Chiclayo Treasures

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....