Peru and Bolivia 2005, part 21 (Chiclayo, Lambayeque, Trujillo, Chan Chan)
The following day I headed for Chiclayo. The reason was that I wanted to visit a museum where the artefacts found in the tomb of the Lord of Sipan are exhibited. In order to do that I took a coach from Trujillo to Chiclayo, which went for three hours, then I took a taxi to get to the point from where group taxis left for Lambayeque, some 20 minutes away, where the museum is located. I did the same thing in the opposite direction later in the afternoon, which means that on that day I spent around 7 hours in different means of transportation just to see a museum. I had never done that before, but I think it was absolutely worthwhile. The museum was great and by that time I was already well used to long coach rides anyway.
Three years before I went there, the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipan was opened in the town of Lambayeque in north Peru. The whole building appears somehow out of sync with the setting, as if it has fallen there from somewhere, but I actually didn’t mind this. It was important that the entire findings from the tomb of the Lord of Sipan (Señor de Sipán) were exhibited at the museum. The tomb was discovered in 1987 and that was the first and for the time being the only completely intact tomb discovered in South America. That makes it not only unique, but also exceptionally important, for it provides scientists with the best possible insight into the customs of the ancient past. It is clear how significant this find is when it’s said that it can be compared to the discovery of Mycenae or the tomb of Tutankhamun.
That “Lord of Sipan” was some high official from the Moche tribe which used to have its civilization in northern Peru approximately from 100 to 800 AD. He has been named thus after the archaeological site in which he was found and his tomb was impressive indeed. After the discovery, the excavation took some 10 months and during that time different things and different people (!), that is, their remains, were found. I was in a way prepared for what I was to see at the Lambayeque museum, for it is possible to see at the Museum of the Nation in Lima a replica of the tomb, such as it originally was.
It was prohibited to take any photos at the museum and, in fact, all the things, especially handbags, backpacks, etc., had to be left in lockers outside the building. The security of the museum was really at a very high level.
Although the structure of the museum, no matter how impressive and contemporary it is, appears from outside somehow in disharmony with the setting, it is in fact an excellent museum and the exhibits are truly great. The displays are very complex and there are a lot of photos that show elements the tomb consisted of and how it was all decorated, as well as different layers and levels that existed within it. In addition to this tomb, there are also others, less impressive, that have been discovered at the site and everything that has been unearthed in the valley of Lambayeque is to be found at the museum. Needless to say, the central elements of the exhibit are gold objects. There were some pieces which I truly liked and it is possible to see in them great skill in processing gold, but there were also some other pieces that appeared somehow rudimentary. As the tomb of Tutankhamun is often mentioned as a kind of reference when talking about that of Señor de Sipán, I couldn’t help thinking how the ancient Egyptians reign supreme in so many aspects, including processing of gold. And they did it a couple of thousand years before the Moche culture! But, as I’ve explained in the text on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List (http://www.svudapodji.com/en/unescos-world-heritage-list/), what I thought was a mistake in fact. Everything must be observed in the light of the local context. Thus I eventually did look at it all in this way, so I was extremely content that I had changed up my original travel plans and that I came to see the museum. It was absolutely worth the 7-hour drive in one day.
After I had finished with the visit to the museum, I first went back to Chiclayo and there I had a little free time which I used for walking around the centre of this small town, having ceviche and papa rellena, and later even coffee. Then I had to catch the coach for my return trip to Trujillo where I arrived in the evening hours.
Tomorrow I first walked a little around Trujillo. It is in fact a very nice looking town and its main square is particularly pretty. At some point, I finally dared to buy a freshly squeezed juice sold in the street. As I was travelling alone, I worried lest I caught some bug, so I ate and drank only the things I thought were somehow “verified.” However, encouraged by the experience with papa rellena eaten in the middle of the street, which I had successfully survived, I was now ready for fruit juices. They are usually sold off some cart that holds a platform with a press for squeezing juices collected into a jug. The vendors also have glasses into which they pour the juice and that’s it. However, I had on me an empty plastic water bottle and then I asked the vendor to pour the juice directly from the pitcher into the bottle. Of course, he did it without any problems and on that first day I made a cocktail – one dosage of orange juice and one dosage of pineapple juice. It turned out it was a total of 0.6 litres (that was the volume of the bottle). I can’t recall the exact price, but it was truly inexpensive. Ooooooooh....... what a mistake I had been making by not doing this before! Forget the price, the taste was divine!
As I walked around, I came across a two-way street in which vehicles went in the opposite direction, i.e., they drove on the left-hand side. Although I was but a mere pedestrian, I was completely puzzled, but it was no mistake on the part of the drivers, for the pavement was quite clearly marked with an arrow painted on the left side of the street in the direction of movement. What is interesting is that this is the only street in Peru where I’ve seen vehicles driving like this. The Spanish used to build their towns with a very simple distribution of streets around the main or the central square: everything at right angle. These streets are naturally quite narrow for today’s needs and very often they are one-way in order for the cars to pass through them without problems. Even when they are broad, they are still very often one-way. This street, however, was rather broad in those terms, there were a couple of lanes, it was two-way, but still to this very day I don’t know what was happening and why people drove on the “wrong” side, since traffic in Peru runs along the right-hand side of the streets.
I also took an opportunity to walk over to the terminal to see when I had the coach to Lima that night. It was a kind of fact-finding mission in order to see how realistically far on foot the terminal was from my hotel and whether I could walk to it with the small bag I brought from Lima. It was fine. Then I had a longer walk to the place where I caught a mini-van that took me to an intersection from where a road led to the ruins of Chan Chan, which meant that I continued with my sightseeing.
So, I got off the mini-van a dozen kilometres north-west from Trujillo in the middle of some wasteland and there I had to cover a short distance on foot from the main road that led to the coastal town of Huanchaco to the Chan Chan archaeological site. Again, there was not a person in sight, but I knew I was in the right place. As I was walking, some nice sense of satisfaction came over me, I felt completely fulfilled and I even sang a little along the way.