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Date: 14th October - 15th October 2006
Early start today, Rich caused a bit of a stir as he arrived back 2 mins before we were due to leave, he was just getting in from the previous night hehe, he was lucky because the tour guide was willing to leave without him!! We had a long drive ahead of us but we stopped off at 11:00 at the Royal Museum of Sipan. This is a really modern meseum that the Germans have helped fund. It is full of artifacts from the excavation of Sipan (the actual excavation was featured in National Geographic in 1987). Sipan was the capital city of the Moche empire which existed between 100-750AD so before the Inca empire. The Museum was interesting and featured findings from 8 of the 9 tombs that were found, robbers had raided the other tomb - gits hehe! We had lunch in the carpark before continuing our journey. We arrived in Huanchaco at about 7:30, this was another beach place but not quite as warm as Mancora. The campsite was nice although it was up some stairs so it was mega hard work for me and Andre to carry the pots and pans chest up but we managed it after building up a good sweat. After camp was set up we split up into groups to go for something to eat, me and Mel went with Deb, Felix and Julia while Rusty went with Mandy and Vanessa. I was pretty hungry and finished off both Debbie and Felix´s meals hehe. After that we went for a drink and a game of pool at this bar with a big green question mark outside of it, the whole strip seemed fairly quiet compared to Mancora.
Next day we we all up at 8:30 and in Doris as we were going on a tour to visit some ruins, we also picked up our guide who was an English guy called Mike White. Our first stop was the mud city of Chan Chan which was the capital city of the Chimu empre which existed between 900-1470 before the Inca´s came and took over the city installing the Chimu Kings son as their puppet ruller. This mud city was very impressive, it has huge plaza´s and bird/fish designs on the walls, the city is estimated to have had a population of 30-35 thousand which is pretty impressive for an ancient city! One other thing that was impressive was that when one of the Kings has died he had been burried with over 600 virgins who has come from all over the empire to sacrifice themselves out of their own free will to be burried with their king. After this we made a stop in Doris at a supermarket to do shopping as it was mine and Mels turn to cook...ahh! We had Russ and Pete as our helpers and had quite a laugh going round buying all the ingredients for the tuna pasta we were going to make. We bought loads of tomatoes, brocoli, garlic, cheese and onions as we had to make the sauce from scratch and for 30 people! We had lots of free tastes of things as we went round the shop which was cool. The second stop that day was at the temples of the sun and the moon, these were built by the Moche so were part of the same empire that contained the city of Sipan. The Moon temple is only partially excavated and the Sun temple has only just been started so still looks pretty much like a small hill. The inside of the Moon temple we could go and see was just breathtaking though, there is loads of really detailed artwork and the colours are still so vibrant it is unbelievable that they are well over 2000 years old. We really enjoyed looking around this as there were lots of different art works depicting their various gods and telling stories, there was one huge serpent one that came and collected the heads of bad people, he was painted on the outside so invading armies would think he was inside. That night it was time for us to cook, we started about 5:30 and the 4 of us got to work chopping and preparing. It actually came together like clockwork and we worked really well together with me barking the odd order hehe. We were a little panicked at first but our cleaner helper Brad went and brought us all drinks to calm us down and relax, and of course it helped haha. The meal turned out really nice and tasty and we made plenty of food so no one went hungry. Everyone said they really enjoyed it which was pleasing, it was so nice to get the cooking out of the way as it sounds so daunting to have to cook for 30 people. After dinner we played chinese whispers round the campfire which was really funny before going to bed, we all slept well that night after knackering ourselves out.
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