Huacas del Sol y de la Luna : experiencing existential tourism

Visiting Huacas del Sol y de la Luna represents a unique and comforting experience. Unique, because for the past 12 years, a project of excavation, preservation and social utility has been conducted. This project takes place in a program which aims at supporting a prolonged operation and to carry on works, from an alliance between an academic organization and the private company. Comforting, from the monumental quality, ways and original colors through which this Moche temple shines and takes us in the heart of past time and takes us to imagine its complex ideology, while bringing so many mysteries out that still need to be solved.

The Huacas del Sol y de la Luna are located in the Capital of the Moche Culture, and thus, is a necessary stop in a trip going through Trujillo or the Moche Road. The site is easy to access, it's located at only 15 minutes (8 km) away from downtown of the Capital of the Primavera, in the Moche Valley. Before arriving to the Huacas, you go through the Campiña de Moche, the only rural area where inhabitants still devote themselves to agriculture, stock breeding, handicrafts, and the typical gastronomy of this place, despite Trujillo's modernity.

A bit of history...

The Huaca del Sol has been working as a political center, and the Huaca de la Luna as a ceremony center. Between these two, there is the Urban Area, made up of houses, large avenues, alleys and squares. These components confirm the great political, religious, economic and social organization of the Moche.

Nowadays, more than 60.000 tourists visit Huaca de la Luna each year! During the visit, you may admire relief and mural paintings allusive to the " Degollador God" or "Aia-paec", and walk through courtyards and ceremony areas aged more than 1.500 years.

In this place, it is assumed that human sacrifices were offered. Physical evidences (skeletons) have been found in the pyramid. The Moche iconography shows ritual scenes, battles between warriors, where defeated men where brought to the temple to be sacrificed and to collect blood, which is the symbol of fertility and renovation of their power. The people would not attend these sacrifice ceremonies. There were reserved to the priests who governed the city at that time.

The Huaca de la Luna is made up of six superimposed buildings, each of these being totally decorated, built and used at different times. The north area is one of the most important ones because it gathers three elements:

• the temple's spread out façade,
• the largest ceremony area for the collective ceremonies and,
• the slope which unifies this area with the principal platform of the temple.

On the façade, a series of characters can be observed, such as the mountains goddess with plaits ending as a condor's head, a snake, foxes, fishermen, gigantic spiders holding ceremony knives, ceremony characters or officiants. Each drawing can be interpreted according to the water worship and the soil's fertility worship.

Management model

For more than 12 years, an archeological project has been conducted in the Huaca de la Luna. Nowadays, an alliance has been forged between the National University of Trujillo, the National Institute for Culture, the Backus Foundation, the Provincial Council of Trujillo, the World Monuments Fund, the Huacas employers' organization of the Moche Valley, etc.

Advices for the visit

• The visit hours are from 9.00 AM to 4.00 PM every day (Sundays and holidays included).
• Easy to access with vans or taxis, from the downtown.
• Guides organize the visit of the tourist site.
• After purchasing tickets, visitors will be taken to a video room, and after 15 minutes, you will be starting the visit with the guide. This service is included in the ticket.
• The tour takes approximately an hour and fifteen minutes.
• The site offers the following services: parking, sanitary services, cafeteria, safe, phones, souvenir and handicraft shops.
• Shuttle service between downtown and the site.
• During the tour, you may observe the excavations and the site's conservation process.

Moche road

From the Huaca de la Luna archeological project, institutions, universities and firms who take part in its development, created an alliance to coordinate actions and to create the MOCHE ROAD. This road includes Cerro Vicús and Loma Negra to Piura, Sipán and Pampa Grande to Lambayeque, San José de Moro to Chepen, Dos Cabezas to Jequetepeque, El Brujo to Chicama, Huacas del Sol y de la Luna and the city of Galindo to Moche, Guadalupito to Santa and Pañamarca in the Nepeña valley, just to mention the most important ones. The road includes also the Bruning National Museum and the Tombas Reales de Sipán to Lambayeque, as well as the Casinelli private Museum and the Archeological Museum of the National University of Trujillo.

Our country has an ancestral cultural heritage supremely rich and varied. Any Peruvian has the duty to preserve it and to make it known.

Tourism Promotion
Proy. Huaca de la Luna

Author : Lic. Claudia V Burga Casanova

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