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