I can´t tell you how nice it is to get off a plane and see my luggage on the baggage carousel, and so started my love affair with Chiclayo. Then, our tour guides had a plaque with our name on it. It was looking good.

The city is much more modern than Iquitos – maybe by about 100 years. No river canoes with bunches of plantain.. it was cars, shopping centres and normal looking people. Had a lovely church in the Plaza, like most cities in Peru.

Our guide was a charming 21 year old called Orlando, who knew way more than he should about history for a lad of his age. Our driver Luis didn´t speak any Inglés, but we still managed to converse gently.

The two boys were very good with us, and obviously quite experienced in their work. We never opened our own car door, or carried our own luggage. It was 5 star service.

We stayed at the Gran Hotel, which according to Orlando is the best hotel in Chiclayo. We had a security guard out the front, and two restaurants. But, like many things Peruvian, it´s just pretty on the outside. Our toilet had a flushing issue, the paint was cracked on the walls and things were a bit grubby in some places. Coral and I didn´t really mind though, we were really happy for a hot shower and a laundry service.

Next day we toured 3 of Chiclayo´s fantastic museums. One of them is Peru´s best museum according to Orlando, and was certainly the best museum I´ve ever been in.

The Lords of Sipán are chiefs of a city which are assumed to by dynastical of the Moche people, a civilation which is pre-Inca. The first Lord´s tomb is the richest burial site discovered in the Western Hemisphere and the site was just a few miles east of the Chiclayo.

The Lords were buried with amazing stuff, and tonnes of it! Finely crafted gold artifacts and ceramics recovered from these tombs are display at the Museum of the Royal Tombs, which is the first museum we visited in Chiclayo.

The second museum was the showstopper though, The Museum of Sican. The three-story, six-million-dollar museum, contains by far the greatest intact discovery of gold artifacts in the Americas, is shaped like the pre-Columbian pyramid under which Peruvian archaeologists discovered this amazing tomb in 1987. No steps, just ramps!

This museum initially made me quite nervous because you cannot take cameras or bags into the museum, and there was no way I was locking into the car, since it´s not insured in a locked car. They have a checking room, but that made me nervous too. The theory is they don´t want people photographing the security installations, and if you do manage to break into an exhibit, they don´t want you carting it out in a bag. We were also checked over for weapons by two security guards.

It was mostly very dark inside, all the walls are painted black and the lights are focussed on each piece.

Descending through the galleries, we were able to see all the objects the Lords were buried with in the same sequence as the archeologists did. The archeologists did a fantastic job of piecing everything together too, because many of the works required significant restoration. 

There were hammered-gold sheets that cradled the lord’s head and rested on his eyes, nose, mouth and chin: bracelets strung with hundreds of turquoise, shell, and gold beads; a gold-and-silver scepter depieting a warrior and his nude prisoner; gold-and silver backflaps (sheets the Moche suspended from the back of their belts) inlaid with shell and semiprecious stones, depicting a figure with a large, ganged mouth holding a human head by the hair and a tumi, a sacrificial knife. Each object or jewel displays exquisite artistry and craftsmanship. Here are some things we saw:

Of course, these aren’t my photos, since I couldn’t take a camera in. 

The museum is is also a mausoleum. Both Lord’s remains, as well as those of two other excavated figures – an ancestor of the lord and a high priest – are in a wooden coffin as the final exhibit. The skeletons are surrounded by ceramics found in their tombs.

What is amazing is that the later skeleton is in worse condition than the earlier one. The later Lord also got lots more treasures in his grave. It is believed that as the civilation became more advanced, they also carried around the Lord a lot more, and he needed to do very little exercise. This meant that his bones weren´t as strong, and they´ve been crushed over time.