As we moved north from Lima we traveled back
in time with the cultures that pre-dated the Inca. A 9-hour bus ride took us to Trujillo, an oasis in the
coastal desert, and to the Moche culture from 200 AD. The Moche people constructed their temples and homes from
adobe-like mud brick, not the most stable of building materials when the rains
come. The only reason the sites
still exist is that they were buried under tons of sand until 1990 when
excavations began. Of the Huacas
del Sol y de la Luna (temples of the sun and the moon) only the temple of the
moon has been uncovered. The Moche
had no written language much of what we learned is speculation but there appear
to be five separate layers to the temple, with each newer level larger outside
and smaller inside than the lower layer.
You can still see the painted colors in several places.
Nearby Chan
Chan, another UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the largest pre-Columbian site I
the Americas. Chan Chan was built
around 1300 and amazingly it wasn’t ‘discovered’ until 1983. Shortly after it was uncovered the El
Nino rains destroyed much of the mud brick but its shear size is amazing.
Much has
changed around Trujillo in the last 2000 years but in the seaside town of Huanchaco
fisherman still set out to sea to fish from the same curved reed boats they depicted
on 2000 year old pottery. The
Spanish called them cabillitos
(little horses) because the fishermen rode them like ponies.
Back at the
hotel I read an article in the newspaper about an Amazon river boat that sank
with 140 people near the Columbian border. They are blaming the incident on too much cargo. Five people died. Just another reason not to have taken
the boat from Pucallpa.
