trujillo, peru

Because of our engagement and our hard work AUFWIND (the organization I work for in the school) told us that they would pay for a small trip for our teachers and us volunteers. We had a hard time deciding where to go and especially when, but after all we found a weekend where everybody was free and went to Trujillo, a city on the coast of Peru.
After a little stress at the busstation because our teachers showed up late and last minute before the bus left, we went on a night ride to the west, from the mountains again back to sea level.
We arrived in Trujillo at 4 am, and then took a taxi to our hostel, which was a little outside in Huanchaco, and there Maria and I went to sleep for a couple more hours while the teachers already took off to the beach and downtown Trujillo.
After an amazing breakfast and a little discussion about where to meet, Maria and I went to downtown as well where we all met up again and started a tour to see some of the sights around Trujillo (there are LOTS of ruins).  We had our own “private taxi”, which brought us to all the places and there we always had a guide. First we went to the “Huaca de la Luna”, a temple built by the Moche culture in the desert. I really liked it, even though I didn’t understand everything because our guided tour was all in Spanish. But the ruins were impressive and there was a lot of art, which I though was really cool. After that we went to have lunch in Trujillo (so much food!) before taking off again to other ruins. This time we went to the more famous ruins of Chan Chan, by the the Chimu culture. The original city of Chan Chan is huge, and a lot of it is still not excavated. So we only went to a temple, and one of the palaces where the “kings” were buried. Just this one palace was so big, that I had a really hard time believing that it was only one out of 10. It was also pretty impressive, but the whole sightseeing-thing started to get exhausting and understanding the Spanish got harder. That’s why I was kind of happy when the tour was over – even though that didn’t mean that our day was over, because we still had to go “shoe-shopping”. Our teachers told us that shoes are cheap in Trujillo because they are made there, but we were not prepared for what was awaiting us. Isles and isles full of little “cabins” full of shoes – it was overwhelming, and after a while we couldn’t see the shoes anymore. But I found a really nice pair, which was the goal, and after Maria found something too, we tried to get out of there and back to the hostel as fast as possible. We asked around for the right bus to Huanchaco, and back at the hostel we enjoyed having a quiet evening with some good dinner (waffles with chocolate and fresh fruits, mhhhh!) before passing out after this long day.
On the next day I woke up very early – but I actually enjoyed it, because I could have some time for myself on the rooftop reading my book before everybody else got up. We all had breakfast together (the food at the hostel was really good, and this day I dared to have fish for breakfast, which I did not regret), and then a long meeting about work. But after that we finally went to the beach, which was just right next to the hostel. There were quite a lot of people, but we found a nice spot, hung out there, went swimming and I enjoyed being on the coast. Our teachers also got some fishing rods and Madeley really caught a fish (which found a sad ending in a little plastic bag) – they were really excited about getting out of Huaraz and being in a bigger city and on the beach.
For lunch we went back to the hostel, then back to the beach again. But this time we just walked around and looked at the famous “caballitos”, some traditional little boats made out of reed.
Then we split up again, because the teachers wanted to buy some more shoes (I couldn’t believe it because each of them already got back to the hostel with a huge bag of shoes the night before) and Maria and I felt more like hanging out at some nice place (so we found a McDonalds with a nice view over the main square haha). We already had our backpacks with us, so we could go straight to the bus after that, because it was already time to go back to Huaraz.
So we spent another night on a bus, before arriving up at 3000m again early in the morning.