The World's Largest Mud City

There is not much to do in Trujillo besides enjoy the great weather (the days' highs fit in that specific temperature range where you would feel comfortable wearing anything, and I'm pretty sure the breeze here is the world's best).  This area receives a small fraction of the number of tourists that southern Peru gets, but those that do come here typically do so for the archaeological sites that are just beyond the city limits.

The largest and most popular of these sites are the ruins of Chan Chan.  This massive city was built with adobe bricks by the Chimor people between roughly 850 AD and 1470 AD, when it was conquered by the Incas.  At 28 square km at its peak (roughly half the size of Manhattan), it was the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas and the largest adobe city in the world.   I've seen population estimates ranging from 30,000 to 100,000 (of course the local guides and Peruvian literature put the figure at the high end of the range).

As one of Peru's eleven UNESCO World Heritage sites, Magge and I decided before we got to the country that we would definitely pay it a visit.  On Saturday, we signed up for a tour that included a trip to the Huaco Arco Iris (a temple outside the current Chan Chan complex), the Chan Chan museum, the only partially restored area of Chan Chan, Huanchaco (the beach town where we went surfing last weekend) and a guide whose English was nearly as difficult to understand as his Spanish.  Despite the communication issues, the price of $5 per person was worth just getting shuttled between the sites.

The Huaco Arco Iris (Rainbow Temple) was right in the middle of a suburb north of Trujillo, and consisted of an outside wall that has been mostly reconstructed and an interior wall that is largely original and has been carefully restored.  The friezes adorning the walls are the main points of interest.  They depict a rainbow over a couple of serpents (the two-headed serpent representing the female, make your own joke); I had a hard time understanding the guide, but I think it's supposed to represent fertility or the circle of life or something of the sorts.

A frieze at the Rainbow Temple.  There are 28 (representing the lunar month) of these around the inner wall.

After a quick jaunt through the museum, which gave a background of the pre-Incan cultures that lived in the area, we drove into the city of Chan Chan.  As one would probably guess, a city made of mud is not well equipped to make it through over 500 years of the elements particularly well.  Rains, especially those brought on by various El Niño systems, have wreaked havoc with the structures, and walls that once stood ten meters tall have largely been reduced to small piles of bricks and dirt.  However, there are still fragments that remain intact, and it stretches for miles.  Given the condition of the city, I can understand how some people would not be all that impressed, but the size of the site impressed me.  One has to use their imagination to better appreciate the site, as the idea of these 10m high, 4m thick walls enclosing a 28 square km city full of temples, burial mounds and markets definitely outclasses the current reality.

We visited the Tschudi complex, the only section of the city that has been restored (partially) and is safe to explore.  The complex is one of nine royal compounds that comprise Chan Chan, and includes a number of ceremonial rooms, courtyards, a mausoleum and a freshwater well.  The restorations (including the freshwater well and its reed plantation) help fill the mental image of what Chan Chan must have been like 600 years ago, but are still far from complete.  As with the Huaco Arco Iris, the friezes have been a focal point of the restorative work.  The complex is large and takes some time to walk through, which just hammered home the size of the entire city, since it is just one of nine compounds.  Even though Chan Chan is not necessarily as visually impressive as some of the ruins we will see later in the trip, we are both glad we saw it.

The purpose of these rooms, called audencias, still isn't clear

Another frieze

Freshwater well (keep in mind this place is in the middle of the desert)

The trip to Huanchaco was an afterthought, since Magge and I were just there, but we did pick up one interesting piece of knowledge. The beaches are lined with boats called caballitos that are made of reeds, and last week I thought they were just gimmicks to get tourists to pay up five nuevos soles for a quick and wet trip into the ocean. However, they are actually the same type of boats that have been used by fisherman for over a thousand years and are still being used. They are more flotation devices than boats, since the fishermen sit on them, instead of in them, with their legs hanging in the water.

 Caballitos in Huanchaco

If you didn't find this post very interesting, well too bad.  Peru is chalk full of ruins and there will be more to come on Hostel Honeymoon.