A True Cultural Experience

I went on another Peruvian adventure this weekend, to Trujillo, a city north of Lima. Ana, the lady that hosts me, is from Trujillo so she gave me some (safe) places to eat and tips on what to see and do. I had a lot of fun and I feel like I experienced a lot of Peruvian culture.

Me at Chan Chan

The first two days we were there we went to different historical sites of the Moche and Chimu people. First we saw two different Huacas (the quechua word for temple) that are pretty destroyed, but there are still some walls up and some of the paintings were still intact with colors. I was amazed by how such an early civilization could build something so complex, we really haven’t advanced as much as we think. The other site we visited was Chan Chan, where the Moche people moved after their civilization was deteriorating.  I liked this better because it was nearly all still intact and was HUGE, a mini-city of sand walls with hundreds of different rooms. It was a maze to walk around, but thankfully there were little fish signs to guide us.

Another cultural event was the opening day of bullfighting in Trujillo. I didn’t realize that the guys in tight colorful pants, called matadors, actually “mata” aka kill the bulls. I guess I just never put two and two together. There were for matadors, from Peru, Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela, and they each killed a bull, but not without a little style.  Your perception of bullfighters is probably pretty accurate, they wave their little colored cape in front of the bull and tease it for about 20 minutes and then they have a sword and stab it into the bull, it falls over and dies, throwing up blood. I will admit seeing the first bull die was a bit horrifying, especially when they stabbed it in the head and scrambled its brains… But after the first one it became more entertaining and I was happy to be a part of a Peruvian culture experience, cheering on the matador and whoot whooting when he finally killed the bull.

Some of the bull’s final moments

Lastly, this past week was the first day of primavera (spring) and Trujillo has a huge spring festival put on by the Lion’s club. On Sunday, we went to the final hurrah-the parade and it was quite the finale—a three hour one.  The floats were all pretty elaborate, many covered in flowers for “spring.” (I have yet to believe that it’s spring as the weather is still windy, cold, and the sky gray.) My highlight of the parade was the Plaza Vea group (a superstore, like Walmart) that grabbed three of us gringas and made us dance with them. I even danced through a guy on stilts and got a bouquet of flowers at the end.  It was quite the experience and I’m excited to taste more of the culture Peru has to offer as I become more and more immersed in the culture.

Dancing through stilts

A bouquet of flowers I got from some of the people in the parade

Amor y Paz.