El Brujo and the Lady of Cao

El Brujo is a group of mounds on a bluff above the Pacific, occupied on and off for thousands of years. The oldest, Huaca Prieta, is a preceramic refuse mound far older than anything Moche. The one people come for is Huaca Cao Viejo, a stepped platform whose terrace walls carry friezes in red, yellow, black and white. In 2006 a burial was opened here containing a woman in her twenties, wrapped in layers of cotton, her forearms tattooed with serpents and spiders, buried with gold nose ornaments and ceremonial staffs. She is now shown in the museum built beside the site, and she reset assumptions about who held authority in Moche society.

What you actually see

• Huaca Cao Viejo - the terraced platform with its painted friezes still in place.
• Museo Cao - the purpose-built museum holding the woman known as the Señora de Cao.
• Huaca Prieta - a preceramic mound thousands of years older than the Moche buildings.
• The setting - open desert bluff with the Pacific breaking directly below.

When to go

Year-round on this dry coast, ideally in the morning before the sun is high, since there is no shade on the mound at all. Wind off the sea picks up through the afternoon and carries sand. The museum and site keep the same hours and close early, so leave Trujillo before nine if you are doing it as a half day.

Honest expectations

There is no useful public transport, so it is a taxi with waiting time or an organised tour, and the drive is over an hour each way for a site you will see in ninety minutes. The mummy is displayed in near darkness for conservation and photography is not allowed. Signage is largely in Spanish. Anyone expecting Chan Chan's scale will find this small.

Nearby

Chan Chan and the Moche pyramids lie south towards Trujillo; the sugar valleys are inland.