'Cat Chronicles - Blog 3 - Allie Ross
.....four Bobcat student-athletes provide a cooperative blog from their own perspective on the adventures they encounter studying abroad this summer.
When we arrived everyone was thinking we would be in a quaint beach town with rolling waves and palm trees, but it was most definitely not. It turns out that Trujillo is the second biggest city in Peru and is known as being the most dangerous. The biggest thing that sets it apart from the cities we have visited so far is that they get very few tourists here, so as a group of young Americans, we really stand out.
We spent our first day here exploring the iconic city center which is filled with dozens of buildings that were once royal palaces after the Spanish conquest in the 1500s. They have been kept up immaculately and many are painted in rich blues, yellows and reds.
After getting our city fix, we all caught a cab to a smaller beach town called Huanchaco and were able to spend two days there learning about the area and discovering its history.
Our professor set us up with a little sand art contest one afternoon, taking themes that we learned from the ancient cultures of the area and creating abstract compositions in the sand. Shortly after we got started, we started to hear sirens and soon several cops were running towards us. Surely we couldn't be doing anything wrong? The cops spoke hurried Spanish and sounded quite urgent about something, although admittedly I had no idea what they were saying, I was just playing in the sand!
Just as anyone would expect, we all panicked a little, then packed up everything to head to higher ground.
The town of Huanchaco is situated between the coast and a large bluff, so we made our way up a long staircase to the top of the bluff to wait out the storm. There were many people up there with us, although no one seemed as anxious about the whole ordeal as we were. We had our cameras out and ready, and were pointing out any waves that were bigger than the rest.
Before too long, no tsunami to be seen, people started heading back down into town, so we followed, a little disappointed that nothing had really happened. At dinner that evening, someone broke the news to us; it was only a drill. That explains why no one else really seemed to care at all. We just had a little bit get lost in translation!
After a few days in Trujillo and Huanchaco we took a long bus ride to Chiclayo, a town farther north in Peru, which is home to the ancient Sicán culture, which was present from roughly 750 AD through 1,300 AD in the area. The culture created vast adobe brick cities with large temples and burial palaces, called Huacas.
We went out to explore the ancient city of Sipán and were struck by the sight of 25+ adobe Huacas scattering the desert landscape. The adobe bricks erode away with every rain storm, and there is currently very little funding for preservation or restoration projects. We had to imagine how it could have been when the temples were 30 or 40 meters tall.
The tomb of the Sipán Lord is known to be like the King Tutankhamen of the Americas. The tomb was never found by grave robbers, and was discovered in 1987 by archaeologists, all astonished by the extravagance of the burial and the jewelry and adornments buried with the body, indicating that he was of the highest rank. The objects that have been uncovered from the tomb are absolutely stunning. We saw many hand crafted gold jewelry pieces and adornments, as well as a vast array of ancient pottery.
It has been really interesting to see how the ancient cultures of Peru have blended and changed over time, and I have enjoyed comparing them to modern Peru, and our culture back to home in the U.S.
We have a few more days in Lima scheduled with our first professor, who emphasizes culture and history, before heading south to Santiago, Chile next week, where we meet with our second professor to study modern architecture and look at cities through the lens of urban design. I look forward to exploring more in the coming week!
Archived Blogs
Blog 1 - Allison Ross - Machu Picchu
Blog 2 - Danielle Muri - Welcome to Florence
