Down the Coastline

Next morning, we got to Chiclayo excessively early and were thrown out of the bus around 4:30am. We slept all right on the bus, although the early hours still got to us a bit. It was even that bad, that Chris forgot his camera in the bus, which unfortunately continued its journey to Trujillo right after and it took us a little bit of effort to convince the Bus staff to look for the cam on board and after confirming its location in our seats, send it to Chiclayo for pick-up. Fortunately, the staff was extremely helpful, and after telling us the cam would arrive some when after 8pm, we happily started our tour through the city to look for a travel agency, which could tell us the most interesting sights in town.

As we walked out of the Bus terminal, we met the very helpful young man from Chachapoya’s travel agency, which whom we had booked our Kueláp tour and he voluntarily guided us to the next travel-agency (of course a  friend’s place) and additionally worked a massive discount for a 3-site culture tour. And just like this we hoped on the bus around 10am and did a 8hr tour around Chiclayo.

Places to see included

The Sipán Pyramids, this time differently presented

The Sipán Museum

And the actual Sipán Excarvation Site

After the tour, we figured that our two weeks jungle trip without internet and Facebook had passed, as well as the 2 weeks of alcohol abstinence. So we checked in a kind of expensive 2 star hotel (the only one with free Wi-Fi in town) and went nuts on FB and Youtube for the rest of the night. Also, we rewarded ourselves for this strong two weeks of no Booze or Facebooking with a nicely chilled brewsky.

The following day, we hit the next bus south to Chicama, the longest left-braking wave in the world. Apparently, one can surf one wave for over 5 minutes, from the very end to shore. *WHOOP* *WHOOP*, if that doesn’t sound fun! :D

There, we arrived and desperately looked for cheap accommodation, an old military hangar, which a friend had recommended, and where we could have put our hammocks. BUT, didn’t find it and the cheapest option available was a shithole directly at the beachfront, which was still overpriced. So after a later afternoon arrival, we got ourselves some food and spend the rest of the day watching Family Guy on my laptop, waiting urgently for the night to come and pass, so we could hit Chicama around 9am, high tide.

We still needed to rent gear, which also was kind of expensive, so we decided to save money and forget about the wetsuit, as we only intended to surf about 2hrs or so, before leaving for Trujillo, the next biggest town south. Thing was, Peru is not nearly as warm as Ecuador, and since we were already quite a bit down the coast, the water was FRESH! The off-shore wind didn’t help the situation so that after some freezing 90minutes, we rapidly left the water and used the last 30mins of our rented gear to tan and warm up in the sun, before returning to our shithole hostel and packing up.

The north of Peru is very distinct, so that on the way to Trujillo at times we thought we’re lost in the desert, among bare rocks and heaps of sand. After a 4 hours drive, we finally arrived and asked a cabbie for the nearest, cheap hostel. Guess what: First option he offered a 3 star hotel where a night would cost us approximately 80 Soles (23€) per person. The next option was shit too, and in the end we abandoned the guy and found an amazing hostel for 20 Soles per person, including breakfast and free Wi-Fi. The place was neat and the people cool, plus even the owner was an absolute sweetheart. Tchackaaa, looking around a bit can have its upsides. :D

As we didn’t have enough of the beautiful Sipán Culture, we checked out some agencies that would bring us to the nearest archeological site, featuring the pyramides de Luna y Sol, as well as the museum that belongs to it.

BUT, the next day was the first half final Champion’s League match of Barcelona against Chelsea on, as well as the British Queen’s birthday, which is why we postponed the tour for a day and got plastered in front of the television instead. Later we also met the weirdest Peruvian guy ever! He spoke fluent German and constantly said words like Schwuchteli (Gay) and Arschlöchle (little asshole) and despite the fact that it was hilarious hearing this dude speak German, it was still really creapy.

Anywho, after the culture tour, our time was already over in Trujillo, although it really is a nice place, with an average of 30+ °C and as little as 2mm rain per month. Attractive place to hang out, but, time doesn’t stop and we needed to keep going, to get all our sights done, and visit everything we aimed to. OFF to Huaraz, to the amazing Lagoon 69 ( hr hr hr ) and then hopefully off to Lima!