The Moche culture, which prospered from around AD 1 to 700, dominated several valleys on Peru’s northern coast long before the famous Inca empire appeared in the country. The Moche left an especially vivid artistic legacy, particularly in their pottery and metallurgy. A series of Moche centers dating from about AD 300 to 550 administered Peru’s northern valleys, including Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna (Pyramids of the Sun and Moon) in the Trujillo Valley. These truncated mud pyramids lie on the south bank of the Rio Moche, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) southeast of Trujillo by way of a rough road, and form part of the increasingly well-known Moche Route , where travellers can explore this fascinating historical legacy along the northern coastal desert. Huaca de La Luna and Huaca del Sol  The Huacas are terraced adobe mounds that likely complemented each other, with Huaca del Sol serving an administrative function and Huaca de la Luna a religious one. The Huaca del Sol is the single largest Pre-Columbian structure in Peru. The smaller Huaca de la Luna is about 500 meters away across the open desert. Although less impressive in size than the Huaca del Sol, the Huaca de la Luna has yielded many more artifacts. Dozens of pottery shards lie around its open area, and the pyramid is riddled with rooms which once contained the Moche’s signature ceramics, precious metals, and polychrome friezes. Builders employed an estimated 50 million adobe bricks to bury earlier structures and create platforms for new ones. Some 10,000 people may have lived and produced a wide array of crafts in the plain separating the Huacas, the settlement’s most imposing structures. A Mud Construction My first impression of the complex from the outside was underwhelming: it looked, at first sight, like a pile of pyramid-shaped mud! Hardly