Why you want to leave me?

best.cake.ever.

Huanchaco

We were pretty bummed about everyone leaving us. So how did we cheer ourselves up? More beach time and shopping! While in Trujillo we discovered Topitop, a Peruvian clothing store with all the light weight, summer clothes we ever could want. There were multiple locations around the city and we visited as many as we could. It was a good thing our backpacks were already so full, or all the the trying on clothes would have led to lots of purchasing. We also took the time to eat some local fare (as usual), and even found a restaurant named Chocolate!

Typical munchies before a meal. And don't forget the chicha  (purple corn concoction)  to drink!

Arroz Chaufa- like chinese fried rice, but better.

The famous ceviche- raw fish made really tasty with lime and spicy stuff

As much as we love shopping and eating, we did take some time to visit some of the historical sites in the area as well. In the US, you hear a lot about the Incan culture in Peru, but there were various (equally impressive) pre-Incan cultures throughout Peru. Near Trujillo we visited the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna (pyramids of the sun and moon). The bigger of these pyramids is the largest pre-Columbian structure in Peru, and took more than 140 million adobe bricks to build (or so the Lonely Planet book tells me). People in the Moche culture made these bricks as a sort of tax, and you can still see different families' symbols on the bricks that remain today. You can also see much of the original paint on the walls.Who knew?

We were surprised at how much of Peru is covered in desert. This is a pyramid almost indistiguishable from years of harsh sun, sand, and wind. Much of the pyramid is now buried underground. They predict it will still take years and years to get close to uncovering it.




Parts of the pyramid are enclosed now to protect them from the wind and sand. You can see in these photos that the colors of the paint are still pretty bright!

 

This is the view from one pyramid to the other. All of the space in between was where the city of Moche once was. They are beginning to dig it out from under the sand, but you can see they still have a long way to go.