Trujillo & Huanchaco

I absolutely LOVED this last vacation I took. There were midterms last week and since I only had one take-home exam/essay that I finished on Monday, I had the whole week with no classes. Kalli, Lenka (friend from Slovakia), and I took a 9 hour bus ride to Trujillo, in the north, on Tuesday afternoon. We found a hostel when we got there that was pretty cheap - price wise and quality! The beds were uncomfortable and there were a few cockroaches, but hey, you get what you pay for. We woke up early on Wednesday and after visiting a local market to buy bread and drink fresh fruit juice, we took a combi to Chan Chan, an archeological site just outside of Trujillo. I loved it! It was crazy to see an entire town that was hundreds and hundreds of years old. It's crazy to imagine that a pre-Incan civilization had built so much without any use of machinery. Some pictures of Chan Chan:

Lots of fish in their pictures

Fish nets

Just hanging out on some ruins from almost 2000 years ago!

A taxi driver offered to bring us to the other 3 locations that our Chan Chan ticket was valid for - Museo del Sitio (a museum of Chan Chan artifacts), Huaca del arco iris (rainbow pyramid) and Huaca de esmeralda (emerald pyramid). The huacas were interesting, but a lot smaller than Chan Chan itself.

Chan Chan people (at Museo del Sitio)

Scale model of Chan Chan

Rainbow Pyramid

View of Trujillo from the top of the Rainbow Pyramid

Emerald Pyramid

We were hungry after all of that archeological site seeing, so we got dropped off in the Plaza de Armas of Trujillo. Every major city in Peru has a plaza de armas, but this was by far my favorite. Big colorful colonial buildings lined the plaza which was kept soo clean I couldn't have found a piece of trash on the sidewalk if I tried. It was a big change from dirty Lima! We went to a place that was suggested in my guide book for great pizza before touring some of the old mansions. 

Building in Plaza de Armas

Love the big statue in the middle!

Palacio Iturregui courtyard

Casa de la Emancipación

Big beautiful church

Colorful buildings in the plaza

Me in the Plaza de Armas

There wasn't really any night life in Trujillo, especially on a Wednesday, so after dinner we went and saw the movie Rio at a theatre. It was less than $2, incredible for a brand new movie! It was dubbed in Spanish but still really cute and hilarious. On Thursday we woke up early for more sight seeing - we took a combi in the opposite direction of Chan Chan to Huaca de la luna (moon pyramid) and Huaca del sol (sun pyramid) built by the Moche civilization sometime between 100 and 800 AD. They had a really cool museum that we looked around in before taking a free tour of Huaca de la luna. 

In the desert...

Huaca de la luna museum - couldn't take pictures inside, but it's brand new and really nice!

Original paintings from who knows when - Huaca de la luna

That's Huaca del sol on the right - archeologists haven't started working on it due to a lack of funding.

Crazy wall in Huaca de la luna

All original paint - none of it is renovated!

After seeing 3 ancient pyramids and 2 museums, I was ready to get out of Trujillo. We checked out of our hostel and took a cab to Huanchaco, this adorable little beach town 20 minutes outside of Trujillo. We had already had a hostel booked, Casa Suiza, and were very pleased to find this cute little terrace outside of our room with 3 chairs - perfect for us 3 ladies! We didn't spend much time there, since the beach was only a couple of blocks away. :)

Terrace at Casa Suiza

Yes - finally on the beach!

There were tons of surfers in Huanchaco, of all ages... these 2 cuties posed for me!

Had to have Trujillo beers at sunset on the beach! :D

I love this picture - see the surfer reaching up towards the sun?

Sun in my hand

After watching the sunset we went to this really fabulous place for sushi. It was the best sushi I've had in my whole life! Granted I only started liking it when I first tried it in Lima, but still. It was delicious and we recommended it to anyone we met. The reason I loved Huanchaco so much was because it was so small. After being there for only a night we started recognizing other travelers and even the dogs. We never had to take a taxi because everything was within walking distance. There were no horns and car alarms like there is constantly in Lima - Huanchaco is just a lazy little carefree beach town filled with backpackers from all over the world and surfers. People walk around barefoot because the streets and sidewalks are so clean - I definitely took advantage of the opportunity! (Don't worry, I'm up to date on my tetanus shot just in case) 

A couple of our other friends joined us in Huanchaco and we all went to this little bar with a live band for some drinks at night. I talked to a lot of travelers from Germany and England who were just living life on the road with a backpack! So inspiring. It made me wish I would have just spent these 5 months traveling instead of "studying" because I don't need the credits I'm taking here anyways. However, I'm sure I couldn't have gotten student loans to just bum around South America for a semester, so it's a good thing I'm enrolled in classes and just traveling on the weekends! 

On Friday we just spent all day laying on the beach. It was so nice and relaxing to just lay there in the sun and listen to music and watch people surf. I was going to take a surf lesson but ran out of time! I'll have to try some other time... For lunch we went to a cevicheria and had ceviche, raw fish "cooked" in the acid of lime juice. It was my third time trying ceviche and I still don't like it too much. The flavor is OK, but I just can't stand the texture or the way it makes my stomach feel afterwards. I've tried it 3 times so I think it's safe to say I just don't like ceviche - even though it's Peru's most famous dish! 

Inca Kola and Trujillo - perfect combination for lunch beverages

Ceviche - ick.

We went to some little shops after lunch and I bought a really warm Huanchaco sweatshirt and some earrings. Everything was really cheap! Then we walked out on this big boulevard bridge for sunset. Huanchaco is known for their caballitos de totora, which translates to "little horses of totora (a reed type material)" They are named that because the fishermen straddle them with their legs hanging in the water and paddle around with a net dragging behind the boat. It's their only means of fishing here! And I guess it works.. there was fish offered on every menu of every restaurant we visited. It was really cool to see the fishermen come in from their day of fishing and the surfers in the water at the same time.

Caballitos de totora lined up on the beach

On the bridge at sunset

:)

More caballitos

Me and Kalli

Kalli, me, Lenka - trying to take a picture of ourselves

On Friday night we had some beers on the beach with a few friends and just chatted. The stars were beautiful and it was nice to just lay in the sand and listen to the ocean. Saturday was another full beach day and Matt, Rebecca, and Kris arrived in Huanchaco to join us. I wish I could have stayed later - they just got home today! Kalli, Lenka and I left on a bus from Trujillo at 10 pm and got to Lima around 6:30 am on Sunday. We had paid 10 soles extra for "bus beds" for the way back, but they turned out to be exactly the same seats as the second floor, which is 10 soles cheaper! Oh well. 

Being in Huanchaco really made me realize how much I love all of Peru... outside of Lima. Maybe I'm just in the "low part" in the cultural adjustment curve that the office of international students gave us, but I'm really sick of Lima. Don't get me wrong, I love the campus, my house, and the people I live with, but Lima is just not my favorite place. It's loud, polluted, dirty, populated, huge, and I always feel like everyone is out to get me. Even though I've lived here for 2 months I still don't know my way around because it's so big and I have to take taxis or buses everywhere. The whistling and cat calling hasn't diminished it all and I'm just sick of everyone making me feel uncomfortable when I walk down the street! 

I'm really going to try to focus on the things I love and ignore the things that are making me annoyed - I've just reached the halfway point of being here so I still have 10 weeks left. Not loving Lima has also made me want to travel even more on weekends - which is why I've only spent one weekend in Lima in the past 5 weeks. I've also learned that I don't want to live in a huge city when I "grow up" and have a newfound appreciation for Madison! I sure do love that city. :) 

Drew is visiting me in ONE WEEK from today and I'm so excited to show him everything I've been doing here. We're taking a trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu the first weekend he's here (also my 21st birthday weekend!) and I'm really excited about it. Should be a blast!