Huacas Del Sol y De La Luna and More!

Today I was feeling much better! Fever is definitely gone which is great!

The Huacas del Sol on the left on the horizon, the Moche
city in the foreground of the photo

We spent the morning at the Huacas. The Huaca del sol is the governmental temple and the huaca de la luna is the religious temple. The sol can't be toured because it is not restored yet, but we toured the luna so we got to see all the religious aspects of the moche people.

Our view at the top! Having an awesome time!

The various levels of the temple

Preserved colors on walls of two levels of the temple

Outer walls of the temple with various colored artwork

This huaca (directly translates to temple) de la luna (moon) had a sacrificial square, a tomb area, a warrior plaza area and some flat lands. This location was different than Chan Chan in that all of the new temples are built above the old ones, so it's a vertically built temple versus Chan Chan that built new palaces horizontally around and built a brand new palace. Each temple in the luna had 3 priests per 100 years and after 100 years a new temple would be built up.

The archaeologists here have carefully preserved the original colors of the walls that were there when they dug the huacas out of a massive pile of sand. That was the greatest thing to see because Chan Chan didn't quite have any colors. Our guide for this set of ruins wasn't as great as yesterday, but there was a lot more to look at for sure!

Warrior battle ground and story on a painting on the wall

A lot of the focus in this huaca was sacrifice. It was best to lose a battle with another person because that person would get sacrificed to the gods, which was a high honor. Most of the artwork was relative to the decapitation god that was the main god for the Moche people. This temple focused on sacrificing to the gods, especially when they were trying to get the weather to start or stop. They would sacrifice individuals and spread their blood on the earth to fertilize the earth.

Once we got back from the Huacas, we ate some leftover BBQ from yesterday, and spent some time at Huanchaco again! We just got back and are trying to plan our accommodations for next weekend in Cajamarca!

Still having an awesome time and can't wait to get back into the shop tomorrow and continue working. We'll be spending tomorrow in Trujillo too, but we'll be in Playa Blanca from Tuesday to Friday! If we leave tomorrow night for Playa Blanca, I might not post a blog at night, but I will definitely keep documenting things and will likely take some video blogs while in Playa Blanca!