Santa Rosa

After breakfast we checked out of our rooms before tonight’s night bus.

We then went on a full day tour of Trujillo starting with some traditional (and very interesting!) ceramic statues of the traditional ‘Moche’ people. The Moche people lived from around 50AD to around 850AD.

We then proceeded to the pyramid of the moon where we saw the traditional mud brick construction of the pyramids and city. We learnt how the pyramid was inverted as they essentially filled in the bottom floor with mud bricks and constructed a larger floor on top when they needed more space. The mud bricks were given by different families as part of their taxes and, as such, you can see different markings on the bricks representing different families. Archaeological preservation and discovery of the rest of the city has ceased since the pandemic due to lack of funding.

We went into the historic town of Moche for lunch and tried the traditional meals of baby goat and duck with beans and rice - goat was delicious but duck wasn’t the greatest!

After this, we went to a horse dancing show and had a short ride the horses. The horses walk/gallop in a very different way, it’s the way they are born (not trained) and as such they are very expensive horses.

We then made our way to the Chan Chan ruins which is a 14km2 historic city situated just outside the city of Trujillo. It once had 10 palaces and we were able to explore one of these to see the different rooms/uses of the spaces within the palace. The Moche people moved here and developed this new town near the sea which had about 14,000 inhabitants.

We then went back to the hotel to freshen up/chill out before boarding the night bus to Lima. This night bus is the best we have been on - lots of leg space!!Read more