Transfer to the hotel in Lima.

The discovery by Dr. Ruth Shady of the ruins of the city of Caral in 1994 revealed the existence of a 5,000 year-old sedentary culture that predated that of Chavin – previously held to be the Peruvian “mother culture” – and seemed to demonstrate that the world’s archaeological community had been wrong to assume that war was the driving force behind the development of cities: Caral had no enemies and therefore no fortifications and it seems to have been created as an economic entity.
Descendants of hunter gatherers, they farmed the land, fished with cotton nets and constructed monumental buildings which were the contemporaries of those of Mesopotamia and the first pyramids of Egypt.

We continue to the city of Trujillo (about 380 km), visiting the archaeological site of Sechin along the way. The temple at Sechin was built around 1500 BC from stone and mud brick. What makes this site unique is the series of stone tablets which decorate the temple walls with carvings of warriors and their victims.

Trujillo was founded in 1534 and named after the birthplace of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro. The central plaza and its surrounding mansions with their Andalucia-style balconies still conserve the city’s colonial and republican heritage.
A tour of the colonial city, including the Plaza de Armas, the cathedral (built in 1666), the regional university (founded in 1824) and some of the city's many important colonial mansions.
A visit to the adobe city of Chan Chan, now famous as the largest mud brick city in the Americas: Once the capital of the Chimú Empire, the city covers an area of 28 square kilometres and is divided into nine zones, each with its own palace, plazas and temples.

Huanchaco is a small fishing port popular with Peruvian surfers, where the local people still use traditional totora reed rafts to fish.

A few kilometres south of Trujillo stand the remains of the enormous pyramids of the Sun and the Moon (known as “huacas”, or temples in Quechua). They were built by the Moche culture and were excavated by a team from the University of Trujillo in 1992. The current excavations at the Temple of the Moon have so far unearthed six platforms, each once dedicated to a Moche ruler. Archaeologists have discovered brightly-coloured murals of great beauty and artistry at the site.

During the Mochica occupation (700 BC) the Brujo complex became the religious capital of the fiefdoms of the Chicama valley. But there also existed other minor religious and administrative centers in the region - each valley had a ceremonial center like the El Brujo complex.

Examples of the southern Moche culture can be found at the Sun and Moon pyramids in the Moche valley. The temples were constructed in typical style with high flat-topped pyramids with terraces on the four sides and a large ceremonial plaza. At the El Brujo pyramid we find high relief representations of human sacrifices, ritual battles, etc. The beautiful murals feature stylized fish and geometrical designs.

Royal Tombs: This impressive modern structure houses exhibits from the Moche, Lambayeque, Chimú and Vicus cultures, as well as a fine collection of art and gold objects from Sipan and Lambayeque. The museum also contains a magnificent replica of the tomb as it was when first discovered in 1987.
33 km north of Chiclayo one finds one of the most important archaeological sites in northern Peru. Tucume was a city built more than 1000 years ago. A short walk to the viewing point provides a panoramic view of the 26 pyramids, mud brick platforms and the city wall surrounding the residential areas flanking a ceremonial centre and a cemetery. The pyramid is the largest adobe construction in the world. It is 700 m long and 280 m wide and about 30 m high. There is a small museum at the site which contains architectural reconstructions, photographs and drawings.
A short distance from the city of Chiclayo, the imposing ruins of Sipan (“house of the moon” in the Moche language) were first excavated in 1987 and the funerary artifacts found are among the finest examples of pre-Columbian art ever discovered. The tomb is at least 1800 years old. The so-called "Lord of Sipan", the remains of a priest found adorned with gold and surrounded with ceramics and other treasures, was the first tomb from the Moche culture ever to be found intact by archaeologists. The gold objects found include earrings, bracelets, and breastplates, all decorated with semi-precious stones such as turquoise and lapis lazuli. In 1989 another tomb was found intact which contained gold and ceramics even older than those found in the first tomb, along with the remains of a shaman. We will visit both tombs and gain a full understanding of this spectacular discovery.

From Trujillo we drive to the city of Chiclayo, which is renowned for the many surrounding archaeological sites of pre-Inca cultures. We will visit the pyramids of Tucume, the tomb of the Lord of Sipan – one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries of the 20th century - and the excellent Bruning Museum.