Trujillo, Peru

From Guayaquil, Ecuador I took a night bus into Peru. In the middle of the night the bus made it to the border and all of the passengers went through passport control. We got back on the bus to continue on to Piura in the northwest of Peru. Along the coast we traveled trough desert then made it to the bustling city of Piura with all of it's motorcycle taxis. I had one of the best plates of ceviche that ever had then I caught another bus to Trujillo, Peru where thee was something more to see.







Trujillo was a beautiful colonial city with a miriad of archeaological sites nearby. The city is set in the desert but it has a long history of agricultural production through distributing river waters from the Andes into irrigation canals throughout the valley.













From at least 500 AD irrigation systems were used to create a fertile valley in the desert supporting a number of indiginous groups predating the Incas. The Moche and Chimu were the groups that left the greatest mark around the Trujillo area. I took a tour to visit a number of sights inn the area and we went to visit the crumbling pyramids of the Sun and Moon first (Las Huacas del Sol y de la Luna). the Huaca del sol (sun Pyramid is Peru's largest precolombian structure with an estimated 140,000,000 adobe blocks used to build it. It is a crumbling mess these days but it is still massive. Next to the crumbling pyramid is a smaller yet much more refined and preserved Pyramid of the Moon (la Huaca de la Luna). The Larger Pyramid of the Sun is shown in the later photos.















The Chimu people lived around 700 years after the Moche and they also created some amazing temples. The tour I was on continued to the Huaca Arco Iris from where you can see the modern city of Trujillo in the distance. The Chimu also build the vast adode city of Chan Chan. Constucted of more than 10,000 structures creating labrinth of eroding adobe walls. The tour I was on visted one of the nine palaces of Chan Chan.















The last sight around the Trujillo area was the fishing village of Huanchaco. At one point ist was a tranquil fishing village where most of the fishermen used specialized reed boats called caballitos (little horses) to fish then surf back to the beach with there catch. Now the village's beach location and good surf has made tourism Huanchacos number one industry.










Wheel barrows

Guayaquil, Ecuador

From Baños I took a 10 hour night bus to Guayaquil on the southern coast of Ecuador. It is Ecuador's second largest city with a much different feel from the mountainous capital of Quito. Guayaquil has had a bad reputation as a large, hot, and fairly dangerous city, but in recent years they have done a lot to improve that reputation through a number of public works projects. From a landscape architecture and urban planning point of view it was a great experience to see those projects. In fact most all of the two days I spent in Guyaquil was spent visiting successful projects and taking hundreds of photos of design ideas. Below is just a sample of the parks and open spaces with the showpiece being the renovated waterfront.




















The first day I was on my own but later that night I met up with a great guy from the Servas program, Carlos. He is a part of a cultural exchange program that welcomes people and helps them to get a better feel for the place they are visiting (www.usservas.org). We went out for beers that night then he showed me around other parts of the city the next day. Besides seeing more parks and planning projects he took me to a place that had fearless iguanas roaming around. We spent the day touring the city then I was off to the bus station to take another night bus, this time 12 hours south to Peru.




















Canon barrel