North Peru: Trujillo & Rio Santa Valley

Continuation from < Page 1 < !

Monday, 25 August 2008, Lima, Peru
We arrived in Lima yesterday after spending 5 days around Trujillo and a further 4 days driving along the Rio Santa valley from the coast to its headwaters in Lake Conococha, then back to the Pan American and on to Lima.
There were several reasons to stay so long around Trujillo, the first being that the so-called 'RV Park' was such a pleasant place to be, and it had free WiFi. Unfortunately we had to find an alternative place to stay on Saturday night because they were using their garden for a big fiesta, but we returned on Sunday afternoon and stayed until Wednesday. It was great to be able to catch up on things, including chatting with friends and family and also burning photo CDs to free up some space on our hard disk. The town of Huanchaco is on the coast and has little of interest to us. The beach is not like those at home except that there are surfers in the water! The ocean looks ok, but the sun is never out here because sea mist almost covers the ocean, and the rest of the land is always cloud covered. There were a few western tourists about and lots of open restaurants with few customers during the day, but when we wanted to go out to dinner, there were hardly any restaurants open.
Trujillo was also not so interesting as a city. It has some nice buildings, many with Moorish style balconies, and it appears to be clean and well looked after, but once again we have been spoiled by the colonial cities of Mexico. We did find the 'Touring y Automóvil Club del Peru' (hint from Footprint) from which we bought 3 maps for S/.5 each, that cover the whole country and are in much better detail than anything we have seen so far. Maps are always a problem for travellers that drive themselves, and I think we have mentioned before that it is possible to have 3 maps for a country and all will be different! We also found a shopping mall with a large supermarket, but made the mistake of going there on a Sunday when it was absolutely crowded. We noticed that the shopping malls here are not like shopping centres we are used to from the USA and even at home, in that they are open air - not enclosed in an air conditioned structure. The first time we saw this was in Chiclayo. I guess it is sensible because it is really dry here - they have almost no rain along this part of coastal Peru.
The main attractions in the area are the archaeological sites of Huacas del Sol y de la Luna and Chan Chan. At the first it is only possible to visit the Pyramid of the Moon and then only with a guide. We were not overly impressed by our guide, who spoke too fast and was difficult to understand even though he was speaking English, but the pyramid was absolutely amazing. The structure is actually a number of temples built on top of each other. They would brick in the previous temple with adobe and then build the next one wider and higher. This means that the painted, moulded decorations of the earlier temples are almost intact where the archaeologists have uncovered them and they are incredible to see.
Chan Chan is a ruin of a huge city covering 28 sq km within its walls; this city was home to over 100,000 people - an incredible number for those days. Of this it is only possible to walk through the Palacio Tschudi, which has been restored. We were unimpressed, after seeing so much original work at the Huaca de la Luna, to be looking at restoration work at this site. There is little colour to be seen also - it is brown like the surrounding countryside. There were some interesting reliefs on the walls in the palace, but most of it was just really huge, and a long dusty walk.
We did spend some of our time there looking for dentists again. Since arriving in Peru, Juergen had noticed that his implant is loose. We visited a dentist in Chiclayo who took it out and then replaced it and tightened it. But unfortunately, when we arrived in Trujillo a few days after this treatment, it was slightly loose again. This time he called the dentist in Cuenca who did the original work and he advised him to find a dentist in Trujillo to tighten it again. After considerable problem finding anyone who could do anything - they all wanted us to come back when their specialist from Lima was there next week, or at the end of the month. In the end one of them tracked down another dentist who could help us right then. Dr Torres was great. He speaks very good English, and has a wall full of certificates of study undertaken in the USA. He was very gentle and made sure everything was right for Juergen before he stopped, and then didn't charge anything - 'I had some free time right now'. It makes you feel good when people are so nice and helpful. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to have completely solved the problem, so we will have to seek another dentist here in Lima, or when we reach Cuzco.
After spending some time with a French family that arrived the evening before, we left Huanchaco last Wednesday morning with the plan to head for the famous Cañón del Pato. We had researched it as thoroughly as possible and had advice from locals that it was a really bad road, but also read blogs of a number of other travellers who had done it, thoroughly enjoyed it and recommended the trip. From Trujillo we had to drive further down the coast almost to Chimbote. There was of course more of the same dull, brown, peruvian, coastal desert, with only the garbage providing a touch of colour here and there. In between there were some pockets of irrigated land where crops were grown - we never cease to be amazed that crops can grow in sand, by the ocean with constant sea mist and almost no sun. It seems a water supply can work magic. After Viru the road veers inland somewhat and the landscape does improve, with interesting looking mountains slowly becoming visible. The sea mist lessens and it is not so grey, and there were some really beautiful sand dunes. The road is dead straight, but that aspect never really bothers us as it is quite a rest for the driver, especially when it is in such good condition as the Peruvian Pan American.
When we turned off the highway at the small town of Santa, to begin following the Rio Santa towards the mountains, everything changed. First there were lush fields full of various crops, including large areas of marigolds (although we are not sure what they do with them), in the river valley and pretty soon beautiful barren mountains up either side. And the sun came out for the first time in days, so you can imagine what that did to our mood. The road is asphalt all the way to Chuquicara, around 70 km from the highway, and in very good condition. There you have to register at the police post, where they take down the details of the vehicle and driver in a ledger, but we are not sure if they ever look at them again!
The road turns to dirt almost immediately after the checkpoint, but as it was only around 4.00 we drove on rather than sleeping next to the police post as so many travellers before us had done. We chose a spot 8 km down the dirt which had been used by Bruni and Norbert, our German friends we had met up with in Costa Rica. It took us more than half an hour to reach the spot, but when we did we were very happy we had driven on. It is surrounded by stunning mountains and even though we had only risen to an altitude of around 600 m, it was wonderful to be back in the mountains. We were parked very close to the river and a little off the road, so the sound of the river helped to mute the sound of the overnight traffic, although there wasn't much anyway.

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