Huanchaco, Peru

​14th August – 16th August 2017

Another early start was in order, as another long drive day was ahead of us. The alarm went off at 5.25 and we had to get up, pack our bags and put away our tents ready for back locker at 6.15. As it was so dark when we were packing, it was difficult to get everything away properly, especially my sleeping bag; so I gave up with that and threw it on the truck half in and half out of the bag. We loaded the truck and had breakfast: granola and yogurt again, before setting off at 7 for the 638km drive.

After a few of hours and a lot of bumpy roads, we stopped for a break. I had tried to sleep a little on the drive but the roads were that bumpy, that when I was lay on the two seats, I kept bouncing off the chairs going over the roads, so it wasn’t very comfortable; it was actually quite hard work to keep myself grounded. After a short break, David and Rianne swapped and we carried on.

About an hour and a half further down the road, we stopped again. We had to buy lunch earlier than planned because we were heading into a patch of land with no stops for a long time!

Before eating lunch, I fell asleep again when we got back on the truck (the roads were much smoother now) and I ended up sleeping for about 2 hours. When I woke up, we literally were driving through the middle of nowhere – there were just fields all around us – lots of rice fields. I ate my lunch on the truck before we had another stop a few hours down the road for a supermarket trip. It was our last supermarket shop on this leg of the trip (which ends on Sunday when some people leave and new people join), and my group had to buy breakfast again. We were around the shop in a good time and back on the bus, with all our shopping away, first.

With still over 200km to go, I had a snooze, again – it’s all I seem to do on travel days as it passes the most time, but it does hurt my legs to be sat still for so long. Driving through Peru wasn’t as attractive as Ecuador or Colombia; it’s a lot more dirty, with litter everywhere and it’s also a lot more run down.

We arrived at the campsite in the dark and had to put up our tents – it was interesting but wasn’t as hard as I expected (and at least this time we were on the grass instead of sand, so it was less messy). Ruth committed her second murder after our tent was up, by asking Joe to take her photo by the tent.

Once we had set up our tents, we walked through the hotel onto the main street where the beach was, to find somewhere for tea – one group were meant to be cooking but it was so late and we were all tired, so we decided to leave that. We found a little restaurant right next to the hotel, which was perfect, only when we got there I wasn’t really hungry so I just had a milkshake. After that, it was time for bed after a long day of travelling.

I got a bit of a lie in the next day, even though it was my groups turn to do breakfast. Breakfast wasn’t until 7.45 but Joe was up banging around at 6.30 – the kitchen was right next to our tents too. He hadn’t given us a time to be there, so I was up and helping at about 7. We were making scrambled eggs with onions and tomatoes but because Joe had been up so long, most of the preparation was already done. They were good eggs, but I think I ate too much.

After breakfast, at about 8.30, we set off with Edith (our tour guide for the day) towards the first set of ruins we were visiting. It was about a 30 minute drive (which was nothing in comparison) so we arrived there just after 9.

Edith took us around one of the Chan Chan ruins – one out of nine – explaining the structure and decoration inside. She explained about the walls being a trapezium shape (so wide at the bottom and narrower at the top) so that it doesn’t fall down. The walls used to be 36 feet high and they surround the ruin that we looked at, so it was 1.5km long. There is only one entrance and the wall is made from mud and mud bricks.

By looking at the decoration, it suggests that fisherman lived within these ruins, as the walls were decorated with fish and pelicans. The way the fish were positioned, suggested that they were on waves, as they were up and down in zig zagged shapes. There was a lot of diamond detail on the walls which again suggest fisherman lived there, as these could represent the fishing nets.

We walked around the ruins – through the parts that we were allowed to see – but for some reason I was really tired so found it quite difficult to concentrate. The tour lasted just over an hour, before we got back on the truck and drove to the next place. Again on the drive, we could see how dirty Peru is and how much rubbish is just dumped and scattered along the side of the road.

After about 45 more minutes, we arrived at the second ruins site of the day – The Ancient City of Moche. Edith took us inside and explained that these ruins have only been discovered in recent years (late 1990s), after people started digging and started to find the walls. There are only parts of the temple that we can see because if people carried on digging, the whole thing would probably collapse. The bright colours were created using different minerals and all the artwork in there was the original work, not restored (like in the previous place). We saw different parts of the temple (which was the temple that represented the moon – much more sacred than the sun because the moon can be around day and night, unlike the sun) and at one point could see the sun temple in the distance; however the sun temple isn’t open to the public. We also looked at the different mud bricks that were made and the symbols that were drawn on by the person who made the bricks.

After the second tour, we had a truck lunch on the car park because David was doing some maintenance work on the truck and we were all quite hungry. It was Stephanie’s group who were in charge but some of us chipped in to help anyway. We had a choice of fillings for sandwiches and some salad to go with it. As soon as we had finished lunch, we had a 40 minute drive back to the campsite (which I snoozed on, of course).

We got back to the campsite at around 3 and had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves. As I was so tired, I spent the afternoon in a hammock and chilled out. Before dinner, I had a shower and made sure my bag was ready for yet another travel day.

Dinner was cooked by Stephanie’s team but David was in charge. He made a curry which tasted so good! We had our dinner and during washing up Ruth got killed. She has had a running joke with David that he should invent something to put around your legs and attach plates to flap to dry the dishes more quickly. Tonight he gave her some elastic and a cup to trial it. When she was done, she was so happy that Celine high fived her and killed her; they were in it together! She was not happy with this!

After dinner, we had time to chill out and relax some more before bed and another long drive day towards Huarez.

To travel is to live, Katie x