Having left Callao/Lima at about 7pm, the ship sailed over night to Salaverry. This is the port for Trujillo in the northern part of Peru, and we arrived at 11am on Thursday. It is a working port, and our arrival meant that one of the ships had to stop discharging her cargo until we left, for safety reasons. She was moored on the other side of our quay, which was not very wide!!
We had initially decided not to do a trip here, but our own thing. However, having done some research, we change our minds and were able to join an excursion to some ruins connected to the peoples in the area pre the Incas. The Chimu had built an enormous city between 900AD and 1500AD called Chan Chan. The Incas conquered them around that time, and then the Spanish arrived. It was built of mud brick and has only recently been discovered. It has been estimated as covering some 20 square kilometres. Our visit started at one of the nine palaces found so far, one of the smallest! We could only see three of the five parts, and that took nearly an hour. It is estimated that the largest palace is about two and half times bigger than the one we were at. After this, we moved on to the seaside, to where the fishermen still use reed boats, and fish in the same manner as they would have done all those years ago. We were given a demonstration of how they did it, and dealt with the surf.
The final part of the tour was to a temple mound. To give an idea of just how big this city was, we had started at the palace some five kilomtres outside Trujillo, and the temple was inside the city, surrounded by modern buildings. Everone was surprised it had survived, though the guide explained it was luck rather than good judgement. Most of the foreign tourits who come to this part of Peru do so for the surfing, though the occasional cruise liners are calling. It is a holiday area for Lima, which is why there are places such as we saw available. (There was another tout, to two much larger temples on the other side of Trujillo and included the old part of the city. One of the difficulties the arrangers had faced was getting enough English speaking guides. Ours was a school teacher, and on the other coach a young man on his first guiding trip who was in the city administration. They both did very well. They were from Trujillo, but other guides, along with some of the coaches had been brought in specially from Lima. We were pleased we had done it, and having talked to those who did their own thing, found we had made the right decision
We sailed out of Salaverry at 6pm, next stop Manta in Ecuador