Like most of South America, Peru is deeply religious and mostly catholic and we happened to be there during Easter. Let me tell you, it was insane. We arrived in Lima on April 16th and promptly ditched the city for a lovely Mountain town called Huaraz the next day. In Peru, and a lot of other Latin countries Easter is a week long celebration called Semana de Santa. Basically, every day there is music and dancing, good food and on Easter Sunday there is a crazy long procession of people carrying very intricate floats with the Virgin Mary and other religious figures.
Huaraz is a charming little mountain town in between 2 very large mountain ranges: Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Negra. Our original intent was to go on a hike, but we checked the weather before we left and it said 99% chance of rain THE WHOLE TIME. Unfortunately, when we got there we realized that somebody controlling the weather app definitely owed us an explanation.
We made it out to some ruins just outside of the city called Willkawain where we met a cute little llama and took some pictures of it (if you want to take a picture with anyone or anything expect to pay somebody for it). We paid about 50 soles round trip for a cab and he waited about 1 hour. Honestly, the ruins aren't the most impressive in Peru, but it was a fun little side trip. If you are claustrophobic at all I wouldn't recommend it as there are a lot of small doors to climb through into small rooms and it's quite dark and confined.
(look at it's cute little fluffy bum!!!)
After Huaraz we ventured to the very, very charming city of Trujillo. Unfortunately our camera was stolen so I only have iPhone picks and didn't manage to get any while we were there. BUT, picture this: cobble stone streets and colorful Spanish colonial buildings EVERYWHERE. This city has, by far, the cleanest Plaza de Armas I have ever seen. Trujillo is definitely worth a visit.
We very unexpectedly spent most of our time in a very small beach town called Huanchaco at a new hostel called La Gringa d'Sudamerica. La Gringa is on the south end of town and pretty much everything in this town is within walking distance. The owner, Julie, is there pretty much all the time; she speaks fluent Spanish and arranges tours to archaeological sites nearby. We went with her to El Brujo.
View from our room at La Gringa
Traditional fishing boats line the beaches in Huanchaco
Common are at La Gringa
El Brujo was amazing, an quite possibly the best part of the trip. We were pretty lucky and had the entire site basically to ourselves. On the other side of what looks like an innocent little hill is a giant pyramid that is El Brujo. Not too far away is another pyramid that hasn't been excavated by archaeologists and was dug into by the Spanish in order to steal the gold within it, this pyramid is not open for tourism.
There is quite a nice little museum on site housing a mummy they found called Senora de Cao. Senora de Cao, they speculate, was a very powerful shaman and when she died she was buried with a ridiculous amount of gold jewelry and pottery. The story behind the site is kind of disturbing (think along the lines of human sacrifice, decapitation and castration) but the ruins were in very good condition and the ocean view from the top was amazing. If you are in the area, I highly recommend a trip to El Brujo.
Burial site of Senora de Cao
Art depicting sacrifice rituals at El Brujo
Brick wall of El Brujo. Each brick has a carved out symbol that is family specific.
I don't really know that we did much this time in Peru, but we saw some amazing things, ate some amazing things and when we came home we gave up our seats for a $500 travel voucher so we're pretty happy about that!
Safe travels, Renee
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