Tucume Pyramids & Royal Tombs Of Sipan Museum

The two museums visited on this trip are outstanding. A superb opportunity to learn about some of the key ingredients in the cauldron of civilizations represented in Peru. The artifacts and design of these facilities is top notch (with a slight criticism that the Sipan Museum should have had English as well as Spanish, just like the Tucume museum did). Also, our tour guide was highly knowledgeable and insightful about these civilizations and how they were governed. She helped navigate us to the most important exhibits and points of interest in these places. My complaint is that from the website description, it was not clear that 95% of the time of this tour (not including travel time) was going to be spent in the two museums. I fully expected that to be the case for the Sipan Museum, since they have gathered and beautifully displayed hundreds of amazing memorabilia and mummies there, and there's not nearly as much to see at the excavation site itself. However, the description indicates that we would visit the Tucume pyramids (or at least some of them), and mentions an optional visit to the Grand Plaza. In fact, the only opportunity to see the ruins themselves is to walk as we did to an overlook of the pyramids and the sacred mountain to which the Lambayeque worshipped. I was thus disappointed that we did not have any chance on this tour to see the actual places displayed in the Tucume museum. Our guide explained that would require a full-day tour, versus the five hours for our trip. But that's not the point. The tour description needs to make this clear so there is no chance for disappointment like mine. I will also say that trip - at over $100 per person for two - is pricey. You could take an Uber or taxi to these sites and tour the museums for a fraction of that cost, and navigate your way around the museums on your own. Though not as efficient as doing do so with an expert guide, you would still learn about these fascinating periods of Peruvian history, and have more than enough left over for several nice meals in Chiclayo.