Trujillo: Huaca del Sol, Huaca de la Luna; Chan Chán

Trujillo is Perú's second (or third, depending on who you ask) city, and is in the middle of a desert, which stretches down most of the north coast of Perú. Remains of ancient settlements abound, and there's loads to see. The most interesting are the ruins of two Moche huacas, temples, and the crumbling remains of an ancient Chimú city.

First stop were the two huacas. The first, Huaca del Sol, used to be huge, but the Spanish essentially destroyed it in their search for Inca gold - they diverted a river right through the middle, and so most of the adobe walls crumbled. Huaca de la Luna, though, survived more or less intact, and over the years was covered in sand from the surrounding desert. Archeologists have been excavating it very recently, and are still doing so today. The temple is made of six levels, each of which represents the rule of one high priest. When the high priest died, they buried them inside his level, and built a new level right on top of him. So by digging down through the adobe bricks, you can trace the development of their culture - and because it was covered up, lots of carvings and wall-paintings survived almost completely intact. It's one of the only sites where you can still see the original temple decorations in full colour, so it was really interesting. Even cooler, by chance there turned out to be a concert of traditional Peruvian / Incan music, dance and ceremony that night, so we bought tickets and came back later. They had everything lit up very atmospherically, and we had a great time watching the show.

Today we went to Chan Chán, another superlative site. It used to be the capital of the Chimú state, and is made up of nine ciudadelas, fully-enclosed, self-sufficient cities. Everything was made of adobe, so much of it has crumbled away, but you can still make out the perimeter walls of eight of the ciudadelas. The ninth survived much better, and has been restored by UNESCO, and so is a stunning sight. The walls have been rebuilt, and much of the original decoration has survived. I never thought that pre-Inca civilizations could have been preserved in such detail. Needless to say, I took far too many pictures. The adobe engravings of pelicans I found particularly cute! :)

In the afternoon we went to the coastal village of Huanchaco. We'd read all about this in one of the books we picked up earlier on our journey, an archeologist's account of his travels in the area, and attempts to rebuild an ancient style of raft.

Huanchaco is now very popular with Peruvian tourists and Gringo surfers - it has very good, big waves. We were there to see the fishermen, who still fish in the traditional way. They build rafts from totora reeds, the size and shape of surf boards with little hollows to store the fish and their gear. They paddle out to sea with a double-paddle, riding over the waves as if they were surfing. It's interesting to watch, and you can see the reed rafts drying in the sun all over the place. We also had lunch in a nice seafood restaurant (not much use for Katherine, I'm afraid, who had chips... :) - I couldn't resist trying the crab cebiche. Translation (not for the faint hearted): raw crab meat marinated in lemon juice. Certainly something I've never had before! It's a traditional Peruvian dish, so I thought I had to try it sooner or later!

That's it. Phew, we're up to date! Next stop Lima, as you know, and from there we're continuing south. Highlights to come will, I'm sure, include the famous Nasca lines - drawings of condors, whales and other animals in the desert, only visible from the air -; and of course Machu Picchu. Bye for now!