After breakfast in your Chiclayo hotel, you’ll tour several important archeological sites. First is Tucume and the Valley of the Pyramids, an important archaeological complex of the Lambayeque Culture who flourished between BC 1000 – 1350 AD. Tucume was the last capital of the Sican culture, which succeeded the Moche in 750 AD and succumbed to the Chimu in 1375. Archeologists believe that Tucume was built after the Sican burnt and abandoned their former capital of Batan Grande. This stunning landscape is best seen from Cerro Purgatorio, which rises in the midst of 26 adobe pyramids scattered throughout 400 acres of dry forest.

Then visit the extraordinary Royal Tombs of Sipan Museum in Lambayeque, which was built to look like a Moche pyramid. The museum holds radiant gold masks, scepters, jewelry and other objects of the royal Moche tombs discovered in the Huaca Rajada of Sipan.

Continue the tour with an excursion to the impressive Necropolis of Huaca Rajada, where the Old Lord of Sipan and the Lord of Sipan lay buried. Gold and semi-precious stones were unearthed here in the 1980s by Peruvian archaeologists led by Dr. Walter Alva. The recent discoveries and ongoing archeological excavations in northern Peru continue to shed light on the fascinating the Moche, Sican, and other pre-Inca cultures. After this day touring northern Peru, return to your Chiclayo hotel for the night.

After breakfast in your Trujillo hotel, you’ll head out on a Trujillo tour of some of the most famous Peruvian archeological finds in recent history. The tour includes a visit to the two most important Moche ceremonial centers, the Temple of the Sun, a huge terraced pyramid measuring approximately 43 m high (the tallest pyramid in the Americas), and the Temple of the Moon, the Moche political centre whose friezes of mystical images are believed to belong to a divinity of sacrifices. These adobe brick ruins boast intricately carved friezes and decorative work with rainbows, dragons, and beasts, some incredibly well-preserved.

Continue to Chan Chan, the ancient capital of the Chimu Kingdom, which reached its peak in the 15th century, many centuries after the collapse of the Moche culture, and not long before falling to the Incas. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage in 1986, this huge adobe city was the largest in pre-Colombian America, and its design reflects a strict political and social strategy marked by divisions into nine palaces forming autonomous units.

Have lunch in the seaside village of Huanchaco, known for its caballitos de totora, a small reed fishing boat that has been a traditional fisherman’s vessel for centuries. Return to your Trujillo hotel for the night.