Brushed by the rolling surf swells of the Pacific Ocean, charming Trujillo sits nestled neatly between the verdant and fertile climbs of the Santa Catalina Valley in northern Peru. It’s a place awash with majestic and pompous colonial architecture, grandiose Spanish facades and elegant whitewashed homes, peppered with aromatic eateries, and alive with a confident population of Peruvian partiers and self-assured political types.

Start your Trujillo tour with your guide around the major sights peppering the city’s colonial core; from the glorious Cathedral adorning its central Plazas, to the various archaeology museums that abound throughout its streets. Then, why not scour the local markets and shoemakers, which are hailed as some of the most accomplished in all of Peru. And if you’re looking to break away from the urban fray, perhaps you can join the surfers on the shimmering sands and curling waves of nearby Huanchaco.

However, for all its internal historical and cultural character, Trujillo’s oldest ‘must sees’ undoubtedly exist on its peripheries; peppering the slithers of coastal desert all around. They come in the form of the sprawling adobe remnants of UNESCO-attested Chan Chan to the west, and the Huacas del Sol—a towering monolith of a site constructed by the Moche pre-Incans.