The drive to Huanchaco took over twelve hours but we did have a stop around lunch time to visit a museum. In the town of Lambayeque we spent an hour being guided around the Museo Tumbas Reales de Sip?n (The Royal Tombs of Sip?n Museum). In 1987 a series of burial chambers where uncovered in the town of Sip?n and the pyramid shaped museum, modelled on the ruins where the burial chambers were found, holds the remains of a number of bodies and displays the copious amounts of gold and silver jewellery found in the tombs.
The museum was quite fantastic for a place dedicated to just one archaeological site. The pieces on show were all stunning, some of them the most amazing pieces of ancient art that I’d ever seen. The large necklaces with chunky gold plated sculptured pieces, the large fan shaped shell necklaces with thousands of tiny shells arranged in pretty patterns, the ornate masks, the intricate gold and turquoise ear pieces and the large gold nose pieces were all worth spending time to look at and marvel over. There were a few mummies as well, some recreated in the tombs as they were found, some the actual mummy arranged so it could be easily seen by visitors. A lot of money had obviously been spent making all the pieces clearly viewable, multiple spot lights with gel masks in place to highlight the shapes.
Once we were done looking around we walked out behind the museum to where Tranquilo was parked and we made dinner. The remaining afternoon was spent driving on to Huanchaco, a pleasant fishing town and seaside resort near the city of Trujillo. We drove into the evening and watched an excellent sunset, the sky turning from yellow to an intense burnt orange. The accommodation in Huanchaco was called Hostal Bracamonte and it was a nice place. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and it was good food even if it took a while to arrive. I had a plan to get up early in the morning so a quiet night was had.
