Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Ruining The Day Away

Huanchaco October 19th

Huanchaco is a beach town 15 minutes out of Trujillo. You want to be some minutes out of Trujillo. It is a big busy city. The fishermen in Huanchaco still use the traditional reed boats to fish from - IN THE OCEAN. I'm thinking garbageman, store owner, maid - anything but the open ocean in a reed boat.

There are ruins here that mostly fall under one city name Chan Chan . They are spread around the area a little. The largest site is the palace which has been reconstructed about 70% which means that what you see is not what they found, but what they found enhanced - usually by good science- but still altered and not just preserved as found. The rest of the local sites are largelely just preserved and not reconstructed.


There were 2 additional temple areas, a museum, and on the other side of town another ruin with a Temple of the Moon and Temple of the Sun that is a pretty cool ongoing dig that has been just excavated and preserved. It has a lot of color and is our kind of ruin. I forgot to mention that all of the sites are made from adobe bricks (mud). I think I mentioned that it doesn't rain much here. Can you imagine leaving mud bricks exposed in Washington? It would quickly be puddle of mud time.


It turns out that the Peruvian Hairless isn't just an oddity but a breed of it's own and a "national treasure." After seeing so many from the time we arrived, we saw this in our Moon book. You can't make this stuff up. They even think the ugly little bastards have medicinal qualities. I guess since you can get diseases touching dirty dogs, and there is no chance you'd want to touch one of them, they can be looked at as a kind of vaccine... It is also believe that kids with asthma and people with arthritis benefit from actually touching them. I can see where people with touching ugly dogs phobias might be helped but, Please!

We may continue up the coast to Chiclaya tomorrow...but may stay on the ocean one more day....yet  TBD.

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