Mancora to Trujillo

In Mancora we spent another day surfing, after renting two boards from this little hostal on the beach. The owner was this Peruvian surfer who let us hang out at the hostal all day when we weren´t in the water. The water was so warm and the waves were a lot of fun--when they weren´t surfable we body surfed closer to the shore and were thrown onto the beach over and over, it was so much fun!! There weren´t many people in the water and I was able to catch a few really fun waves--surfing in Peru! People were surfing long and short boards, and boogie boarding, and a few were also kite surfing, which I really want to try sometime!!
We took a night bus to Trujillo, which got us there early in the morning. After finding a tour that would take us to the Incan Temples of the Sun and Moon, to Chan Chan and to see the Moche and Chimu ruins, we decided that we didn´t need to stay in Trujillo at all--it is the third largest city, and we have found that we like the smaller cities.
The sites were amazing--we walked through the Temple of the Moon which is still being worked on by archeologists so it was cool to see it as a work in progress. When one of the rulers died, they filled in and sealed that level of the temple and then built another level on top of it, always with the same gods and symbols. The manta ray is a huge symbol in the temple, and other marine things like octopuses were all over too. The Temple of the Sun was closed to visitors so we could only see it from the outside. Our guide said maybe in 5 or 10 years it will be open, so we´ll have to come back! It was very impressive from the outside, though--it was so tall and it was made only of dirt, sand, rocks and water.
There is a ugly looking (not to be disrespectful) Peruvian dog that we have seen everywhere, it looks like a black pig because it has no hair except for a few coarse yellow hairs around its face. We saw a lot of these around the ruins.
We went to the Rainbow Temple which was made in celebration of rainbows, which were thought to be a god because they brought rain to this arid desert. The stone designs at this temple were beautiful, and at the top there was a good view of the area, which is bordered by massive moutains with lots of sand dunes.
Chan Chan itself was made by the Chimu people (I´m pretty sure), and it is incredible. A complete walled city that used to cover 25 square kilometers, complete with temples, cemeteries, and a huge lake-like thing that they found when digging--it came from an underground reservoir. It was so impressive, and the detailing with symbols of sea otters, fish, and geometric shapes was incredible. The city was made between 800-1200 ad.
There were two guys from Lima on our tour who invited us all to get cerviche on the beach at Huanchaco, which was part of our tour stop. Cerviche is raw fish that is cooked by the acid in the lime juice it is marinated in. It´s a lot like the poisson cru we had in Tahiti, without the coconut milk (which is key, I think). Cerviche is supposed to be very spicy (ours wasn´t), and people love it. We are also going to have cuy sometime soon, but i´ll have to explain that later on.
We left that night to go to Huaraz, the town in the Cordillera Blanca. We had to leave Elizabeth in Trujillo--she was heading to Lima (and was able to travel with a girl on our tour from Holland) and Annie and I had more time so we could go to Huaraz on the way. So, sad to lose Elizabeth, but it was so cool to travel with her and we´ll keep in touch with her and hopefully visit her in Yale at grad school!