Touring Northern Peru, it was a good week!

Sunset in Macora, sweeeeet!

Mancora, beach, sun and loads of fun!  We, my traveling partner Julia and I, spent four days on the beach.  I know, the general beach activity is nothing, well not so this time.  We did spend alot of time on the beach, reading and doing nothing, we also walked down the beach 6 km to get a great view of the sunset, took surf lessons (I stood, Julia as well!), checked out a sweet lagoon full of flamingos and ate.  That something right?  The quote of the four days came from Julia when she asked me, while sitting on the beach ¨Hobbit, what altitude do you think we are at?¨ I know, the Swedes!!  In all fairness, we played soccer and she kicked my ass!!  It was a relaxing four days, unlike Montanita in Ecuador.  We did find a great reggae bar and spent most of our evenings there.

Top of the pyramid

But, it was time to move on and we headed south to Chiclayo.  Not the best choice of destinations, but we made the best out of it.  We arrived early morning and slept, then headed to Sipan, a pre-Incian pyramid.  Wasn´t that exciting, so we broke a few rules.  First we didn´t rest in the designated "Area of Rest."  For real, there was a sign that said that, wierd.  The site is continually being excavated, we decided to take a closer look and climbed into one of the ecavations, which was actually pretty cool.  We then proceded to climb up one of the pyramids where the archeologists had opened a hole in the wall and checked that out.  Our final bad deed was to climb to the top of the other pyramid and check out the amazing view!!  Well worth it!

Local woman spinning wool

Back to Chiclayo, one more day and Julia and I were to part ways, what to do?  How about a market and the beach - surprise!!!  So, we get up and goto the market.  The cool thing about this market was that alot of the vendors where super nice and were letting us try crazy fruits that we had never heard of, some good, some interesting.  And then we proceeded to have the worst beach experience of all time.  We get to this beach and there are about a million people on it.  We ate the worst lunch ever and strolled the beach in awe of the humanity!!  All we wanted to do is relax on the beach and read, not gonna happen.  We caught a ride back to town, found a nice bench and watched life pass by, it was great!!

Guinea Pig pen in an ancient house

Fortress wall

Well, it was time to say farwell to the best traveling partner I have had yet, sorry folks, can´t lie. (Ish you will always be a favorite, just remeber who wept and what happened!)  I was off to Chachapoyas and she was off to Cusco, via Lima.  Hopefully our paths will cross again!  I went to Chachapoyas to see Kuelp, a pre-Incian fort, but found much more!!  The first day I went to Kuelp, it is a fortress set on top of a mountain ridge, the Inca had serious issues conquering the Chachapoya.  The fortress is huge and produced breath taking views of the valley and surrounding mountains.  The tour guide spoke english like a recorded message you get when you call the phone company, very robotic and boring. This guy took boring tour to the a whole new level.  It became hilarious after awhile!

Gotca

The next day I visited a waterfall called Gocta.  It is one of the highest waterfalls in the world.  It was a total of a six hour trek.  We went to the top fall first, sweaty and tired, standing next to the falls soaked us and it felt amazing!  We then went to the bottom of the falls and found the valley to be lush and cool.  This is one of my favorite places of all time!!

Cliff dwellings, some sketchy trekking!!

The next day, not as exciting, we visted some tombs on the side of a cliff.  Scary, but not exciting.  Well that was it for Chacapoyas, it was now time to make my way to Cusco.  How to get there, as soon as possible?  Plane, yes, I cheated and bought a plane ticket.  This morning I flew from Trujillo to Cusco.  I did spend a day in Trujillo though.  No, I didn´t go to the famous ruins known as Chan Chan.  Instead I sat on the beach, shocker!  I leave tommorow for Machu Picchu, on a route I have never taken.  I´m very excited about it and can´t wait to see how it turns out!  Time to go, take care!!