Trujillo

Our bus rolled into Trujillo right on time. We hadn't decided exactly what we wished to do, however we wanted to push up north asap (but didn't really fancy another overnight bus). As we gathered our thoughts in the bus office, we were approached (as always) by a whole raft of taxi drivers offering to take us anywhere we wanted. One spoke reasonable English, seemed to know what he was talking about and was very polite. We asked him to take us to the next bus station to find out about times and tickets up to Piura, Mancora or Tumbes.

We were too early for the first company, but El Dorado was open. We booked tickets for the 12:45pm bus and thus had 5 hours to kill. We negotiated (a bit) with our driver, who would take us where we wanted until then for 70 Soles (about 12 quid).

And that's how we met Celio Eduardo Rodan. He was in the guidebook, mentioned by name as "Helpful and Informative Taxi Driver" (which he was). Since the publication of the book he had added "Official Tour Guide" to his list of titles. He suggested that we get breakfast first (as the sites were all shut) and took us to a nice breakfast place. He also suggested that we went to the Temples of the Sun and Moon and not just Chan-Chan. Top chap.

The Temple of the Sun wasn't really visit-able, but the temple of the Moon was. It was very interesting and was in the middle of being excavated. Some of the friezes on the walls were quite impressive.

Temple of the Moon

Celio seemed to know everyone, and he certainly knew a lot about the temple. It was very enlightening. As we were leaving, hordes of tiny (but very polite) schoolchildren descended upon the site. It's nice to see that the local government deem it important to show the kids their ancestral heritage.

Entrance to the Temple

From there we went to Chan-Chan. It was vast. I didn't think it was as interesting as the Temple of the Moon, so I'm glad we followed Celio's advice. Again, he seemed to know everyone and was informative about what we were seeing. We also saw a Peruvian native (hairless and very ugly) dog.

Chan-Chan

Celio then took us to get some munchies for our trip and then on to the bus station. This time we had our fingerprints taken before being allowed on the bus.

On arrival into Piura, we checked into the Portales hotel on the square. We got the last room; had some food; watched Argentina stuff the USA 4-1 in the Copa America and retired.