A long Journey to explore... and read

Hi Folks,
Sorry for taking so long to write back. We've been traveling on buses for the better part of five days and when we finally get somewhere all we want to do is relax. So, i left off on the bus to Trujillo. The bus turned out to be really nice considering the price we paid for it. We were on the upper level of a double decker and our seats reclined about 120 degrees with leg rest. The bus had an attendant who passed out bread and some kind of roll thing and coffee before turning on the Inside Man in Spanish and disappearing until 8 am the next morning. I slept as well as one can on a bus where the seat goes back only so far and then has a tendency to spring forward for no apparent reason. But it beats paying for an extra night in a hotel and driving during the day when you could be out exploring the sites.

So, once in Trujillo we stood in the bus terminal looking like total tourist with our Peru Guide book out trying to figure out where we should spend the night. We decided on Casa de Clara because someone said it was good. The hostel was more like someones home with a lot of bedrooms. The owner is named Clara, but we only saw a Peruvian girl at the counter and a British guy named Michael that runs the place. Michael was really nice, but i think he's been in Peru too long and so he's started to maintain the Peruvian attitude of wearing the same clothes days on end and not understanding English anymore. When we went on a tour with him the following day one of the tourist asked if the Moche people had built something or other and he mistook this for, "our we destroying the ruins". very odd.

We ditched our backpacks and headed into town. The first thing we noticed was that no one was really about and everything looked relatively closed. It turns out that Trujillo is a nice little town that doesn't like to be open on Sundays. Kind of like most little towns in America. Opps. We had about two days in Trujillo and we were wasting one on a Sunday. We ended up at the main square, Plaza de Armas, and watched tons of soldiers marching about. I think it was a little boyscout commencement ceremony ro something. At least it gave us something to look at while we figure out how to spend the day.

Robby managed to attract some Tourist guy trying to get us to go on a tour with him and then come back to the Plaza around 2 pm and he would take us to a fiesta. It's funny that in America I get all the crazy people who come and talk to me, but in Peru, they all find Robby. It could be because I stare at them blankly when they start talking to me in Spanish and occasionally say, "Si" or "no gracias" or it could be because Robby actually understands their gibberish. America's education system sucks. Everyone we meet in Peru from other countries all know at least two languages, most know three or four. Americans pretty much know one with the few exceptions of the smarter Americans that pick up one other language in the four years of jr. high and high school they're taught.

I was starting to fade on Robby in the Plaza and desperately wanted to find some real Peruvian coffee. We looked in the guide book to find a place, but our guide book kind of lacks in helpful; information, mostly good for misinformation, and so we wandered the streets. We ended up in a cute alley way with seats. My coffee arrived and I starred at it. It was one cup of hot water, one small cup of black stuff and one small cup of milk. The waitress told me to pour the black stuff, which was the coffee, into the water until i liked the taste and then add the milk. The milk in Peru tastes like odd butter, so it's black coffee all the way. Peruvian coffee isn't very strong, but it is pleasant, not too burnt tasting like Starbucks and no bitter after taste. I was happy.

There was a museum of archaeology somewhere around where we were, but i told Robby that we should go to the Beach (the Peruvian girl at our Hostel said since it was a sunny day and they don't have many sunny days in Trujillo that we should visit the beach. It was where all the other people were)and come back to the museum later, after siesta. She reluctantly agreed and we set out to find a Colectivo - a 12 person van that the Peruvians have converted into small transportation vehicles that they will fill to the brim (one of the Colectivos that we went in had 22 people in it) and are extremely cheap. It paid 1.2 sols to go 12 kms. Huanchaco is the city of the beach and of the reed boats. it's know for its 15 foot boats that are two long poles of reeds wrapped in twine and tied together. People sit on their knees and paddle out to fish or relax. We didn't want to get soaked since we were in normal clothes, so we chose to watch people try to navigate the boats rather than try it our selves.

We stayed in Huanchaco for about two hours wandering the small inhabited strip of land along the beach and then taking pictures of the interesting mud brick houses in town. Most of the houses in Peru are built like they were 2000 years ago. With mud and water and hay. It is effective and cheap. I really like the doors of the houses. They are the only tings with character that separate all the houses. Some are colors, some have bars, some have designs. Very interesting. We took the Colectivo back to town, but jumped out early because we saw the Coca Cola sign that someone said the Archaeology museum was next to. We ended up walking around in the hot sun for the next hour going back and forth looking for a street that didn't exist. Our guide book said that the museum was in the middle of an intersection next to a gas station. We asked a gas station attendant if he knew where the museum was and he sent us in the wrong direction. Eventually we found it, across the street from where we jumped out of the Colectivo and in back of the gas station where we'd asked for directions. After all out effort to find the damn thing it had the audacity to be closed. Stupid guide book saying it was open on a Sunday. We started walking back to the hostel, but ended up the wrong direction and hopped in a cab. I was sick of aimless wandering.

We walked through Trujillo at night, but discovered that there are a lot of people wandering about, but none of them seem to go anywhere. a lot of the dance clubs were closed and the restaurants were closing by 10 pm. We had some Chinese food, which turned out to be chicken and rice, but at least the rice was fried. Robby and I have discovered that Peruvian food consist of Chicken, rice, french fries, and random meats that we wont eat including guinea pig - the Peruvian speciality. EWWWWW. someones pet went bye bye.

The following day we went on a Tour of the Sun and Moon Pyramids, the Dragon Pyramid and the City of Chan Chan. Michael from the Hostel was our tour guide and we were accompanied by a girl from Zimbabwe and a couple, one Canadian and one Dutch. Michael turned out to be a great Tour Guide. he knew millions of little facts about each of the places and could talk for hours. The Temples of the Sun and Moon are two pyramids opposite each other and of the Moche culture. We were allowed in only the Temple of the Moon. The Sun was being fixed to allow for Tourist. The Moche people made beautiful wall paintings of gods and animals and then decided block the painted walls with other, plain mud brick walls. It's a wonder the archaeologist even found the paintings in the first place as they had to remove about three other walls covering them. Michael said that the Moche covering their drawings was equivalent to us changing our wall paper - if you don't like it, cover it. Their pyramids were also built from the ground up with different decades of the society adding on to the last level, building upwards. The Temple of the Moon had 6 different levels or floors to the pyramid.

After a brief lunch of rice and lettuce (Michael made us lunch at teh Hostel, but didn't realize that 4 of the 6 people on the tour didn't eat meat) we set out to teh Dragon Pyramid. The Pyramid was a storage unit for the Moche. A triangle with walls around several incave spaces. Small and not very exciting. Chan Chan was much better. Archaeologist don't know how big it was because of the current Trujillo people living on part of Chan Chan land, but there were about 20 big and small pyramids spread across several KMs. We walked around the biggest of the Temples. It must have been 1.5 kms squared. There were ceremonial squares where they used to sacrifice people to the gods and where they threw parties and then a ceremonial lake that they bathed in and did rituals.

After the tour ended we said bye to Michael and the rest of the Tour group and hitched a bus to Chiclayo. We realized that we don't have to see anymore movies in Peru if we want a day to relax because we will See a ton on the buses. We ended up watching True LIes in Spanish with Spanish Subtitles. I have to tell you that i really don't like Turue Lies, but there is something entertaining about it when watching it in Spanish. The Spanish dubbed voice even differed from the subtitles. It was awesome. We made three stops on the 3 1/2 hour trip. During the first stop half the bus got off. After the second stop RObby and I were the only people left on the bus. We looked around wondering if we should have got off. One of the two bus drivers ended up talking with us and said that most people don't go to Chiclayo after 7pm. We went at 8 pm. I was starting to think that Chiclayo had to suck since no one wanted to go there, but we were wrong.

Chicolayo turned out to be our favorite city thus far. First we ended up arriving at about 11:30pm and our new bus driver friend organized a taxi for us to Lambayque where we had accidentally booked our hostel for the night. Lambayque is about 12 kms from Chicolayo and completely dead at midnight. Even our hostel was locked up for the night. We had to wake up some poor guy sleeping on the couch to let us in. In the morning we realized that it was a small, semi-shit hole town, and i told Robby we would be moving to Chiclayo for the remainder of the two days we had in Chiclayo. Before we moved though we decided to visit the Museum of Sican. It was a across the street from the Hostel and told of the Sican culture, but for all Robby and I knew it was a bunch of pots and a few poor souls that had the misfortune of their skeletons being put on display. All the signs were in Spanish dn I stopped trying to read them after the third sign. What should have taken us at least an hour to go through, took us twenty minutes. We were standing in the sunshine by 11:30am wondering what to do next.

We of course wandered in circlexs looking for anything that resembled an editable place to eat and ended up in a hole in the wall cafe between two big touristy restaurants that were expensive. The hole in the wall place had daily specials that we didn't understand. We just ate what they brought. First course was chicken soup that tasted yummy until Robby foudn a chicken claw in hers. I told her to suck it up and keep eating. After she found the chicken heart, i lost my appetite for the soup as well. I'd ordered chicken and rice again because you can't mess that up too much, but RObby got fried rice that happened to come with mystery meat. Now, i wouldn't normally eat miserty meat rice, but the owner of the three tabled restaurant seemed to be so happy we chose his place ratter than the more touristy places that i ate about half of the plate before getting truly freak out and wanting something normal to eat. We ended up paying 8 sols total and eating about 45% of the food. But the owner just smiled and gave us his business card.

Amazingly RObby and I found a Hotel about two blocks from the center of town. We didn't realize how lucky we were until we met some other people and tried to find them a hotel for under 30 sol a person a night. Since we didn't speak good SPanish and the hotel people wanted customers they agreed to our 20 sol a person a night deal instead of the normal 50 sols a person. We were damn lucky. That afternoon we caught a Colectivo to Ferrenate, a small place in the middle of nowhere that was suppose to have a museum on Sipan. The Colectivo dropped us off on the out skirts of a small dusty road and told us to walk. We walked for ten minutes before i told Robby to ask someone where we were. The next person said to keep walking as well. 20 minutes later we came upon the most modern building we'd seen here, complete with air conditioning. They just randomly decided to build this ratter nice museum on the outskirts of a town that no ones heard of and that people usually come to on tours only. Of course the museum was in Spanish again, but it was nice to get out in the day and do something.

We needed to take a small ricksaw type motorcycle thing with two seats attacted in the back to the Colectivo station and then we were back in Chiclayo. Earlier in the day we had booked a tour for the following day to The Temple of Sipan, Tucume Temple and the Museum of Sipan in Lambayque. We spent the night relaxing and watching Tv.

Our Tour consisted of 6 tourist and a guide. We made friends with Daniel, A Portuguese working in Peru and Harold, whom the tour leader called Tom because he couldn't pronounce his German name correctly. First stop was the Temple of Sipan. It was a group of pyramid-like ruins that had errated with time and what once was a step-like looking pyramid now looks like a large lump of dirt with rain rivets. The Peruvian people had found four tombs on the site of Sipan. They'd removed the bodies, pots and jewelry they'd found in the tombs and replaced them with replicas so that visitors could see how it looked when the archaeologist discovered it. It was a cool idea because most of the ruins that we see are big holes in the ground contain lots of dirt. The interesting thing about the replicas is that they'd removed the real skeletons that they'd found, but replaced them with other real skeletons. I guess since the replacement skeletons weren't 1700 years old, they would last a bit in the open weather and with people gawking at them.

The People of Sipan buried Two kings, a priest and some soldiers at the site. Most of the people where buried with sacrificed people. The new king, as there was an Old King found as well (2000 years old), was buried with a soldier- who's feet were cut off as not to be able to run away from his master in the after life, a couple women, a child, dog, and llama with it's head cut off. Most of the graves had the feetless soldiers and the headless llamas. They were all buried with copper pots and gold statues. The kings had all their golden jewelry and beaded necklaces. I have to give the archaeologist credit for the necklaces because the string holding the beads together disintegrated after 1700 years and so there were millimeter sized beads everywhere and in the museum the necklaces were put back together as they once were, minus a bead or two. Brilliant.

Next stop was one of the expensive touristy restaurants we had avoided the otehr day when Robby got chicken feet soup. This place was expensive, slow, and touristy with the smake tasting food as one of the 5 sol shops on the street. I wanted to go to one of teh little shops, but we felt if would be rude to leave. An hour later we were on the road to Tucume. A city built by the Lambayque people about 1500 years ago. The pyramids looked just like Sipan, with the rain riveted mud, but there were at least 26 pyramids spread out for about 30 kms. The only thing that we were allowed to see at Tucume was the view from atop one of teh smaller pyramids that I wheezed to the top climbing. It was a great view, but it would have been a better trip if we could have got to See one of the tombs that they'd discovered. OUr tour guide said that if we wanted to come back in about five years he thinks one of the tombs would be available to the public. Ahh, i don't think so.

The last stop of the Tour was the Museum of Sipan which was fascinating. It could be because the Tour was in Englisbh so we had an idea of what we were looking at or it could be the fact that we got to see the original pots, jewelry and skeletons from the Temple of Sipan. Both of the kings and all the feetless soldiers were there. The New Kings bones were almost disintegrated in parts because he was buried under lots of copper that eats away at bone. The Old King was in the great shape since he was buried under a ton of gold. All in all, the tour was interesting and we got to see a part of the all Peruvian cultures.

After the Tour, Daniel, Harold, Robby, and I wandered from tour office to Tour office trying to book a tour for the following day to Chaparri, a nature preserve that the tour guide from Sipan told us to visit. Since the perserve was on private property we needed to go with a local guide. Originally they wanted 85 sols a person, with was a rip off and no one wanted to pay. We ended up finding Julie, a French girl, in one of the tour offices and bargaining our tour to Chaparri down to 60 sols a person. The tour would be from 7am to about 5pm. We wanted to catch a night bus to Huaraz the following night.

We all agreed to get dinner after RObby and I booked our bus to Huaraz. What we discovered was a little worrisome. Only one bus company went from Chiclayo to Trujillo to Huaraz and that bus left at 4pm. We didn't want to waste another day in Chiclayo, but we really wanted to go to Chaparri. decisions, decisions. We asked our new friends if they could find replacements for us on the tour for the following day, but instead they managed to get our tour an hour earlier and made if so we would be back by 3:30pm to catch our bus. We were greatly relieved. We spent the rest of the night finding Daniel and Julie a hostel and getting food from a restaurant that was still open.

At the butt crack of dawn we hopped in the van that drove us to Chaparri. I managed to catch a few zzz's, but ended up mesmerized by the beautiful scenery of mountains, ca taus, and birds on the small dirt road we were driving. 2 hours later we hopped out of the van and sat down for the intro to the hike talk. Unfortunately it was all in Spanish, so i zoned out. Good thing that Harold, Julie, and Daniel spoke Spanish and could interpret. As the Guide droned on, I spotted a deer. She came right up to our group and started to look for food. The guide said that all the animals at the preserve were rescued and that when they'd released Marie, the deer, she decided to stay. She let us take pictures with her and pet her, but became annoying when she tried to constantly each my backpack. Everyone occasionally feed her pieces of their lunch. She also because sort of our tour leader, leading us up the path to the other animals.

We saw a few cages were there used to be animals and then a giant boacontrictor. The tour guide asked us what we wanted to see and we all said "bears", because that is the reason that we came. We spotted one from a few 100 yards away in a tree and I thought that was the closest that we would get to see of them, but we walked a little further and the tree was next to us. The preserve rescued 8 bears and was nursing them back to health before releasing them back into the wild. They were very odd bears because they liked to walk on two feet and looked like a cross between bears and meerkats. They were about 3 1/2 feet standing on two feet and the small ones weighed 60 kilos while the male weighed 90 kilos. Our guide chopped down a piece of sugar cane plant and gave us pieces of it to feed to the bears. There's nothing like offering a hungry bear sugar and your hand. Luckily it knew the difference.

We spent the better part of an hour walking through the perserve looking at the nature around us. They'd built the preserve in the ravine of a mountain. Green cataus and other lush plants surrounded us. The Tour ended at the Voltures cage. Voltures are pretty ugly. They look like giant turkeys with a very large wing span. They also like to keep company with smelly, descreated cow heads. Yum. They can have Robby's chicken heart soup.

We made it back to Chiclayo with and hour and half to kill. We found a cute desert shop to swap email addresses with everyone before hopping on our first of two buses to Huaraz. The first bus took us back to Trujillo, but instead of taking 3 1/2 hours like the previous one, it took almost 5 hours. No wonder the bus people wouldn't let us take a later bus when we'd asked the day before. We stopped at every two bit town along the way becasue getting to Trujillo 45 minutes until our next bus. Since we decided to save a bit of money, we decided to take the Economy bus. We spent the next 10 1/2 hours freezing and covered in dust because most of the windows on the bus were broken and let in all the crap in from outside. It was miserable and now we've learned our leasson... pay five dollars more and ride in comfort.

We arrived in Huaraz at 6:30 am and with no clue on where we were going to spend the night. We meet an Israeli at the bus terminal and he asked if we would like to share a taxi to Hostel Caroline. We said sure. The hostel was a ways from town (about 1/2 mile), but it was a real hostel. We were put in a four person dorm and told to go upstairs and grab breakfast. We met a bunch of people at breakfast, most of them Israeli. Apparently there are a lot of Jews in Huaraz. We ended up talking to a couple, Matthew and Sarah, who said that they were going on a tour to Chavin in about 30 minute. We had wanted to go to Chavin as well, so we decided to join them.

In America you have to reserve a spot on a tour at least a few days in advance, but here in Peru, you can hop on last minute. The only problem was that the tour was in Spanish again. The guy from our hostel said that it would probabaly be in English, but no such luck. We ended up talking with a two girls traveling together from Germany and a solo Austrilan guy.

First stop on the tour was a small lake at the base of rather large, snow capped mountains. The local Quechua people were out at the water with their Alpackas, offering them up for pictures. Robby and I decided to take a picture with them because really, when else do you think we'll ever get a chance to pet an alpacka. They are very soft and placid creatures. I want one. I'll let with hang out with the baby elephant I'm going to own one day.

We drove for another hour along very whindy and steep mountain switchbacks before coming to a stop at a restaurant at the bottom. The ordered Coco tea, with is made from leaves of the Coco plant, or cocaine plant. The tea is suppose to be able to relieve headaches, stomach aches, colds, and breathing problems. RObby and i both seem to think it makes us loopy. I didn't feel the effects as much as RObby did, but yeah, i want to be clear headed for this trip, not feeling all foggy like I've had some bad allergy medicine. And for all those people saying, "you took Cocanie?" Um, no, it's just a lite tea. You'd have to drink about 50 gallons of the stuff to equal one sniff of Coke.

By midafternoon we finally made it to Chavin, the old ruins of the Chavin people. There was a main Temple with a large courtyard in front of it and small maze like walkways under the ground between the two. Teh Chavin people where into echos and sounds. Sound/voice could travel through all the passageways that they built and they made a ground flute near the temple that when wind blew over the holes in the ground, it made pretty noise. The Temple had an alter built on top of some steps. teh interesting thing about the steps is that one side was black and one side was white, as well as the walls on each side. The tour guide says that the black stone represented night and the white side was day. She thought that the women of the culture entered the alter via the black steps and the men via the white steps.

We got to go underground and walk around in the labrynth of tunnels the Chavin people built. Most of the passageways ended after a few feet. There were numerous holes built into the walls, windows into other rooms. No one really knows what the tunnels were used for, but they think to house goods and maybe have soldiers stay there to protect stuff. The whole thing had low ceilings, so either the Chavin people were really small or they didn't want a lot of people to go underground.

we saw a small museum on the ruins before returning back to the hostel. I wanted to explore the town a bit, but Robby was starting to feel the effects of altitude sickness, so we went to take showers and talk with the other people at the hostel.

The following morning we woke up early because we wanted to walk to Wilkawain, which the guy at the hostel said was an easy 8 km hike. We had wanted to go to the Monterey hot springs, but after talking with the german kids the previous day, we realized that sitting in a dirty swimming pool of pumped in sulfur water was not going to be really relaxing and so we settled for the closest hike from town. Huaraz is know for it's outdoorsiness. People come here to spend weeks hiking, mountain climbing, camping, and skiing. We came for two days. :(

Since Robby didn't want to get sick again we decided to take a Colectivo to teh top of the small hill where the ruins of Wilkawain were and then hike back to town. Using our trusty guide book we aimless searched for teh two streets that teh colectivo drove past. We found it 50 minutes later, but not where the book said it would be. It was a 20 minute ride up a steep hill in a very cramped bus before we breathed fresh air. The hostel guy must have been drinking too much Coco if he thought Wilkawain was an "easy" hike. my ass, but whatever, down is better than up.

The ruin was a large burial chamber that contained two skeletons. The small one outside at about 1/3 the size contained 5 bodies. I guess they weren't important. Wilkawain was similar to Chavin because of the underground passages, but much smaller. We made our way through the two tombs in 15 mins. A 10 year old boy appointed himself our tour guide adn told us about the tomb in Spanglish. We gave him cookies and 1 sol.

We spent the next hour and a half walking down the mountain, following a man made river that supplied the passing houses with water. All the Peruvians said hi to us, some even stopping to ask where we came from. Even though we were on a hiking path, i don't think many non Peruvians walk it. Wilkawain is not on most peoples "things to do in Huaraz" list. The path also split in two about 6 times on our way downa dn we decided that as long as we continued down the mountain and towards the left we were good. We would have died hiking up the hill, but it was very pleasant to walk down. We past numerous wheat and other vegetable feilds and by peoples mud brick houses. The Peruvians live simply, but they know how to use all the resources of the land and most of them seem content.

When we finally made it to the bottom of the hill we ended up on a main, high traffic road. This was clearly not the same road that we had traveled to Wilkawain in the Colectivo, but there wasn't really any other towns around, so we assumed we were in Huaraz. We assumed correctly, but we had somehow come down from the mountain about 1.5 miles from the center of town. We troughed onwards and made it to a quaint coffeeshop just before the rain poured across the town. The water made everything look beautiful and smell great. It was awesome until we realized we had laundry drying outside. I wonder how well drench clothes will do couped up in a backpack under a bus for 9 hours. hum...What are you going to do when you travel? life's life.

So i will end this long as hell blog and let your eyes relaxs and give my fingers a break. I also apologizes for the many grammar errors this blog probabaly has becasue i think my computer time is about to run out and i don't think i'll have much time to reread it before posting. So, until next time...leave me a comment. I want to know someone made it to the end of this thing.