Chan Chan

I'm feeling a lot more energized today than yesterday. I definitely needed all of the sleep I got. The medicine is definitely helping in that my fever was reduced, if not completely gone when I woke up this morning. We all got a late start, I would guess we all needed some quality sleep, but once we were up and out, it was amazing!

We visited the archaeological ruins of Chan Chan today! A quick description of Chan Chan would be the largest pre-Columbian South American city. It's now in ruins. It's worth a google search for further historical information, but I'll share some cool photos and explain them a bit! These photos definitely don't do it justice, and are the lesser quality of my photos, but they were the quickest I could upload today. I have plenty more that have more detail that I may post at a later date.

11 of us went, but today we comfortably took 3 taxis versus stuffing all 11 of us into 2! We arrived at the entrance and paid 10 peruvian soles (3 soles is about equal to 1 USD) for our entrance and then an extra 5 soles for a guide, which was so worth it because we would've never gotten enough history out of it by ourselves. It's not very self explanatory.

The part we toured was one of the nine palaces Chan Chan had. This was the only palace that exists still enough to tour. The reason there were nine palaces was because when a king died, the next king, one of his sons got his own palace, and the rest of the king's family and servants and whatnot were sacrificed to go with him into the afterlife. The king was then buried, in an open tomb, in the palace. It typically took 20 years to build a palace, so each new palace was started when a new king was put in place.

Trapezoidal walls

The palace we visited spanned 11 acres, but some could span as large as 20 acres. We walked around and saw several squares that served as plazas of sorts. This palace had 3 squares, one public square, one private square, and one funeral square. All of the walls were trapezoidal in shape and made with mud on the bottom and bricks on top.

We proceeded to some rooms, which were differentiated by the designs in the bottom row of decoration on the wall. All of the decorations in this palace had to do with the sea, fish, tides, pelicans, moon, etc. Each had a theme of sorts and this one existing happened to be relative to the sea.

Fish and tides wall art on the walk into the palace

Different rooms in the palace, markings on the bottom may
have signified what the room was used for

This palace also had at one point 140 water wells. The last well to be full of water started drying up 3 years ago, and now just looks like a lush garden. It will soon be dry too.

Lush greenery in the one of the old water wells that is now drying up

Open tomb

We then proceeded to the tomb area to see a replica of the mummy in the tomb. The reason the tomb was left open was so they could bring the king around ceremonially every now and again to worship him.

After that, we went back toward the entrance and our ticket actually included a stop at the museum as well. We decided to walk there, which was a 20 minute walk in the peak sun hours, but it was a beautiful day. I got lightly sunburned on my shoulders, but nothing major. We spent a short time looking at the artifacts that were preserved from the ruins in the museum.

View on our walk to the museum, also the mountain we
climbed on New Years Eve!

By the time we were done, it was about 1:30pm and we needed some lunch, so we went to a close mall where we ate a quick lunch at the food court and then went to a supermarket where I bought more Powerade. We knew we wouldn't have enough time to do the other archaeological site because it closed at 4pm, and we needed to be back by 3pm.

We got back, and one of the long term volunteers had started prepping for a BBQ that we all chipped in for. The excuse was to celebrate two birthdays, the long terms from yesterday and one of the short terms which is tomorrow. This BBQ was insane. I never imagined the amount of food we would have: homemade burgers, chicken and beef kabobs, grilled fish, grilled veggies, salad, tuna salad, appetizers of sorts, and more! Despite the awesome food I've eaten so far, my stomach definitely needed some familiar food.

We then played cards for quite a while and I've learned I'm quite good at a game that's called a variety of names: P's and A's, Scum, President's and Assholes, etc. Maybe I was dealt good cards consistently, but I did really well for about 2 hours.

Tomorrow we plan to do the Huacas de la Luna, which is the other archaeological site. Then we might go to the beach if we have time. It sounds like we will leave for Playa Blanca either Monday night or Tuesday morning. It will be about a 7 hour bus ride for us to get up there because we have so many volunteers this time around.