Last Stop in Peru

The best I can do to compete with weekly fb posts of IV sunsets

The Huanchaco fisherman's boats

After trekking around Peru for three weeks (it's already February 8th at this point!) , our last stop was Huanchaco/Trujillo before we continued on to Ecuador! Huanchaco is a beach town about 10 miles outside the major city of Trujillo, and just seemed like a nicer place to say. Our hostel was right on the beach, with a balcony perfectly placed to watch sunsets. It was pretty awesome to fall asleep to the sound of waves crashing too. Another plus for Huanchaco was it's food options! Don't get me wrong, I love peruvian food, but having options was incredible. Even though I was still a little sick, it didn't seem to matter as much.

Trying to blend in

So what was it that brought us to Trujillo in the first place? Ruins, obviopo. We were headed to a HUGE clay city called Chan Chan. It's not inhabited anymore and whenever it rains major parts of the city fall apart, but it was still incredible to see. Almost all of the walls had these really neat designs carved into them. Most of the city was reconstructed, but I trust the accuracy of the reconstruction people. There was also an man dressed in traditional incan ceremonial clothes roaming the site, but you had to pay to take a photo of him. So me and Briana waited until someone called him and then snapped really quick photos with his charriot and "gold" club :) The place really was huge and you got to see all the different sectors of the city, like where all the people lived, where they held ceremonies, sacrificial areas, where the market was, etc. Really cool stuff.

The water was FREEZING unfortunately, so not much bathing went down. There was, however, a lot of beach market shopping, surfer watching, and sand walking. It was just really relaxing because it seemed like ever since we left Cuzco, it was constant going, going, going.

The lower outer wall of Huaca de la Luna

Another one of our days in Huanchaco/Trujillo we headed to the Huacas, pronounced waka (waka, hey, hey?) de la Luna and del Sol. They are basically two giant ceremonial structures out in the middle of nowhere. The Huaca de la Luna started out as a small temple, but as time went on it was built over 5 times into a bigger and more expansive temple. We got to go inside and you can really clearly see the layers that it was built in based on the paint that was on the wall. It's all original paint too! That was really impressive to me, that it has lasted that long. Huaca del Sol was inaccessible because it's still being excavated and just looks like a big lump of dirt, but it was a really impressive lump of dirt.


It was finally time to say goodbye to Peru. We had head some not so great stories about the border crossing between Peru and Ecuador so we were searching for a bus that took us to each immigation station, waited for us, and picked us up. Ideally we were going to do the 16 hour journey directly to Guayaquil, but there was only one spot left, and we were two people. So we had to take a bus further north and then connect to a direct bus. This whole trip has made me really bus-savoy. A 5 hour journey now seems like absolutely nothing. Long story short, we got our direct bus, had no problems crossing the border and made it to Ecuador safe and sound!