viaje al norte

So i just got back from another one of our trips that we take with all of the Rotary students and this time we went north!we started by flying to a city called Trujillo and we stayed in a hotel that was across the street from the beach. I never went to this beach because after being warned for month about the sun i was in full on skin protection mode; hats, sunscreen every five seconds, the works. It was probably better anyway because the people that came back said there were jellyfish, sea urchins, rocks, and huge waves. There was a pool at the hotel and I just hung out there with a few other blancas. While we were in this city we saw the malecon which is just like a boardwalk and the plaza de armas. We also stopped at an old archaeological site, one of them the tallest in south america with 7 stories. After that we travelled to a city called Chiclayo and had a FULL day of archaeological tours. We saw the ruins of an ancient culture called the Moche and the mummy of a man called the Señor de Sipan which was actually super cool. First we went to his final resting place and we saw all of these tombs that were restaged but still awesome and along with his "body" we also saw the "bodies" of a sacerdote, which I believe is like the medicine/gods man, and an older hierarchal figure as well.  We walked through all of these tombs and then inside to a museum where some of the actual artifacts were kept so they would be safer and could be preserved longer. Here we only saw things like vases and things that were of little importance to the Señor of Sipan because these are all kept in a museum with tighter security and closer to civilization so that people can see it more easily. After we finished at the smaller museum we travelled into the city to see the actual bodies and artifacts. Unfortunately we got there kind of late so we were rushed through before they closed but we got to see all of the recovered ceremonial items that the men were buried with along with their actual bodies. The bones of the Señor de Sipan were completely crushed because the roof of his tomb caved in and his tomb was also very humid. He had a ton of jewelry buried with him but apparently grave robbers have taken almost all of it and the things that we saw only made up about 6% of all that there was originally. While we were in Chiclayo we also saw the city and their plaza de armas before going on to Tumbes. We travelled all night in bus with a sick passenger who threw up at like 2 am two rows behind me and when we arrived we headed straight off to Puerto Pizarro which is a port that connects the amazon river (I think) to the ocean. Theres a few islands here with beautiful wildlife and we stopped at Crocodile Island where we saw all the life stages of a crocodile and passed by another that has a ridiculous amount of birds. All that afternoon we got to swim at the beach on one of the islands and the water was so warm!!!! I hadn't brought my bathing suit but I couldn't resist going in so I ended up swimming in my dress! Thankfully that insane sunlight dried it pretty quick. :) That night we were in the bus again all night to Guayaquil, a city in..... Ecuador!!!! We spent the morning seeing the boardwalk and some Galapagos Tortoises  and in the night we got to explore the city. We ended up going to eat pizza and then found an amazing ice cream place that we ended up going to again the next day. That day we spent the morning on a mirabus to tour the city and we saw the second largest shopping mall in South America. Then we travelled of to Las Salinas which has a gorgeous beach and some cool shops along the coast. After one night there we made our way back to Tumbes. After picking up some stuff we had left in a hotel, we went to Zorritos, to the best part of the whole trip. We were in a hotel that literally was on the beach and we just got to enjoy it for 2 days. It was such a nice end to our trip and a good way to say goodbye to my "sister" here. I had spent almost half of my time in Peru living with a girl from Taiwan named Irene and at the end of this trip her family in Taiwan needed her to end her exchange and come home early. It was so hard to say goodbye to her but we had a bonfire on the beach and we all gave her a little peruvian thing like candy or a handmade little trinket and we all said something about her. It was a sad but nice end to our trip.