Sally Mallory, Tomb Raider

One of the most exciting parts of my trip to Trujillo was visiting the Moche valley. The Moche lived a long time ago, before the Incas made their mark on the Andes. The culture died out around 1,200 years ago, but you can still see where they lived. They were wonderful artists, making things like this portrait out of clay; and these ear ornaments. Erasmo and his mother took me right to the top of the Huaca de la Luna. In the distance you can see the Huaca del Sol, and a little bit of Trujillo. The huacas are a little bit like pyramids: one for the moon (Luna) and one for the Sun (sol). They say that it took 50 million adobe bricks to build the Huaca del Sol!

I was a bit scared to go down inside, because they've found lots of skeletons and National Geographic talks about people being sacrificed here. You never know, there might have been a curse or something! Erasmo's mom let me hold her hand in the scary parts. Each new generation of Moches made a new row of murals. Some of them were kind of spooky... there was a sort of Terminator dude in there killing people. It was really cool, though, like being in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

On the left is a picture explaining about the murals inside the courts. They also had all sorts of different pamphlets about the Moche culture, but I'm only reading at Level 22 in English. The pamphlets must have been at Level 40 or something like that, and they were in Spanish! You can read more about them in English here, but you might want to ask a grown-up to help you out. I had to!

Erasmo said that the King and Queen of Spain visited the huacas last year. That must have been cool! I wonder if they found it creepy too!