In which I come full circle.

Well, my time in el norte is at an end - I am sitting in the Cruz del Sur station in Chiclayo waiting for the bus to head back to Lima. I busted my hump to get a good amount of data collection done this week - I finally got back to work Monday morning after spending Thursday-Sunday on a mini vacay while waiting for permissions to come through.

As part of my mini vacay, on Friday I decided to visit the site of Tucume. In trying to figure out the best way to get there, I asked the owner of my hotel (a delightful lady in her early 60s) how much a taxi should cost. Here is a rough translation  of her response from the Spanish:

"A taxi? Bah! You are young! Take the bus! A taxi is for old people like me!"

Accordingly, I hopped into a microbus (she was right; it was easy and super cheap) and headed out to Tucume. The bus drops you off on the main road, about 2 km from the site. You can either take a moto or, if the day is especially fine, you can walk. So I walked. The first kilometer or so is through a small town, while the second is entirely through farmland. It was kind of awesome to just be strolling along in the middle of nowhere on a lovely sunny day.

View from the top of Purgatorio - see the little circle? You can stop there on the way up!

The site of Tucume is a huge, spread out complex of huacas - basically mound structures originally built out of adobe blocks that have been eroding away for centuries. The site is argued to be an important center for the Lambayeque (or Sican) culture and was also apparently used by their successors (Chimu, then Inca). There is a tiny (one-room) on site museum at the entrance and then you are free to walk around some of the trails and hike up one of the biggest mounds, Cerro Purgatorio. At the far end of the complex you can see the excavations with the sculptural reliefs (I don't remember making it that far last time, Gabi - you? It's pretty far from the entrance).

Huaca las Balsas

On top of Purgatorio I befriended a Colombian guy and his teenage daughter; they were wearing matching Colombian flag t-shirts. They had already traveled through Ecuador and were headed next to Lima. I don't know if my dad could've gotten me to wear matching t-shirts when I was 16, but if a multi-country vacation was the reward, I suspect I might have been willing to pay such a price. In any case, I took some pictures of them, and then they insisted taking some with me (and for me, as you can see), so I had a bit of a break from my day of self-portraits. I started to feel like I was photo bombing myself, but I figured unrelenting pictures of scenery with no faces in them can get a little old.

One of my new Colombian friends

All in all, I had a great visit to Tucume, and I bought (another) textile to add to my collection from their little gift shop. The weather was fab - a lovely sunny 76 degrees. The problem, however, with such a temperature is that you don't realize precisely how strong the sun is because you're not boiling hot. Consequently (and somewhat comically), my arms and one side of my neck got slightly pink. Why only one side of my neck? Because apparently I had my ponytail slung over the other shoulder for the entire day.

Funerary Mask @ Museo Nacional Sican

Saturday I revisited my old digs at the Museo Nacional Sican. It's somewhat of a production to get there from Lambayeque - a collectivo to Chiclayo, a taxi to the next collectivo station, a collectivo to Ferrenafe, and then a moto to the museum. None of it expensive or lengthy, just not much of a direct route. It was fun to see the museum again; the area around it is built up a bit more now. The museum there is famous for detailing the excavations of two elaborate tombs, one with a figure who was wearing a large golden mask adorned with the figure of a bat.


After running around being touristy, I decided to take a lazy Sunday at the hotel. I sink-washed a few clothes and then read a book out on my deck. As in, cover to cover. Hence, I unintentionally added some more pink to my arms because I didn't think to apply sunscreen until halfway through. Darn this comfortable climate!

Facade in Lambayeque

This week as I mentioned I have finally gotten back to work! Monday I went to USAT (Universidad Catolica Santa Toribio de Mogrovejo), where the material my friend Haagen excavated from the site of Morrope is stored. Gabi and I helped at the excavations at that site back in 2005, but it was still somewhat surreal to open the first box Monday morning and find my own handwriting on the labels. I've always counted that summer field season in Peru as the experience that solidified my desire to go to graduate school; I find it satisfyingly appropriate that I'm revisiting that material as I work now near the end of my graduate career.

The Morrope bones are generally in decent to pretty good shape; I barely managed to make it through the best of the lot in my time there this week. But, Cuzco (and my already booked flight) waits not for Emily, so it's back to Lima I go, where I will accept the hospitality of Alejandra's family before I head out again on Saturday!

All right - just about time to get on the bus. Here's hoping the Hallmark channel Luke Perry western they showed TWICE on the way up here isn't on the playlist for tonight.

In closing, I will wish my hubby a happy anniversary - three years ago today we got hitched! As I mentioned on FB, it's awesome to have a husband who understands that sometimes you need to spend your anniversary measuring dead people in Peru. :p

More Tucume

And even more Tucume

I forgot to mention - I also had dinner with Haagen and Raul (and all of  Haagen's students) on Monday night at one of my fav restaurants - Sorrento, where the empanadas are the size of your head! As tasty as I remember. Yum.