Trujillo

I arrived in Trujillo on Saturday, although I've actually been staying in Huanchaco, which is a bit like Trujillo-on-Sea - it's a town on the coast about 10km north-west of Trujillo. Huanchaco is famous for its surfing, although as its the low season at the moment, there aren't a massive number of surfers here. It's also known for it seafood, of which I've been eating a lot.

I've put a couple of photos of Huanchaco beach here and here - in the second one you can see the caballitos de totora stacked up along the shore. By the way, if it looks gloomy in the photos, that's because it was. I really had expected it to be hot and sunny here, but Trujillo seems to suffer from the same problem as Lima - it's sandwiched between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, which causes almost constant cloud cover. However, the sunset wasn't too bad yesterday.

Yesterday morning I went to Chan Chan, which is quite an impressive archaeological site dating from around 1300AD. It was apparently once the largest adobe city in the world. I've uploaded some photos of the stone carvings here and here, as well as a photo of an excavated tomb.

This afternoon the weather improved a bit, and I went into the centre of Trujillo to have a look around. It's quite a pleasant city, and full of colonial buildings - these ones painted in pastel colours and with wrought-iron grills over the windows are quite typical. There wasn't a huge amount to see, except for the cathedral in the massive Plaza de Armas, below.

I'm now back at my hostel in Huanchaco, and I'm waiting for my inconveniently timed 11:45pm bus to Tumbes, which is near the Ecuadorian border. I'll probably cross into Ecuador on Wednesday, and I'm aiming to arrive in Cuenca on Thursday, in time to watch the opening games of the World Cup. I'll be staying in Cuenca for the whole of next week, as I've booked another week of Spanish lessons.