This was to end up being a very very long day. Getting up at 0440 hours to leave at 0530 hours was bad enough for me but those on the cook group were either up late the night before or up even earlier to prepare breakfast for the rest of us. We knew we were in for a long day of travelling having been told to expect to arrive at Punta Sal at 2100 hours but due to poor road conditions, heavy rain then after a breakdown for three hours we did not arrive at Punta Sal until 0115 hours. By the time the hotel staff were woken up and things sorted I decided that I was not going to put up my tent on the beach but asked for a room, to be given a ‘matrimonial room (that’s what a double bedded room is called here so it seems) all for £12 per night. It was well worth the money as you can see from the photos.
On the way we called in the
The Lord Of Sipán Museum for two hours. Open since 2002 and dedicated to the evacuated tombs of the Moche civilisation. The museum is named after the Lord of Sipan,the name given to one of the Moche mummies found in 1987.
The museum contains the greatest intact discovery of gold artifacts in all of the Americas. Built in the shape of a Moche Pyramid, this modern museum was built to showcase the treasures unearthed from the Royal Tombs of Sipán, particularly the Lord of Sipán, El Señor de Sipán.
There they had recreated the actual finds of 1989 in a building that resembled the original where the artifacts were found. The Lord of Sipan was a warrior-priest with administrative powers. He was about 35 at death and was 5 1/2 feet tall. Buried with him were a dog, apparently a favorite pet; a child; three young women, possibly wives or concubines; and three men, including one believed to be a sentry, whose feet had been cut off to prevent him from abandoning his duty of guarding the tomb in the next life. "Imagine the power he had! All those people were sacrificed and entombed with him," said Luis Chero, resident archeologist at the site. "He was a great lord with absolute control over the lives of his subjects.'
The tomb was at one end of a ceremonial, adobe-brick platform 230 feet long, 166 feet wide and 33 feet high. The 150-foot-high pyramid, called Huaca Rajada by local villagers, juts up out of miles of surrounding sugar cane fields, some of them still watered by canals built by the Moche, according to Juan Martinez, an archeologist on the excavation. Archeologists say the Moche people were a warring nation given to human sacrifice, highly skilled in metallurgy and proficient in using complex irrigation systems to make desert lands produce bountiful harvests of cotton and corn.
The Moche dominated a 300-mile stretch of Peru's northern coast from about AD 100 to AD 800. Their civilization mysteriously disappeared long before the Spaniards arrived in the 1530s and destroyed the better known Inca empire, which held sway hundreds of years after the Moche. The Huaca Rajada pyramid apparently was a giant mausoleum for a succession of Moche rulers, and archeologists have recently discovered a second tomb, now under excavation, of another warrior-priest, although of lesser rank than the Lord of Sipan. Their skeletons, surrounded by various ceramics found in their tombs, are softly lit and visible to the public. The Lord of Sipán, is a royal warrior and priest who died around A.D. 300.
The museum has three main sections. One floor is devoted to Moche artifacts, primarily ceramics. Below this is the floor which contains the stunning gold and silver treasures recovered from the tomb. On the lowest level is a reproduction of the tomb as it was when it was discovered. In one room there is actually an animated, life size reproduction of The Lord Of Sipan and his court.
I was more than impressed by the actual building as well as the artifacts displayed inside. The high standard of the gold and silver items together with the way all items and bodies were displayed as actually found was mind bending. This is one museum that everyone should have a chance to visit. It is said to rival that of the tomb of Tutankhamen.
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| The Museum |
The Old Lord of Sipan, buried in the first construction stage of the funerary platform, must have been the most ancient ruler of the Valley.
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| A mobile diorama of the king and subjects |
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| The room |
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| The bedroom |
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| Note the water outlet pipe |
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| Beach view |
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| Beach view |
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| A pale beached whale |
I had a very a very good fish and salad meal at the hotel that evening with wine included.
In the morning of 10 March we leftt the hotel at 0610 hours to travel to Cuenca in the mountains of Ecuador. Passing through the two borders, leaving Peru and entering Ecuador took us 30 minutes then we had to wait another hour for the truck to be cleared. By midday we were driving up into the mountains with it being cooler and the countryside being much greener.
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