Traveling South America Recorriendo Sudamerica: Travels to the north: Part 1

As many of you know, Sara has left Ayacucho on last weekend. She is traveling around Peru until her flight home on April 11! I'm sure friends and family are thrilled. I will be working at FINCA until April 29 and then will also do some traveling before finally heading home on June 8! My last few months at FINCA have been (and will continue to be) dedicated to teaching AFLATOUN and finishing a video project I have been doing for FINCA.

Going backwards a bit, I suppose one month after the fact is as good of a time as any to finally tell you all about our trip up north and to Ecuador! Unfortunately, Sara got sick right before traveling and so I started the trip without her. Our friend Else and I headed to Lima on Feb. 16. As I mentioned in the last post,the weather was really crazy during that time and we weren't able to get out of Ayacucho by bus! We ended up purchasing a more expensive than desired flight to Lima for 5:30am. Due to rain/fog/clounds, we didn't even take off until 3pm. Oy. However, we finally got to Lima that afternoon and I had a very very happy reunion with my wonderful Chilean friends, Cotty and Cami!!!! We spent a day and night in Lima doing some of the typical tourist stuff (many of which I hadn't done yet) - visiting the catacombs of the San Francisco Church, Magic Water Park (a park of unique water fountains that are lit up at night) and wandering around downtown. Then, on Friday night we took our first of many overnight buses, to the city of Trujillo. Trujillo is nice, not super special, but our real destination was the AWESOME: the beach town of Haunchaco. Huancacho is about a 20 minute cab ride from Trujillo and is a beautiful beach/surf town where tourists from all over the world come to learn to surf. While the chilenas and I were content sunning on the beach, Else got adventurous and went out for what was her second surf lesson ever there. She did great!! Only two hours after arriving to Haunchaco we decided to extend our time there to three days and we all had wonderfully relaxing time sunning on the beach, walking around the cute town, and eating ceviche (duh). We also spent one day visiting ruins outside of town. The ruins are of a pre-incan civilazation called the Moche people that lived in that region from about year 100 - 1000. We saw the Hauca del Sol (Pyrimad of the Sun) that is full of colorful paintings carved into stone.

Huanchaco ended up being the first of three beaches we visited in Peru. Our next destination was the Chiclayo, a 20 minute ride from the beach called Pimentel. Sara met us in Chiclayo along with our friend Carlos from Ayacucho. Carlos grew up in Chiclayo and was able to show us the best restaurants and markets in the city. We also got in a few more good beach days in Pimentel though the scene there was not nearly as exciting as that of Hauncacho or our final beach destination, Máncora. Chiclayo, only three hours north of Trujillo, is also ancient Moche territory so we took the opportunity to go a local museum to learn more. The Moche culture is known for extravagant burials and excellent metalworking. Tombs of ancient royalty have been discovered in the past 20 years or so, filled with gold, copper, sliver and turquoise pieces. The archeological museum is home to much of this beautiful jewelry and other artifacts.

For more information on Moche, I found a pretty good BBC article. You can read more at wikipedia....