On to Salaverry, Peru (port for Trujillo) today. My tour left at 8:30, so I was up at the proverbial crack of dawn. We’ve been playing hopscotch with the Minerva II taking turns to be first in first out of the ports, and today is our turn to be first.

The tour today was really neat. First of all, it was the very best bus I’ve ever ridden in! Double-decker, but only one step up to the first level which another lady and I had all to ourselves. Big wide cushy leather bucket seats, each with its own cup holder and pull-down leg rest and plenty of leg room. First sightseeing bus I’ve met where I wasn’t all cramped up by the time I got off! Actually, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the fine quality of tour buses on this trip...I was all set for recycled un-air-conditioned school buses, and we’ve had nothing but top of the line models.

So where did we go? To Huaca El Brujo which is a Moche temple up the coast from Trujillo where excavations only began in the early 1990s and which has only been open to the public for a relatively short while. We had an excellent tour guide, an archaeology grad student who really knew his stuff. This temple was where they first discovered that the Moche (a pre-Incan civilization) had used adobe to decorate their temples with high relief figures. Since each lower level of the temple was filled in before the next level was built, the original paint colors are mostly still there, as you can see. After the Incas conquered the Moche, the area continued to be used as a cemetery, and they have found fabarics in some of the graves that have survived this long. One of the most interesting tours I’ve ever been on.