Travel Recaps: Huaca de la Luna

When we went on our tours around Trujillo, which we were able to set up through our hotel, the highlight of the morning was Huaca de la Luna, so it gets its own post.

There are two large mountains about 15 minutes away from downtown Trujillo, named Huaca de la Sol y Huaca de la Luna.  They were found fairly recently, and are still in the process of being excavated and restored. The project has received significant funding from Spain and from a Peruvian beverage company, Backus, and as a result this was one of the best organized, and well staffed places we got to visit.  They had lots of explanatory signs (a rarity in these parts) and a nice education area in addition to the Huaca.  Huaca is a word that means something like a place where you can find treasure, and also to the treasure itself, but can also mean tomb or grave.  The Sol y Luna (sun and moon) aren't named because of a significance of these things in the culture, but because the people who discovered these ruins had recently been to Mexico and visited Teotihuacan, where there are Templos del Sol y de la Luna, so they decided these would be the same.

Anyway, here is the Huaca de la Luna as we approached it on our tour.  The covered parts are due to the excavation and restoration that is in progress.

From here, it doesn't look that impressive.  But, once you climb up into the main part of the complex, it is much more interesting.  The archaeologists believe that this Huaca was the religious center of the Moche people who lived in this area, between 100 and 900 AD.  When we reached the area under the roofs, we found this:

These murals were found with these colors and all intact.  They are huge--at least 12 feet tall, and really detailed:

We walked through this part of the complex, and then got to the roof of the complex, where we had a good view:

In the foreground you can see the remains of the settlements of the Moche people here, and in the background the Huaca del Sol.  The archaeologists think that the Huaca del Sol was the political center of the Moche, and the Luna was the religious center, and some important people lived close to these centers and others lived in the surrounding areas and were more likely to farm. 


From there we reached the main ceremonial plaza:

Here again we could see elaborate mural work, which is most concentrated here.  The theory is that this is where major religious ceremonies were held.  The artwork is incredible and enormous.

Here you can see a restorer squatting on the left of the picture to give you a sense of the scale of the plaza.

 Above is a close up of the soldiers depicted on the lowest level of the plaza.

This is the wall of a small enclosure in one corner of the main plaza area.

This wall is perpendicular to that in the first photo of the plaza, and is incredible to see because it is composed of at least six levels of murals, each of which is more than 10 feet tall. On the lowest level you can see the soldiers, like the photo above, and then a row of people.  Above that are reddish octopuses, then another row of people, then seahorses.  The complex is situated very close to the coast, so sea creatures were a part of their daily life.

It may be hard to get a sense of the scale in pictures, but this is a reconstruction drawing on one of the fabulous signs in the complex:

It was amazing to see the elaborate work of the Moche people and to think that most of it was at least 1500 years old, but that we could still walk in the same places and admire the artwork from so long ago.