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The mud brick capital of the world

Georgi:

Because we have an Inca Trail booking for the 25th of the month, and we ended up faffing around in Ecuador a little more than we should have, we've ended up with a bit of a tight schedule for Northern Peru. This means that we either have to race through things, or eliminate them altogether.

One option that came up for possible elimination was Trujillo. The reasons for visiting Trujillo are twofold. The first is that in the nearby desert, there are some apparently quite amazing mud brick pyramids. The second is that at the beaches, there are fishermen who go out to sea in reed boats, and then surf back to shore with their catch, as they've been doing for thousands of years.

Apparently some painting on a shard of pottery indicates that these are the descendents of the oldest known surfer dudes in history. For a dollar, you can get one them to row you out to sea, and surf you back.

The reason that I wanted to visit the place was because I liked the sound of the pyramids. I must confess that rather than being intellectual in nature, my interest was as a direct result of having read Tintin and the Picaros, and seen him running down the steps of some South American pyramid ruin. Ter, bless him, didn't see anything wrong with the fact that my travelling decisions are spurred by comic book characters, and was wholly supportive of this enterprise, with the caveat that we would have to give up sandboarding at Ica as a result.

As it turned out, I didn't have to make this decision, as we would pass through Trujillo on our way to Lima, anyway, and both the buses to and from Trujillo were night buses. This gave us a day to kill, and what better way to do it than to look at pyramids? I can say with a great deal of relief that I am delighted that the decision was taken away from me because Trujillo really is a hole, and if our time spent there was my fault, I would have felt guilty, rather than just irritated, all day.

As we alighted from the bus, we were met by the inevitable horde of taxi drivers, one of whom offered us a round trip to all the sites we had planned to visit. After some fierce bargaining, we got him down from 200 soles to 70 for the day. He saved face by pretending he'd never said 200 soles in the first place.

Off we went to the promising sounding Huaca del Sol y Luna (Temples of the Sun and Moon). If you squint your eyes up really tightly, and use your imagination, you can maybe work out that two of the sand dunes are slightly more triangular than they should be. The mud bricks used to build the temples are made of the desert sand, so they are exactly the same gray as their endless surroundings. Years of attrition by wind and sand have meant that the temples are amorphous gray lumps. Wholly unimpressive.

One temple is in the process of being excavated, and this is a bit more interesting. When the ancient Chimu decided they needed a bigger temple, they just built it on top of the old one, so by peeling away layers of mud bricks, it's possible to reveal earlier and earlier friezes on the older temple walls. I wondered how the resident archaeologists decided which later murals to leave intact, and which to sacrifice in the quest for earlier, although very similar paintings.

We went on to a museum, where there was a display of different shapes and sizes of mud bricks, and then on to a buried ancient mud brick city, enormous and still being excavated, which was interesting, if a bit hot and sandy.

At the sea, we saw the fishermen, but they didn't get to flaunt their surfing skills for us in the very mellow sea. We also didn't have access to a shower, so we didn't go for a ride in one of their boats, which look disconcertingly like a woman's thighs trussed together. But we did have a plate of the most overcooked prawns I have ever eaten.

To top off the day, we went to see the only English movie showing in town, called Just Friends, if translation serves (the titles are always in Spanish, even if the movies are English). It was so awful, it's not even worth criticising.

Back to the station for another night on a bus

Ter:

It's amazing the rubbish that one is subjected to. It seems as if bus companies around the world are members of a secret organisation dedicated to the proliferation of B-grade action films. Yes, from Luang Prabang to Lima it seems as if Dolph Lundgren is the Hero of choice.

Is this really what people on buses want to watch? Has market research been done? What's really frightening is how many of these films have been shot in South Africa. I've even auditioned for two of the ones we've sat through.

Maybe there is a business here, Art film buses, Bus Nouveau.

Trujillo is a real dump of a city. There are three or four pretty buildings in the whole town. In every brochure you see they have photographed these buildings, so it seems as if it's a really picturesque part of the world. Don't believe their lies. The ruins are pretty interesting though and worth look but the seaside town down the road is one of the ugliest seaside towns in the world, and I've been to Ramsgate. Glad we only spent a day here.

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