Huanchaco, Huacas and Chan Chan

Following in Padre's footsteps (even down to the hostel!) our next stop was the fisherman's village of Huanchaco. Here we camped in a cosy campsite so close to the beach that the ocean sang us to sleep each night. It would seem that Huanchaco, like Sucre in Bolivia, is a place backpackers find hard to leave. We met some great people in that campsite, and shared some wonderful memories. The main attraction of going to Huanchaco was orginally for the famous archaeological ruins of Chan Chan - but the beach took over, and we ended up getting lost for about 11 days, eating fresh mangoes, lounging in hammocks, and even watching the resident iguana of the campsite go about his day.

We did eventually visit the archaeological sites however. Lots of people tend to just get a taxi to Chan Chan and go about it themselves - but we opted to get a tour so we would have a guide, and we were so glad we did. The tour took us first of all to a site called Huaca de la Luna (sacred site of the moon), and it is opposite the Huaca del Sol. The two sites were completely covered by sand, and are preserved beautifully because of this. The government does not have enough money to excavate the sites properly, so only the Huaca de la Luna has been properly examined - and only a proportion of it at that. The Huaca de la Luna is said to have been a religious site, a temple of sorts for the Moche people, whereas the Sun Huaca opposite is said to have been built later, and was more of a political centre. 

The Huaca de la Luna is one of the most amazing archaeological sites I have visited. It was a site for human sacrifice, where warriors would battle each other, and the one that was victorious would be sacrificed to the Gods. The site had five levels - every 100 years one would be plastered over, and a new level with a new murial painted atop it would take its place - it is incredible to see the different stages, and how the artwork changed over the 500 plus years the Moche people used the temple.

Outside was the most incredible example of this - here you can see 6 different levels of painting, and behind this wall there would be another 5, and behind that another 4...etc.. giving an awesome insight into the lives of the people. The bottom row depicts slaves, above that the warriors. The artwork surrounding the Huaca, and the fact it was only discoved around 22 years ago - before that it was a mountain of sand. The site is still, slowly being excavated - it would be amazing to go back in 10 years and see the Moche Village which lay between the two Huacas, and the Huaca del Sol too.

We also visited the site of Chan Chan, the largest Pre-Colombian city within South America. The site of Chan Chan is incredible purely due to the sheer scale of it - the ancient city sprawls over 20 square km, and once housed over 30,000 people. The city is dated to the Chimu people, and has largely been reconstructed. The main area where tourists visit shows the citadel, and a network of store rooms, decorated with a fishing net design across the walls. We can also see pelicans, and the direction in which they are facing shows the direction in which the person should move around the rooms - there was only one entrance. The site has unfortunately been so reconstructed so much that it actually bares very little resemblence to ruins, and more seems to have been heavily interpreted and covered in plaster - the pelicans look a bit like 8-bit renderings of their ancient selves. On one hand it being so reconstructed allows us to see what it would have maybe been like, and would make it more accessible for tourists to relate too. However, as archaeologists, we found it a bit false, and would rather they had been restored to a lesser extent.

 

The museum of Chan Chan, and the museum of the Huacas were very informative, and had an array of artefacts which were amazing - the pottery of the era was so detailed, and the faces so well constructed, unlike anything we had ever seen before. The tour was fantastic, and kickstarted our history and archaeology-heavy next two weeks...watch this space!