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| Municipal Band of Trujillo giving a welcoming concert... |
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| Little children performing a welcoming dance |
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| Port workers looking on with a rather quizzical glance |
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| Cute children - good enough to break any tourist's heart... |
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| Port equipment....in a desert like landscape |
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| Trujillo Church |
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| Municipal building with flags at half mast... |
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| Pizarro, honoured in a main street of Trujillo |
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| Trujillo Cathedral at Plaza de Armas |
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| Renovation of Trujillo's Cathedral with a replica of the Sistine Chapel ceiling painting |
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| Colouful buildings all around Trujillo |
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| Corner of Plaza de Armas |
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| Plaza de Armas Fountain |
All of Peru covers only 7% of the entire South American Landmass, but is the third largest nation.
Trujillo with the port of Salaverry, used to be a resting place for travellers on the road between Lima and Quito (now Ecuador). Trujillo was named after Francisco Pizarros birthplace in Spain after he directed Diego del Almagro to found the city and name it thus in 1536.
The city has retained an Andalusian style appearance, with Spanish colonial style buildings graced with overhanging wooden balconies, a great number of churches, and elegant plazas. Many lordly mansions of wealthy early Spanish families are preserved and turned into banks, museums or galleries.
It is a gateway to verdant valleys fed by streams originating in the Andean foothills, and to a plethora of archaeological sites, such as the Imperial City of Chan Chan where 35,000 Incas used to live before the Spaniards invaded, and such as the Temple of the Sun and Moon (the largest pre Colombian structure in the Americas) and a number of ancient pyramids amongst approximately 2,000 more archaeological digs.
Chimu, Moche, Incas have lived and thrived here between 500 and 1000 AD, possibly longer and earlier, but they abandoned the site before Pizarro arrived, possibly due to severe draught conditions around the end of that era, which made it impossible to sustain agriculture.
Trujillo was the first city in Peru to declare independence from Spain in 1820 (not that long ago) and 100 years later in 1920, the longest standing political Party, APRA, was founded here.
Trujillos national flag flew at half mast today above all public buildings: A bus, driving along the Pan American Highway during the night, with over 50 people aboard had driven off a hundred meter cliff, killing about 48 passengers upon impact . Normally two drivers man a bus cab during long distance travel, this time there was only one. He had fallen asleep.
