Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Down the coastal road

My first impressions of the Northern Peruvian dessert are mixed. The coast from Chiclayo south with it's beach towns and awesome weather is a dry sandy string of pre-Inca ruins with good to great museums, ugly trash dumps, industrial drip irrigated mega-farms, and colonial towns with pleasant city centers.

The very awesome El Museo Tumbas Reales del Señor de Sipán in Lambayeque, Peru. [No photos allowed inside the museum.]

El Museo Tumbas Reales del Señor de Sipán- Lambayeque, Peru

Reed boats, fútbol, and fishing pier at Huanchaco Beach, just north of Trujillo.
Huanchaco, Peru

Trash dump somewhere on the Pan-American Highway between Chiclayo and Trujillo. The truck is on a side road, not the Pan-American.
Pan-American Higway - Northern Peru

Irrigated fields.
Pan-American Higway - Northern Peru

Heading South on the Pan-American Highway with some irrigated fields in the distance.
Pan-American Higway - Northern Peru

The pre-Inca ruins at Tucume, Peru. All those rain-furrowed hills are pyramids.
Ruins - Tucume, Peru

Ruins of Chan Chan. Near Trujillo. Art Deco?
Chan Chan - Peru

Huaca de la Luna (Temple of the Moon) outside Trujillo.
Huaca de la Luna - Trujillo, Peru

Cathedral - Plaza de Armas - Chiclayo
Chiclayo, Peru

Cathedral - Plaza de Armas - Trujillo
Trujillo, Peru

5 comments:

Crash Eddy said...

Viewing your GM, other than the GI, this is your first travel on the Pacific Coast. Is coastal Peru quite different from the mountains and volcanos? Is that road next to the trash dump really the Pan-American Highway? Seems primative.

john said...

Ed, Good question. That's a side road at 90 degrees to the Pan-American. I updated the caption to clarify and added another photo that looks straight down the PAH.

Crash Eddy said...

Glad I was of some use. New photo of PAH still looks spartan compared to what we think of here, the six lane divided Interstate with its unbroken commercialism.

Sun-Ling said...

@Ed,I am with you. 80% of our distances south have been covered on the Panamerican. It's always 2 lanes, a far cry from I95. I guess it's a reflection of development or lack of. All the asparagus must be going on ships not the Panamerican.

john said...

Ed,
UPDATE: the Panamerican directly NORTH of Lima is a 4-laner for about 150 kms. SOUTH of Lima it´s back to 2 lanes.

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