Chachapoyan Road Stories - Kuelap and beyond

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Day 257 Sunday 24^th June

Today is all about filling in time till our 9.00pm bus, so we did not check out till 1.00pm and asked the hotel to mind our bags. Then it was a fruitless walk around, but we did achieve in getting money out with our Mastercard no problem, I think that it is just pot luck if the ATMs have money and if on that day they want to accept your card. After aimlessly wandering we headed back to the hotel to sit in the dining area and watch the football on TV and a bit of reading.

For dinner we headed out a bit early and had an early feed at Romana restaurant along with a couple of beers to help us sleep on the bus. We wandered back to our hotel and spent another hour killing time till 8 when we got a taxi down to the Movil Tours terminal. This bus company is one of the better in Peru and it straight away this was evident in the book in procedure where we had to book our bags in at a separate counter and then had to go through a proper security check to board the bus. Our bus had “semi Cama” (Semi bed) seats which sounds great except that all it really means is the seat in front can recline till it traps your legs. We just both hate overnight buses and have been lucky to avoid them for most of this trip, but unfortunately for this trip we just couldn’t avoid it. Our bus took off at a bit after 9 and at least this bus didn’t stop too much and our driver seemed to keep the speed down so it was a fairly safe journey. We settled down for a long sleepless journey.



Day 258 Monday 25^th June

We caught a few minutes worth of snoozing but otherwise were awake all night. Shortly before 6am the bus made it into Chachapoyas and we were dumped on the road outside the bus terminal in a light rain. It would have been nice to have been dropped off inside the terminal where it was nice and dry but we had to struggle with all our luggage trying not to drop them in a puddle. Got over to the dry ground in the drive and then had a bus trying to run us over as we got our stuff together. Finally hauled all our crap into the terminal waiting room where we opted to stay till the sun came up before looking for a hotel. A lot of hotels and hostels are open 24 hours but we thought we would wait till 7 when at least there might be more movement. At 7 we hoisted our bags on and walked the 8 blocks downtown to the hotel Casa Vieja where we got a great room for 110 Sol ($44) a night. The room was not quite ready so we went to the café next door which serves the hotel’s breakfast and turned out to be a great food option.

We got into the room about 8.30am and just crawled into bed and went straight to sleep till 1.00pm when we decided we really should go for a walk and check out the town. The shops in Peru seem to close at lunch till about 4.00pm, so there was not much to look at, but it looks like a pretty little town. On the plaza we found a travel agent and booked two different tours for the next two days. For dinner we picked up a meal at a restaurant called Romana, which we soon discovered was a franchise of the one we had eaten at in Chiclayo, except at this one the food was less than ordinary.



Day 259 Tuesday 26^th June

Up early for our tour today and was at a table in the café next door at 7 in the morning just as they were opening. The tour agency was on the other side of the block from the hotel and so it was easy for us to be there 10 minutes early for our 8.30 tour. We had booked two tours with this mob, one today to a Chachapoyan fortress known as Kueleb and another for tomorrow to a cave and some ancient sarcophaguses, but when we turned up in the morning they had decided to switch our tours around. Didn’t really bother us that much other than them telling us they did it because “this way it will be better for you”, when in fact we knew it suited them better to do it that way.

On our tour today was another French couple who were then going to head off on a 3 day hike at the conclusion of the day’s tour. Our guide, was a really nice guy but he struggled with the English and his explanations were not that thorough, and in fact he never even gave us his name. Our vehicle for the day was a minivan similar to a Tarago that would normally seat about 8 people but it only had us four in the back. Chachapoyas sits at about 2500 metres and is located in the heart of the Andes, but in one of the more lower altitude parts. Our tour started with a steep descent out of town down to a river that cuts through a dramatic rocky gorge. We would travel across this gorge again tomorrow and the following day and we would never tire of seeing this incredible scenery. The worst aspect was the tight long hairpin turns as we descended and then ascended on the other side, where our van seemed to spend more time on the wrong side of the road, hugging the cliff or both at the same time.

After driving for an hour we came to the small twin towns of Luya and Lamud where we had to stop to buy entrance tickets and gave us the chance to have a toilet stop. As I hopped out of the van a guy came up and shook my hand and gave me a bit of a spiel in Spanish which of course I didn’t understand, before I took off to the toilets with Shelley. On our return the guy had been waiting with the French couple (who could speak Spanish) and he then took us for a tour of the local church. He opened the place up and took us into the storage rooms where they store their costumes (some real fancy frocks these priests wear) turned all the lights on and gave us what appeared to be a great talk about the history of the church. Sort of guessed the guy was doing it for payment but when the French couple didn’t tip him (and they had been chatting to him all along) we sort of figured why should we. We shook hands as we boarded our van and he wandered off like a dejected child; sorry mate we just didn’t know what to pay you.

From Lamud we drove higher into the mountains till we came to an empty paddock where we hopped out and walked down a short muddy path to our first site of the day, the Caverna de Quiocta. This is a 600 metre long cave into the hillside that was only discovered in 2004 by a local shaman who quickly proclaimed the place sacred and that the waters inside the cave will heal all ill’s. The place has yet to be fully investigated by archaeologists but people do believe that the ancient Chachapoyans who lived here thought the stream that flows through the cave had special healing properties. The fact that the front part of the cave was a cemetery and is full of bones sort of proves that maybe the waters weren’t as good as they thought. Having to walk through a boneyard on the way to the water would certainly have put doubt into your mind, sort of like having a coffin salesman in the reception of your local doctors. Because a stream flowed through the cave the place was muddy, like I mean “the battle of the somme” type mud, if we weren’t slipping in it we were stuck in it. We had grabbed our torch before leaving and our guide had a huge lantern with a car battery around his shoulder so we had at least some light, otherwise it could have been a real nightmare. Along the way we saw heaps of bones and lots of discoloured and damaged Stalactites and stalagmites, which I guess was a good sign that they place had been well used over the centuries. Nothing was anywhere remotely as nice as what you would see in Australia like at Jenolan or Wombeyan caves, but it was interesting and other than the mud was a good walk. When we got to within 100 metres of the source of the water we had to stop as it was off limits to tourists and can only be visited by the Shaman and locals. We then had to turn around and trudge back through the mud and all the way cursing why we had worn our freshly cleaned pants today.

Outside a light rain was falling that dogged us all day so we were glad to get back to the van and head off to a small village where we stopped for lunch. We got a feed at a small stall in a market that was closed for the day, and considering the establishment, it was a pretty good lunch. The only problem with the place was that they didn’t have a toilet and we had to run across the road to a convenience store and use their personnel toilet.

In the afternoon we headed deeper into the mountains till we arrived at the highlight of the day, the funerary sarcophagi at Karajia. As I may have stated before, Peru was once ruled by dozens of different civilisations before the brief coming of the Incans. The Chachapoyans were one such group that dominated this area from 800AD till the Incans came in 1470. The Chachapoyans were a warrior type civilisation that was fragmented into many different groups that basically battled each other until an outside threat appeared, and then they would unite, and once the threat was gone would go back to fighting each other over food, water, land, etc. Because they lived up in these Andes highlands the Incans called them Chachapoyans, which loosely translates (Spanish bastadization of Incan) as “People of the clouds”. Tomorrow we would visit there crowning glory at Kuelap, but today we were off to see some of their dead. To get to the sarcophagi we had to walk a kilometre down a steep extremely muddy steep trail. The mud in the cave had been a combination of sticky and slippery but this trail was all slippery and it took all our efforts to stay upright. We had countless close calls and not so close calls so by the time we got to the bottom we were covered in mud, but it was well worth the effort.

The sarcophagi are mud representations of the important people they hold and are perched high up on a cliff face that overlooks a valley that was once a site of a Chachapoyan village. This cliff face was once thought to contain dozens of such sarcophagi but sadly only six complete examples exist today. Archaeologists are still unsure how they were perched so high up on a cliff, but know that each one contains a body that has been squashed down into a foetal position and then had a high pointy mud sarcophagi constructed around them. The existing ones are thought to be about a thousand years old, which is remarkable considering how the others have succumb to grave robbers and the elements. There was nothing huge, or elaborate about this historic site but it was still really amazing to see this thin slice of a lost civilisation, and it turned out to be a real “wow” place for us. We had the whole place to ourselves and it was kind of eerie I guess seeing these tombs still gazing over a town they outlasted, it was well worth the effort seeing.

The hard part of the day was trudging back up the hill whilst trying not to slip over. The industrious locals were hanging around offering us a lift back on a horse, but we both felt safer on our slippery feet rather than the four slippery hoofs of a horse. If the locals had been smarted they should be renting gumboots or offering to clean your boots at the top, both of which we would have paid a fortune for.

To finish the day we were taken on a long drive out to the Valle de Huaylla Belen, which was where the French couple were starting their trek. It was a long drive of over an hour along a very, very rough dirt/mud road, and in the end we were stopped about a kilometre short of the destination by the a huge mud hole. The views of the valley were nothing short of spectacular and our guide kept trying to talk us into joining them on the trek, but the thought of staying in a small cabin with no power and water in this cold corner of the world made it easy for us to say no. We said goodbye to the French couple and our guide and jumped back into the van for our return journey.

Along the way our driver got a call on his mobile and we heard the word “Papa” a few times so guessed he was speaking to his Dad. Just as it went dark outside we stopped in a small village and our driver told us in Spanish that he was sorry but we would be delayed a minute. This turned into “los siento, dos minutos” and then after about five minutes he asked if it was okay if we would take on some passengers. “yeah, no worries”, as we were the only ones in the van, that’s fine. All of a sudden stuff was being piled onto the roof and into the back of the van and in a wink of an eye we were filled to the roof and beyond. It soon became clear that we were moving his parents, and nothing says “moving house” more than piles of loose clothes hangers. After nearly an hour of filling the van Dad sporting a huge white hat and Mum clutching a huge chicken boarded and we were underway.

Five minutes down the road something fell off the roof so we had to stop to retrieve it before getting underway again, and this was the routine for the next two hours. At one of our stops, while Junior was struggling on the roof trying to tie everything down, Dad was running around trying to use his mobile phone as a torch, and then Ma let go of the chicken which decided to make an escape and was flapping all over the place. After having a chook piss all over our bags I thought it might be safer to hop outside and help with the tying down of the luggage on the roof and left Shelley to deal with our feathered friend. Soon discovered why our driver kept loosing things as it was a mini mountain of bags topped with a spare tyre held down with a crappy net. After about ten minutes of struggling everything was back in its place and we were underway again. The final leg of the journey was down into and then out of the deep gorge we crossed in the morning, and so once again we were being flung from one side of the van to the other, but at least in the dark we couldn’t see just how close to the edge we were. Years of driving with my Dad had given me nerves of steel so I wasn’t too worried except that I knew that Ma and Pa in the front were cradling a large LPG cylinder, but I guess if we were to go over a cliff it would give us that spectacular Hollywood fireball finish. Finally got back to Cachapoyas at 8.30 and before dropping us off we had to unload Mum and Dad who couldn’t stop thanking us. After our families have helped us out so much with shifting out of our house we couldn’t have possibly said no, it was kind of a tiny little pay back and made us realise how lucky we are to have such great family who have helped us to get here.

We were eventually dropped back at the plaza where we could walk back to our hotel. It was after 9 by this stage and thankfully the café next door was open so we could pick up a bite to eat before crashing as tomorrow was going to be another long day. The café staff are so nice and didn’t even blink an eye when two muddy Australians with an inch of mud all over their boots walked in.



Day 260 Wednesday 27^th June

Up early again and at the tour office by 8.40am today this tour has four other people all from Peru and our guide Augusto a very intense but lovely person. As Scott mention yesterday we would be taking the same windy road down into the gorge but at the bottom we turned left and then began to ascend up the mountain, this journey is very long to get to Kuelap. We stopped at a small town called Maria (I think) where we could pre-order lunch for later that day, but we decided just to have fruit as our café had served us a big breakfast. The others all ordered the Cuy (guinea pig) and then after all having a toilet stop we were back on the road winding up the mountains. On the way the guide told us the government was thinking of putting in a cable car to the site but at this stage there are not enough tourists to justify the cost. A cable car sounds great but it is a massive distance and height I think the journey would have to be in stages and would definitely be scary. So it leaves two options to get to Kuelap the road we were taking or a zig zagged path that leaves from Tingo village and apparently takes about 6 hours hiking 1200metres up which is very slippery. As we got closer we could see a flat mesa and part of the wall in the distance it is a dramatic location. I think that our choice of arriving was the best as it drops you at the carpark and from there it is a short walk up to the fortress.

The fortress of Kuelap is at 3,100 metres so it is perched high up and as you approach it is amazing to see how huge the walls are at about 12m tall and the total size of the site which is 700m long. We walked around past the grand entrance and stood in awe at how impressive this place is and its age which was started in 800 AD and work continued for about 700 years. The large sandstone blocks were quarried about one weeks walk from the site so it must have taken incredible man power to achieve as they didn’t use horses, carts or even the wheel. The site apparently contains more than a million blocks and exceeds the number of stones in the great Pyramids of Giza. Having been fortunate to have seen that structure as well, we know that the blocks at Giza are a lot larger and this site was constructed over a longer period of time, but that in no way takes away from the enormity of this place, considering the location this place is staggering. We entered at one of the lesser gates and here we could see the remains of the circular houses, there were approximately 3000 people living within these walls and 400 houses. In the centre of the houses are holes in the ground which were where the remains of people were found so the living had the dead buried in their homes. It is a strange concept for us who in the west have a fear of dying, but maybe this lack of fear made them better warriors. On the next level there was a tower that overlooked the valley and river below giving them a clear view of any attackers, their main enemy till the Incas arrived were head shrinking jungle tribes. Our guide very quietly yet with great intensity said that he did not like head shrinking at all, which made you feel that they were still around and maybe we should be looking over our shoulders. At a section of wall near here the guide removed a stone which revealed human remains inside almost like fill in the great walls, again living with the dead

The next section was a largely restored section that Alberto Fujimori the former Peruvian President had started and actually had wanted to rebuild the whole site not in archeologically way, but from scratch. Thankfully people persuaded him that tourists wanted to see the real thing and not a Disneyland replica so only a small section exists although there are large sections that have been restored by archaeologists. After here we moved up to a structure called El Tintero (Inkpot) that is the shape of an inverted cone it is here that the bodies of animal sacrifices were found in an underground chamber leading people to believe it was a religious building. The last section is where a well was found that contained the bodies of a hundred Chachapoyans. The story is that the Chachapoyans foolishly sided with the Spaniards against their old enemy the Incas, but in doing so smallpox entered the community and to try and contain it the people were buried quickly in the well, but it wiped them all out more effectively than the sword.

To leave the site we exited through the grand entrance which is amazing and saw stones with carvings of faces, serpents and one of a deer that the archaeologists when restoring this section put in upside down – woops. This is an amazing site that should have more tourists but I must admit it was great today because our group was the only one there the whole time we wandered around, it was only as we left we saw another group. We slowly walked away glancing over our shoulders every now and again to get final glimpses of the fortress.

Back at the carpark our guide asked if it was OK to give a local woman a lift back to the lunch spot and both Scott and I envisaged a dining table on the roof and a few chickens on board. We said no problem and it was just her with no extras so the trip back was quick. At the lunch stop we brought some fruit and sat watching the local dogs and chickens mark out their turf before jumping back in the van. We had one last stop along the road, here across the valley we could see a site called Macro that consisted of the retaining walls that would have had houses on top and what appeared to be holes in the cliff face that were tombs. This was where another small community of Chachapoyans lived and that probably were fighting with the community in the fortress, who knows.

We arrived back in town at 5.00pm and said goodbye to the group and our guide and walked back to the hotel. We had to clean our boots and organised some things as we are moving on tomorrow, although it is tempting to stay and see more. We had dinner and a few drinks at the café for Scott’s Birthday tomorrow as we will be on the road most of the day.



Day 261 Thursday 28^th June

Happy Birthday Scott now get out of bed and start packing, we timed this badly because it will be a long day and not sure what the next town will be like. After breakfast we did the packing and paid the bill, the hotel has been really nice and they organised for the collectivo taxi to pick us up. It turned up at 9.30am with 3 other people (2 big and one baby who was fascinated with Scott), we crammed the backpacks in the boot and squeezed ourselves in for the hour journey to Pedro Ruiz. The scenery was spectacular as was the fact that on the way out of town the taxi could not make it up a hill and had to find another street less steep but once he reached the gorge he wound up his small bomb and was doing 100km flying around hairpin bends. We have had plenty of wild rides in our travels but this was one of the worst. There is nothing quite like being in a car going around a blind hairpin bend on the wrong side of the road, with the wheels squealing and peering over a vertical cliff, all we could do was focus on the scenery and hope we did not go flying off the edge. The woman with us didn’t seem too perturbed as she started breast feeding her child, I guess if the kids hungry, what can you do? Scott struggled the whole trip down trying not to bump the poor kid’s head which was nearly in his lap, but it at least added a surreal element to it all. The collectivo taxis wait until they are full then leave, because it is a set fee they want to get to the final destination as quickly as possible and get the next lot of passengers. It reminded us both of a similar journey back in Egypt when we had a hair raising sprint from Dahab to Nuweiba to catch a boat and on that journey I am sure we lost two years of our lives and Scott’s hair turned Grey. Lyn and Murray were with us on that trip and can certainly testify to just how scary that journey was.

Once at the bottom of the gorge the scenery just got better, as we flew along beside a fast flowing river, adjacent to the huge vertical rock faces of the mountains. In some places the road swept beneath huge rock overhangs that looked more like open sided tunnels. As the car went under you just peered up at the huge mountain overhanging and thinking if it was to let go we would be squashed like a bug. This trip down the gorge was perhaps one of the most scenic so far, which helped take our mind off the manic driver.

Well we made it to Pedro Ruiz in one piece and had to ask a local where the bus companies were as the collectivos drop you where it suits them. The ticket sellers all appear to be in cafes and probably sell tickets for the same bus, which we discovered was at 1.00pm so we had 2.5 hours to wait. We brought a Coke and sat in the café reading till the bus turned up and it was an economico and slightly worse than the last one and our driver was also a lead foot, it must be to do with the mountain air. About half an hour out of town we stopped for the lunch break, damn this is going to be another long trip. We didn’t bother to get off as we don’t normally have lunch and didn’t need to go to the toilet, which was just as well because we saw a local woman relieving herself on the grass next to the café….I guess they didn’t have a toilet.

We finally got to Tarapota and were dropped off a couple of kilometres from the town centre so had to get a rickshaw to the hotel and arrived about 8.45pm. The room at the Luna Azul is small and just clean but the staff are friendly and it is only $AUD32.00, if it was not so late we probably would have looked somewhere else. We headed straight out to find dinner and the town looks pretty happening but we were too tired to rage even though it was Scott’s Birthday, so we had a quiet dinner and went back to the room to sleep or so we thought.

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Photos

Karajia
The old boys watching over the valley

Lamiud
Inside the church

Quiocta Caverna
Cemetery at the beginning of the cave

Quiocta Caverna
Cave formation

Quiocta Caverna
Stalagmite

Quiocta Caverna
More formations

Karajia
The funerary sarcophagi

Karajia
Peering over the rocks

Karajia
Other angle of the sarcophagi

Road to Valle de Belen
The mud hole

Valle de Belen
View from the road

Valle de Belen
The river meandering

Kuelap
Our group

Kuelap
Bones in the wall

Kuelap
Shelley walking down Main entrance

Kuelap
The mountain Kuelap Fortress sits on

Kuelap
The wall looking over the valley

Kuelap
The main entrance

Kuelap
Fortress walls

Kuelap
Looking up the side entrance

Kuelap
Shelley standing outside the lookout tower

Kuelap
Scott at Kuelap

Kuelap
Looking down at the side entrance

Kuelap
Designs on the walls of the houses

Keulap
House foundations

Kuelap
Burial holes in the house

Kuelap
Main entrance

Kuelap
Wall shot

Kuelap
House looking over the valley

Kuelap
Badly built replica of round house

Kuelap
El Tintero (inkpot)

Kuelap
Close up of the walls

Kuelap
Long shot of the wall

Macro
House foundations

Macro
House foundations and tombs

Pedro Ruiz
Shelley waiting for a bus

Comments

[traudy glasencnik]

Happy Birthday Scotty!!!
Hey Guys xx, you got some great shots in this blog. The scenery looks amazing(valle de belen) and the fortress incredible. Also the sarcophagi. I cant believe they are still there. God, I dont know how you cope with those hairpin curves radical drivers, that would just freak me out! Nice to see your getting in good with the locals, hahaha...aleast the chicken had it better on this ride. Interesting facts on the Chachapoyons... never heard of them? be good xx

[Steve]

bring in the machine that goes ping
Fantastic...The only thing that would Kuelap better is a Mcdonalds ...Rip out a wall , fill in a burial chamber or 2 and voila ...Would you like to try our chachapoyan burger sir ..It comes with the smallpox sauce and Inca fries ..