It was only a 5 hour bus ride from Trujillo
to Chiclayo, seemingly short after our steady run of overnight trips. It took us a bit of time to find somewhere to
stay that was within our price range as we hadn't pre-booked anywhere but we finally
found Piramide Real that was half price of all the others, and still decent, so
we booked 2 nights straight away.
We caught a collectivo to the nearby town of
Lambayeque, where the famous Museo Tumbes Real de Sipan is. After handing over our camera, phone and passport, and experiencing a pat-down more rigorous than at any airport, we were granted
entry into the giant pyramidal construction.
Once our eyes adjusted to the dark lighting we saw one of the best museums
in South America. The items collected from
the Sipan ruins were not only amazingly restored and well presented, they were also
impressively detailed and skilled pieces in their own right. But it was the metal
work that impressed us the most, with exquisitely detailed earrings and head dresses
expertly crafted right down to the most minute detail.
Back in Chiclayo
we explored the Witches Market, which joined up with the food market, which is always
a happy coincidence. We finally manged to
locate the actual lucuma fruit that we'd been enjoying as an ice cream and yoghurt
flavour, and after paying an exhorbitent gringo price for one piece, we eagerly
peeled back the skin. Turns out we should
have stuck to enjoying the nice ice cream and yoghurts as the fruit is chalky and
very dense. We only made it half way through
the piece before we both had dry mouths and "lucuma belly", with the
rest ending up as landfill.
That afternoon
we received news that our bank tranfer to pay for our Galapogas Island cruise had
finally gone through, which consequently meant we had to take the inland route into
Ecuador (which unfortunately meant no surfing as we wouldn't get to Mancora). This also meant that the rest of the afternoon
was spent running around bus companies trying to find the least dodgy way to get
over the border....
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