Pyramids

Last week on Wednesday, I took a tour to visit the Tombs of the Mochica including a priest and the Lord of Sipán, a few museums, Lambayeque, and Tucume- the site of 26 adobe pyramids on about 50 acres of land. It was a great tour. Our group was 16 made up of five Chileans, 1 Spaniard, 2 Limeños, 3 people from Arequipa, and some Ecuadorans plus the guide and the driver.

We first went to Huaca Rajada, the site of 9 layers of Tombs. It was very interesting seeing the work that was done to excavate the tombs and the discoveries they made. The guide did an excellent job of explaining what was in the tombs and why and how it was possible to identify certain things. A tomb with a skeleton and a chalice in the right hand means that the tomb belongs to a priest. The Lords were buried with their prime wife, 1 or 2 concubines, a dog, soldiers, a llama, jewels, and decorative pots. the oldest lord was found with more than 2000 clay pots shaped like men and much ornate jewelry. His riches were mostly of copper, while the more recent lord was buried with gold and silver.

Afterwards we went to the city of Lambayeque, where we ate at a very nice restaurant, and I ordered something without rice, since we eat rice for every other meal. We then saw the cathedral and visited Tumbes Reales museum where we learned more about the Mochica and their history.

We then departed towards Tucume to see the pyramids. Along the way we were slowed up by a procession of people for one of the Virgins, highly regarded in this region. Once at Tucume we visited another museum, saw many large poisonous spiders on some cacti, and then got to hike half-way up one of the pyramids. This was my favorite part of the tour. The view from the pyramid was incredible. Pictures do not do it justice. It was so peaceful and the breeze was welcome. From the pyramid we could see many of the other pyramids as well as sugar cane fields, palm trees, banana trees, and rice fields for miles around.

On the way back, it took us 3 hours for what should have taken less than 45 minutes because of the chaos caused by people not abiding by the rules of the road and creating massive traffic jams in attempts to get around the people who were part of the procession. Oh the joys of traffic here =)

Rain...

Thursday night it rained for the first time...but not very much. I think it was almost a mist because water was not sitting anywhere, everything was just damp and the sidewalked were extremely slick like ice. Everyone was talking about how much it had rained and I was thinking to myself, ¨Wow! This is great, if this is what it´s like when it rains, I can definitely live with this¨...but then I found out otherwise.

On Friday night it began to rain and it rained all day on Saturday and into the night. Now, this was not a heavy, pouring-cats-and-dogs kind of rain; it was a light rain. In Nebraska, it would have been a welcomed rain in the summer, but I hope I don't see rain again here. Since Chiclayo, is in the desert and it rarely rains, the city is not prepared for any rain. The city is flat and almost no earth can be found because buildings and pavement are everywhere. There are no gutters and everyone has flat roofs. To make things worse, homes are open in the center without roofs, and there is dust blowing everyday that it doesn't rain.

Needless to say the city flooded, even though it was probably only 1/2 inch of rain. We spent the day and part of the night sweeping rain into pitchers and a dust pan, pouring them into a tub and siphening the water down onto the already flooded streets off of the roof/top floor of the house, and also out of the main floor where water came because of a lack of a roof. Quite frankly it was disgusting sloshing through the dirty water, running our hands along the grainy cement. I really hope it doesn't rain again. The stench is awful. Who would have thought that so little rain could become such a problem!