Scott’s work slowed down enough for us to take a couple of tours to see the nearby ruins this week. There are a ton of pre-Incan ruins to see in northern Peru. It is all pretty far out of the way from Machu Picchu, so unfortunately the average 2-week tourist doesn’t get up here to see them. The ruins are also much less excavated and less understood than ruins around Cusco, which I really liked, but might be less interesting to some. Scott and I just hit the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is available to see in Northern Peru.

Chan Chan

Technically we’ve seen Chan Chan every time we’ve traveled between Trujillo and Huanchaco. The highway between the two cities goes right through the Chan Chan complex, which actually helped Chan Chan get its UNESCO heritage status by showing that the site was in danger.

Chan Chan is part of the Chimu culture from around 1000 AD to 1400 AD. Each of the rulers of this culture built their own palace, and then were sealed inside when they died, along with their riches and rest of their sacrificed administration. (This was presumably an anti-corruption measure. If you are the top military commander and kill off the main ruler, you have to die too. Or if you feel like killing off your dad, the king, you don’t get any of his stuff.)

The Chan Chan complex has something like 10 of these palaces, only one of which is open for public viewing. The palaces aren’t what you would expect to see in terms of grandeur. They were limited to adobe for building materials, so instead of building up, they built big and flat. In that sense, the palaces feel like compounds. They only have one entrance, with a public square immediately as you walk in, and other administrative and ceremonial rooms woven throughout the rest. The one we visited (Tschudi’s Palace) had a lake! It took us about an hour to explore. And it’s one of the relatively smaller ones in the complex.

Huacas de Luna y Sol

These huacas, or temples, are also part of the Chimu culture. They are step pyramids, also made of adobe. Since they are not hollow inside they could build progressively upward in this case. And they did so as each group of religious leaders died off and were buried within their layer.

The temples were used for ceremonial purposes only, so the priests lived elsewhere. The most important rituals that happened here were centered on the El Niño phenomenon. After the cities were devastated by El Niño rains, the religious leaders would go through an elaborate ceremony that started with a fake war where both sides took prisoners. The prisoners were then sliced up and walked throughout the town to spill their blood on the ground, which symbolized the re-fertilization of the soil. They they were held hostage at the temple and drugged with San Pedro, a hallucinogenic cactus. After a few more days of bloodletting, the prisoners were eventually sacrificed and typically quartered. Their blood was sometime drunk by the priests and/or spilled over the temple in a huge public ceremony. Gruesome.

Huaca Arco Iris

This is a relatively small Chimu huaca, dedicated to rainbows (aka “arco iris”). The Chimu people obviously were in desperate need of rain every year for their crops, seeing as their civilization was built in the desert.

The most interesting thing I learned here was about the conservation of ancient artifacts and ruins. An entire platform of this step pyramid was destroyed by a recent El Niño. It was not reconstructed according to some internationally agreed upon regulation. Unfortunately, the Peruvian government doesn’t have the resources to protect it’s vast number of ruins. (There are over 400 adobe step pyramids in the area surrounding Trujillo alone.)

They do what they can to prevent everyday dangers, such as people, wind and rain. But they are resigned to lose some of them due to natural disasters. It’s an interesting debate.

El Brujo Complex

The El Brujo complex is the oldest set of ruins we have seen yet, dating back to the Moche culture which started around 100 AD. It is made up of 6 or so different huacas, all of which have been seriously mangled by years of huaqueros (grave robbers), natural disasters and everyday erosion.

As you can see, one of the huacas has this amazing looking tent covering it up for protection. This was super curious to me, given most of the other, more obscure sites we’ve seen have been left out in the open. As it turned out, this complex is privately operated. The Peruvian government still owns the land, but a private foundation is in charge of excavations and protection. This means that the resource and regulation issues are irrelevant here, and the private foundation has sprung for an awesome tent!

The site was pretty amazing in terms of development. It is way off the highways and paved roads, through a maze of sugar cane fields. But, once you drive up to the Huaca Cao Viejo, there is a semi-paved parking lot, a super modern museum, souvenir shop, outdoor seating area, plumbing, English-speaking guides and of course, the tent covering up the excavations.

The private foundation has excavated maybe 30% of the Huaca Cao Viejo, and they have already made some amazing discoveries. The most important one happened in 1999 with the discovery of the “Cao Lady”, a female ruler who died at 25 after giving birth. Another tomb in this huaca had two women in it, so they are researching to see if this area was completely governed by women.

p.s. All of my photos from these ruins can be seen here.