It felt as if I’d had a really long lay in, but it was only 08:00 hrs. when I got up and walked down to the “El Poseidon” for breakfast. A couple came in to buy some bananas and we got talking. Nick was from Dublin in Ireland and his wife, Georgina, was Canadian. They invited me to join them on a visit to the Huacas Sol y la Luna, the pyramids of the sun and the moon.
The Huacas del Sol y de la Luna are an archaeological complex located on the north coast of Peru, considered a Moche sanctuary. The Moche or Mochica culture is an archaeological culture of Ancient Peru that developed between the second and seventh centuries in the valley of the Moche River (current province of Trujillo, in the department of La Libertad).
It consists of a set of monuments located about five kilometers south of the city of Trujillo, in the district of Moche. This archaeological site physically represented the capital of the Mochica culture from the first century A.C. to the ninth century A.C.
There are several theories, but the most convincing are those that say that one building was for politics (Huaca del Sol) and the other for religion (Huaca de la Luna); at the foot of these enclosures, one of approximately five floors and the other of ten, is a city of the middle or upper class.
I grabbed my camera from my room, and we got the yellow Trujillo bus. This broke down enroute and we had to transfer to another bus for the last bit. We waited for a collectivo (minibus) on the corner of Suarez and Avenida Los Incas.
The buses were all packed full and most of the locals were packing into the dilapidated taxis. Some Dutch people that Nick knew turned up and together, the seven of us plus a Peruvian boy that the Dutch had “adopted” piled into a taxi.
We drove out of town and bumped cautiously along the dirt road which led through simple houses and small holdings to the pyramids. Two huge but dilapidated mounds stood on the edge of the desert overshadowed by a pointed mountain (which was probably the inspiration for the pyramids).
The adobe brickwork was clearly visible in excavations on the side. An "adobe" or "adobe brick" is a dried-mud brick made of earth, water and usually some kind of organic binding material like straw or grass.
The word "adobe" comes from Egyptian, which was adopted into Arabic, then into Spanish, and now enjoys common usage in English. Adobe is one of the world's oldest and most effective building materials because of its ability to flex under changing temperatures, and to keep interior environments cool in hot climates.
We trudged across the sand and clambered up the Pyramid of the Moon, which was riddled with tunnels. We crawled into one hole with Georgina leading with a torch.
It went in a long way with several chambers, each the size of a standard garden shed. A number of tunnels led off from the main one, but none appeared interesting enough to warrant crawling along them to investigate.
We started walking back towards the amorphous mass of the sun volcano when a whistle summoned us to the Tourist Police Hut for the official spiel. Apparently, the site was once a rubbish dump until researchers from Harvard University cleared it with a bulldozer, wreaking havoc on the buried ceramics and pottery.
All of the adobe bricks bore the characteristic mark or sign of the group or gang which had manufactured and laid them. We walked back to the road and got Coca Cola in a small farm where two proudly puffed-up male turkeys were trying to impress the bored looking females. The ugly males made a wide range of obscure noises intended to woo.
The Tourist Police were packing up for the day at 13:00 hrs. and they joined us in the battered Volkswagen collectivo van back to Trujillo. We shook hands with the friendly Tourist Police and Nick handed out sweets.
Back in Trujillo, munching coconut we walked to the main plaza and went into a shady café on the corner for the set menu. This was a tasty bargain for 35 Intis and consisted of soup, chicken and rice with a cup of tea. The town seemed quite dead, so we got the bus back to Huanchaco.
I went up to Nick and Georgie’s room in the Hostal Huanchaco, which seemed to be a nice place to stay, and I left my camera and valuables there as our next project was surfing. We hired a surfboard each for 100 Intis an hour and headed down to the beach looking very professional!
The next 45 minutes was an experience and downright bloody dangerous! Swimming out against the oncoming barrage of huge breakers was practically impossible. Twice the board, held like a shield in front of me, was ripped from my slippery grasp and bashed against my nose. Numerous times it was torn away from me to bounce harmlessly in the spume on the rubber leg cord/leash.
A minefield of sharp rocks on the seabed added to the hazards that we faced. We both failed to get a decent body surf, let along stand up. In all it was a frightening battle with the ocean which left me with a battered nose and a bleeding toe. I was quite glad to hand the surfboard back into the shop.
Nick was still raring to go, and he went on to play football in a small, friendly 6-a-side tournament. Georgina and I looked on with boredom, thankful when it got too dark and cold to play on. I went back to collect my valuables and beat Nick in two games of Pool in the basement room of the Huanchaco Hostel while a Simon and Garfunkel music tape blared from the bar.
At 19:30 hrs. I nipped back to my room for some first aid and a quick shower before rejoining Nick and Georgina for supper. We went to Violetta’s, a private house which served cheap meals. We had fish and salad and relaxed in the armchairs drinking tea while a local musician played 12-string guitar and a Gringa (female traveller) failed dismally to accompany him on the pan pipes.
Finally, we went to investigate the Bracamonte Hotel. We found it to be a modern chalet complex with a swimming pool and a lively bar and restaurante. We sat outside and drank Pisco Sours while a German motorcyclist moaned about South America and the hostel pets, a cat and a monkey, who played together on Georgie’s lap.
A pisco sour is an alcoholic cocktail of Peruvian origin that is typical of the cuisines from Peru and Chile. The drink's name comes from pisco, which is its base liquor, and the cocktail term sour, in reference to sour citrus juice and sweetener components.
The Peruvian pisco sour uses Peruvian pisco as the base liquor and adds freshly squeezed lime juice, simple syrup, ice, egg white, and Angostura bitters. The Chilean version is similar, but uses Chilean pisco and Pica lime, and excludes the bitters and egg white. Other variants of the cocktail include those created with fruits like pineapple or plants such as coca leaves.
Although the preparation of pisco-based mixed beverages possibly dates back to the 1700s, historians and drink experts agree that the cocktail as it is known today was invented in the early 1920s in Lima, the capital of Peru, by the American bartender Victor Vaughen Morris.
We walked back to our respective hotels at 23:00 hrs., exhausted after a very active and varied day.
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