A friend of mine, Michael, is down in Peru and so we met up to go to Trujillo, about 9 hours north of Lima.
We visited a small temple complex called La Huaca de la Esmerelda today, which was so off the beaten track that we found it by accident. We were on the bus, trying to get to an obscure museum in the basement of a gas station, when it occurred to me that we had passed it. I got off the bus, and noticed a sign for a church, which we went to since it could be interesting.
At the church, which was closed and not very interesting, we saw a sign that said “Huaca La Esmerelda 350m”. So we wandered through a sketchy part of town, which we only afterwards read about in the guidebook that was home to a higher than average number of thefts, and finally found a random temple.
The temple was fairly small, but the highlight was not the temple or the history or designs. The highlight was the fact that, since every archaeological site in Peru is required by law to house a mating pair of Peruvian hairless dogs, this temple happened to have two-week old wrinkly, hairless puppies!
Adventures in Peruvia 