Lima and more ruins

After Machu Picchu we headed north to the capital city of Lima. However, we actually spent most of our time in a somewhat upscale suburb of Lima called Miraflores. Boy was this a great move on our part. In a lot of the lodgings we've stayed in recently, it's felt a little like we were roughing it. However, the B&B we stayed at in Miraflores was anything but. The picture above is the Pacific coastline of the city.

Like I said, we spent most of our time in Miraflores, but we did manage to take the brand new public transportation system into the heart of Lima. Below is the Plaza de Armas.

And that's about it for our Lima photos.

We mostly just took it easy during our stay in a big city. We enjoyed a typical Peruvian dish of ceviche on a number of occasions.

We went to a movie or two at the excellent mall that overlooked the Pacific ocean.

And we watched some Bici-cross racing. This track was also along the coastline, up on top of the cliff overlooking the ocean. Really, the only reason we saw this was because we frequently walked up and down the coastline that was made up of one long park. There happened to be a race on Sunday, so we sat down and checked it out. It was pretty fun!Here we are in front of the Pacific.
Probably the most touristic thing we did within the city was we visited the Larco Museum. Rafael Larco Herrera was an archaologist who played a large role in identifying and preserving pre-Inca culture withing Peru. The museum uses mainly ceramics to depict the different Pre-Incan civilizations. It was fascinating.

We weren't allowed to take pictures of the museum, but they also allow you to walk around the storage rooms of artifacts. It never occurred to me that museums don't put most of what they have out, but it this case it would be pretty ridiculous to display the thousands of pieces that we saw in storage.

It's really excellent that they allow you in to the storage room, because there were so many different things back there. Here are a few shots of my favorites.

After hanging out in Lima for nearly a week, we moved on to Trujillo, where there were more Peruvian ruins to see.

The first is called the Huacas of the Sun and Moon, and this site is particularly interesting because it is a fairly new discovery.

Below is a shot of a well preserved wall. The site, two giant pyramid-like structures, is in a pretty flat area outside of the city where these ruins have been covered in dirt and sand for hundreds of years. As you can see, the wall below is still maintains a lot of its original color.
We found out later along our travels that this red dye comes from prickly pear cactus.
Here's a shot of much of the site that is currently being uncovered. The project of unearthing these ruins was began by a private organization in the 90's, so there is still a ton to uncover. The neatest part about this ruin is that you could come back in 10-20 years and you may see an entirely different spectacle.

Below is a shot of one of the main plazas that existed within this community. A unique aspect of this site is that each generation continued to build on top of the previous generations creation, covering up what was previously there.

Another site just outside of Trujillo that we visited was Chan Chan. This was a totally different civilization of people who were somewhat related to the Huacas group, but later.

We really liked the wooden guards that stood out in the main plaza.
This site was also covered with hundreds of years worth of dust and sand, and it seemed like uncovering the intricate walls would have been quite a task.
Here's Laura admiring the openness of this plaza.
And perhaps our favorite part of visiting the ruins outside of Trujillo were the Peruvian hairless dogs that were kept onsite. In order to preserve this breed, they are kept at some of the parks and ruin sites. Without this program, they would have a seriously hard time making it in this world. I mean, can you imagine this hairless creature as your family pet?! Laura was petting her because she figured no one else does.