Visit of El Brujo and Trujillo city center

Alexis in a final attempt around 9 pm last night went out because he saw a travel agent office close by that was supposed to still be opened. We want to go and visit El Brujo which is a site not easily accessible. Online all the tours are private and above 100 USD per persons which is just unreasonable.

He is successful, this travel agency was still open and we booked an half day tour to visit El Brujo. And it’s affordable, it includes the transport and the guide and that’s it. Since it’s Saturday, in our minibus are only local tourists going there and we have a Spanish guide.

The minibus to get there is taking the coastal road and we get a very nice view for half of the drive of Huanchaco beach town. There are a lot of surfers on that day. 

Then, we cruise through sugar cane plantations until we reach desertic lands again. The site of El brujo is 3 pyramidal complexes and only one can be visited: Huaca Cao.

Why is this particular set of ruins important? Because it is one of the only that has been constantly occupied from 4,000 B.C until even the Spanish colonists. The most significant civilization, as least architecturally, was the Moche. And inside Huacas Cao they found an undisturbed tomb of the Dama de Cao, a Moche high lady with her full regalia. The discovery is fairly recent, 2005, but it did disturb the pre-conception of an only patriarchal society. It seems that genders equality might have been a little better than initially thoughts in those times.

I had selected this site for it was said to have amazing colors and the entire findings from the tomb are still in the museum there. And it didn’t disappoint, the museum and the site are fairly new and have English and Spanish explanations – it’s also really well explained. In terms of wall decorations, it’s just as nice as the Huaca de la luna. 

What is really sad is that such a very nicely set up archeological site doesn’t have an easier access. It’s really isolated. Going there with your own transport takes 3 different changes and you need to organize your return as well. Once there, there is absolutely nothing to drive you back to civilization… A tour is definitely the way easiest way to go.

We started at 10 am and were back at 2:30 pm in Trujillo. We went queuing at the local post-office to send some postcards. Peruvian post doesn’t ship to Malaysia… and you need a passport to buy just standard stamps. That was unnecessarily complicated to just send tourist postcards.

We backtrack to the main square where we got ourselves a super late lunch and then we headed back to the hostel for some rest and packing. Tomorrow it’s another long bus ride to Chiclayo.