"¿Chimbote, eh?" "...Si"

 

Our friendly neighbor we met on our way out of the hostel this morning.

 

While checking in at the bus station for our ride to Chimbote, the man taking our bags asked us in a pretty skeptical tone, "Chimbote, eh?".  Kit and I discussed this and decided he was probably thinking, ´Why the hell would you want to go there?´  Little did he know we weren´t so sure why we going either.  However, we decided, as our bus was boarding in about half an hour, we didn´t really have a choice.

We boarded around 8:00 and were quickly served breakfast; a piece of lemon flavored corn bread and a cheese sandwich was the vegetarian option.  After leaving Lima, all we saw was desert, coast and impoverished towns over and over again.  You can probably imagine how boring this became after 8 hours, but it did provide for some good reflection time.  It also made me appreciate me breakfast quite a bit more as well. 

About half an hour before we arrived in Chimbote, we decided to take the hint from the worker at the bus station and change our final destination.  We had already been on the bus for 8 hours so we figured two hours more to Trujillo was worth the ride. When we got to Chimbote we got off the bus to pay the rest of our way North to Trujillo and were immediately hit with the decaying fish smell that we were extremely happy to be avoiding.  We were also bombarded with young Peruvian children begging us for food and money.  This was the first we had seen of this and was extremely difficult to ignore.  After getting our ticket changed, we got back on the bus for two more hours.

We arrived in Trujillo and took a taxi to a nearby surf-town called Huanchaco.  We decided to take the cheap route and stay in a dormitory style room at this pretty neat Hostel on the ocean where we have two roomates, one English guy and one French girl.  After moving our bags in, we had some dinner (spaghetti and pizza... super Gringo) and then called it a night.  Somehow,10 hours of doing nothing on a bus proved to be exhausting.

After a restful night, we decided to go and check out some nearby ruins.  We visited La Huaca de La Luna and La Huaca del Sol which are both ancient temples of the Moche people.  To give you a brief summary, the Moche people would hold ceremonial battles and the losing warriors were brought to these sites to be prepared to be sacrificed to their highest deity.  After having a tour of the temples, we checked out the La Huaca de La Luna museum.  It was pretty incredible to see so much original pottery and other artifacts from so long ago.  On our visit we were accompanied by a slough of Peruvian children that were on school field trips.  It was apparent that they found us much more interesting than the Moche artifacts as they continually stared at us and yelled out the only English phrases they knew (Hello!  Good afternoon.)


Standing on Huaca de La Luna, Huaca del Sol in the background

Decorations on wall that surrounded temple

More artwork on the wall.

The plan from here is to stay 2 more nights in Huanchaco and then continue the northward journey with the next stop in Piura.  Back for another 8ish hour long desert-filled ride.  Woo Hoo!  Until then, surfing and a live reggae concert are in order.

¡Hasta pronto!