Trujillo

Day 153 – Architecturally designed mud pie

Arriving at Trujillo in time for breakfast we ate, organised our next bus to Chachapoyas, left our backpacks at the station and were off again on a minibus to Chan Chan.

Occupied by the Chimu people, Chan Chan was built in around AD 1300 and is a huge citadel of crumbling mud walls that must have been an awesome place in its day.  The city once formed the largest adobe (mud brick) city in the world and also the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas.

For 30 soles we hired ourselves a lovely English speaking guide who took us all around the restored parts of the city, explaining each of the sectors and their significance and a bit about what it may have looked like back in the day.

An artist’s impression of what Chan Chan may have been like.

The main entrance.  The walls currently stand at about 4m tall and 2m thick at the bottom, but were once up to 10m tall. 

There were many large squares with altars on one side where sacrifices to different natural elements were performed.  The diamond patterns around this square represent the nets of the fisherman who would go out and fish for the people and the altar is facing the nearby mountains to bring good weather.

This is the ‘professionals’ sector where doctors, accountants, etc had a ‘room’ to receive clients.  Although the fishing net pattern is a common theme throughout the city, along the bottoms of these walls there are different friezes of fish, pelicans and geometric patterns for each of the professions.

  

 
Patterns of squirrels with alternating three and four pronged tails adding to seven and 14 ‘waves’ along the top.  Many of the stories etched into the mud brick walls relate to the number seven and natural elements and cycles such as the sea and the moon.

A main hall leading to a well.

 
The major spring fed well in town.

A king was buried in this crypt with 44 of his servants and many of his treasures and ceremonial objects for the afterlife.  In fact much of the city was lined with gold and other precious metals.  Today there is an empty tomb, not even any bones.  Despite the Incas having conquered the Chimu in around 1460, the city was not looted until the Spanish arrived looking for gold.

We had a little bit more time until our night bus, so we decided to check out the nearby sea side village of Huanchaco for lunch.  After a nice vegetarian meal, we stopped by the internet to check if our payment for our chosen Galapagos boat had gone through and as it hadn’t (stupid bank), we tried to fix the situation, leaving us rushing to catch our bus to Chachapoyas, getting there just in time.

Local fishing boats stacked against the seawall in Huanchaco.