Huaca of the Sun

We just got back from some ruins outside of Trujillo called Huaca del Sol, which means Huaca of the Sun, and it was good enough to be blogworthy. In case you are wondering, not every ruin is. We went to one last week called Chan-Chan that was pretty unimpressive, except that it was old and big. But old, big mud brick structures only take you so far, especially when they look mostly reconstructed. We wanted flash, we wanted authenticity, and we found both in the Temple of the Moon.

The temple was actually five temples on top of each other. Every 100 years they'd fill in the lower one and start a new one, and that lasted for 500 years until they were conquered by a nation that knew when good enough was good enough (the Spanish.) But the upside was that there were a lot of friezes that were well preserved, since they were buried when they still looked nice. We also saw some hairless peruvian dogs, which are always a highlight. They are so weird! Their skin feels like the inside of an old baseball glove.