture

Feeling we had wasted a day, we booked Douglas to take us to the various historical sites close by. He met us with a hug at 8:30 and we were soon driving to our first stop.

This was Chan Chan, part of the Chimu empire and the largest pre-Colombian city which was built around 1300 AD (Pre-Inca) and the largest Adobe city in the world (thank you lonely planet).

We paid our entrance fee which also gave you access to 3 other sites and after some debate, paid for an expensive guide. We waited for the tour to start and took a few pics of the Peruvian dogs who were milling around. I think they are quite cute!

The guides English was quite difficult to understand and he spoke as if he was reading text from a book. However, we were glad to have him as there was absolutely no plaques or information available so all you would be left with was walking around walls of mud and trying to make sense of it, and finishing in 5 minutes.

Only one of the palaces has been properly excavated and is open to tourists. There are 9 palaces in total as each new king built a new palace after the death of the previous king. The majority of the palace is dedicated to the cemetery where the king is buried, together with 45 of his nearest and dearest who are sacrificed upon his deathbed so that they can join him in the afterlife. Makes you think twice about being a queen!

The rest of the palace is made up with the royal residence, big plazas where they performed ceremonies and offerings to the gods and a number of tax offices.

Next stop on our ticket was the Chan Chan Museum. It was crap, full of replicas and no information so I’ll move on.

After a coffee pit stop, Huaca Esmeralda was next and not much better, no info available (and not much more if you google it) but it was again from the same dynasty and consisted of an adobe building with a few ramps and not much else. We dawdled so we didn’t return back to Douglas within 5 minutes.

Huaca Arco Iris was our final stop on our ticket, it was a religious and administrative site of the same era. Again, no guide or plaques here again so just more mud walls with some colourless engravings depicting dragons. Slightly more interesting but again we walked around slowly so we didn’t look like complete philistines

To be honest, we had had enough by now but Douglas insisted on taking us to another site. We drove for about 20 minutes before we came to a museum where we had to pay an entrance fee for both the museum and Huaca de la Luna.

 

This was from the Moche dynasty who came before both the Chimu and the Incas. There are actually two Hucaca’s, La Luna and Del Sol. Only enough funding has been raised to excavate La Luna (madness) which is believed to be the religious site where important sacrifices happened and nobles and priests were buried. Del Sol was the administrative site and then there would have been a huge town lying between them.

The museum was very interesting with lots of original artefacts which were excavated from burial sites. It spoke about the many sacrifices done to appease their god which was a mountain over looking the temples. Basically, they sent warriors to battle against each other, the losers were then imprisoned and sacrificed to the gods by decapitating them. Nice!

Next it was time for the tour of La Lunas. This was only discovered in the 90’s by a couple of girls on a school trip. They climbed (what they thought was) a hill and sat down to rest. There they spotted some adobe bricks, did some digging and came across an engraving. The whole temple had been buried under sand for hundreds of years

The Temple structure itself is set out as a pyramid across 7 levels. Each new level is created as they brick up the old temple beneath it and build the new one on top. They are not clear why they did this.  Inside the temple itself, the structure is an inverted pyramid. And has a huge plaza just outside where the warriors were imprisoned and sacrificed.

We really enjoyed the tour, very informative and a lot of it is still undiscovered as some of the site is very fragile from when the Spanish looted it. The outside wall still shows the colourful engravings depicting their god as each new level/temple is built. If ever in the area, I’d opt to see this rather than Chan Chan.

We finished the tour and was back in town around 4pm where we headed to a local’s café for some food. I thought I’d left my sunglasses (yes, another pair) in Julies hostel so we headed there. We were warmly greeted by our new friends and Julie, and both mocked for missing the surfing.

She didn’t have my sunglasses but gave me another pair (We were later to find mine in the pocket of Glenn’s shorts) and had a couple of beers before saying our goodbyes. We had a bus to catch at midnight so couldn’t hang around.

Back at the hostel, we packed and then went to the bar to have a final beer with the last of our Peruvian Soles. Some cheeky sod came up to Glenn and asked to share his beer! He received a polite but very firm NO!

Douglas then took us to catch our midnight bus back in Trujillo. It was a bit disconcerting as there was an armed guard on the door checking and allowing access to only those who had tickets. Well they did say it was a dodgy city!

The bus was almost 2hrs late so it wasn’t much before 2am before we could board and settle down and hopefully sleep through some of the 17 hour Journey.