Máncora and Chiclayo

We are now in Chiclayo and have been here since Tuesday afternoon. (We never got to post more photos in Máncora because we ran out of juice on the laptop and did not find an adaptor until Chiclayo, so I think we will just do some extra photo posts to make up when we get back to Tacna).

We spent Sunday and Monday enjoying the beach in Máncora and mostly relaxing.  It was much less humid than Tumbes, which we were thankful for, and while it was hot in the morning it clouded over in the late afternoon which made it easier for us to hang out on the beach without being too worried about the sun.  And we got to enjoy these views:

 

  

From Máncora, we took a 6-hour bus ride down the coast to Chiclayo.  Chiclayo is a city of about 600,000 people and has some pretty old colonial buildings, and is also a jumping off point for 

touring some very interesting pre-Incan ruins.  It is also home to some of the scariest driving I have seen, and to cross the street we basically take our life in our hands and try to dodge taxis and the five or six lanes of cars that are created on a four-lane street.  Eventually we found some stoplights, which help but we are still very aware of where the other cars are. Here is the main cathedral right off the Parque Principal in the center of Chiclayo:

We spent the last two days exploring some ruins from the Moche culture (~200-800 AD or so) and the Sicán or Lambeyueque culture (800-1300 AD or so).  Relatively recently, archaeologists realized that mountains in the areas around Chiclayo, that just look like this:

 

are actually old pyramids made of adobe from these early groups, but they have been kind of torn apart by the rain.  But they think that once upon a time they looked like this instead:

 

These cultures had elaborate funeral rites for the social elites, and there are separate funeral chambers for the important people.  The picture of the mountain above is actually at Huaca Rajada, a site which was only discovered in 1987 and has been slowly excavated since.  At the site, they have reconstructions of the graves, like this (as always, you can click on the photo for a bigger version):

 

And then they have the actual original pieces, along with documentation of the restoration process, at an amazing museum called Museo Tumbas Reales (Museum of the Royal Tombs) where they sadly do not allow photos.  The burial site above is considered to be a very important person, the "Lord of Sipán" and there are extensive displays at the museum of all his funeral garments as well as the other people he was buried with and his ceremony costumes, many of which are made from gold, silver and copper, and are amazingly exquisite.  It was a really cool museum and an interesting day.  

Tomorrow we are headed to Cajamarca, where we are told it will be significantly cooler since it is at almost 10,000 feet. Here we are enjoying our visit to one of the sites today: