Trujillo to Lima

Ok, so Friday we spent in Huanchaco, a small fishing town just outside Trujillo. The place we stayed was really nice, there was an incredible restaurant that was great quality for money and a pool, and free internet and the beach was just across the road. The only bad thing about the place was that now im completely covered in bed bug bite. I dont know why , but for some reason im the only one to get hit by the little guys... the girls avoided them fine.
Friday morning we went on a tour of Chan Chan, the ruins of a Muchi city. It was discovered in 1960 and since then they have been trying to clear away all the sand that buiried it. Its a big city and they havnt even restored one of the 9 palaces yet. So theres quite a lot of work to be done.
The walls of all the buildings are made from adobe bricks, and so recent el niños have done a lot of damage and a lot of city now looks like plain, old, everyday dirt mounds.
Because they were a coastal culture, all the Muchi reliefs were of things like fish and fishing nets and pelicans and catfish. Really amazing, ill put some pictures up soon.
My favourite thing about the entire thing was the wells. Because all the land here is desert, the people had to use the water from the rivers for irrigation by making man made streams and things. But inside the city they had huge rectangle wells, maybe 8metres deep , and around the outside theres a spiraling ramp for the people to get to the water. They used it for drinking water and for the crops and animals, but these days its contaminated. We walked down one of the long sandfilled corridors with high adobe walls then a huge open area full of water...like an oasis. Incredible. The head archeologist named them Sunken Gardens when they discovered Chan Chan.
The Inca conquered the city in the late 1400´s and apparently the people didnt put up much of a fight. Noone did to the Incas from what i can tell. The occupied Chan Chan for 50years, until the spanish conquest.
The Muchi people had tombs with steps , which is unusual because it means that people can go down into the tomb. This meant that during the spanish conquest the incas exploited all the Muchi gold first for the Inca ransom.
What else...i think thats all i can remember . Sorry its all facts...check out nickys blog for descriptions of the place itself.

Yesterday, saturday, we had a long 9hour bustrip from huanchaco to Lima. We were told 7-8 hours so we got quite impatient by the end. But i watched two movies, Brother Bear and Bucket list, both were really good.

We had a pretty short city tour thismorning, just followed the guide around the plazas. But thenm we went to an amazing cathedral with catacombs! o00ooo , the best type of comb. There were wholes in walls that look into rooms that were just full of bones. . the floors were covered, and the bones were dry and i wondered what noise they would make if you dropped something into them. It was so tempting. there was a brick well shaped area that was where the archeologists layed out a lot of the bones, so they were arranged in a big circle, with femurs and humerous and tibias and all sorts of bones ,and rings of skulls. It was pretty cool. There were 25,000 Lima civilians buried in this particular catacombs and theres heaps more around the city for the elite. In the cathedral there was one private tomb of a benefactor that had the coffin, on top was a skull and crossbones (of whom i dont know) and then around the coffin was the family... who were all uncovered. So strange, but very interesting.We went to Miraflores this afternoon, the fancy part of town. The lunch place chosen by the group was fancy so Nicky claire and i broke off and i had an amazing big veggy sandwhich and fruit salad with yogurt. mmm.
Then we headed to the mall, its kinda on a cliff face, the roof is a courtyard plaza type thing , with binoculars and fountains, and then you decend the stairs and bam! a fancy shopping complex!
We wandered around there for a while, i had a deliscous cookie. The others had icecream.
Twas really hot because the whole thing is open, and the weather here hot today, the sea breeze made quite a difference though.
Just got supermarket dinner yuss