1. The sarcophagi at Karajia 2. Indiana Jones examining pre-Inca bones 3. Valle de Belen at sunset 4. Long-distance locals 5. Lunch time cat-nap at Lanche 6 & 7. Kuelap
From Trujillo we hopped on yet another night bus to navigate the winding roads inland to Chachapoyas, a relatively untouched town nestling amongst dramatic cloud forests bursting with humming birds and delicate orchids. Peppered with unexcavated ruins and crowned by Kuelap, a ruined city second only to Macchi Picchu in scale and grandeur, the region has mercifully not made it on to the gringo trail and Japanese tourists are as infrequently sighted as the Andean Spectacled Bear.
A contributing factor to the relative lack of tourists is that the only way to get there is by night bus. And what a night bus - we were forced to take seats in the penultimate row. Between us and the frequently-visited toilet was a fat, hairy man who, in between quarter-hourly trips to the loo for a (not very) circumspect cigarette would unbutton his shirt and snore with all the fervour of a trapped pig while his head bounced against the back of my seat. The air conditioning broke and the temperature climbed, we rolled from side to side on the switchback turns. The end of our teather was reached and surpassed by quite a margin. Still - we arrived, we slept, we recovered.
Hoping that the best thing for my cold was a bit of trekking we booked ourselves onto a 4 day expedition in to the hills, culminating in a trip to Kuelap. This being the rainy season and tourists being in even shorter supply than usual, we set off alone the next morning with Jose, our guide. It had rained all night the night before and we hadn´t gone far before we were stuck in a quagmyre and Mike was called on to push the car with Jose. Apparently someone was needed to weigh down the front wheels so I stayed put inside and shouted encouragement out of the window while Mike sank into the slippery mud. It was a tough job.
We made it through several sticky spots before we left the taxi and trekked down to Pueblo de Los Muertos (village of the dead), a burial site left by the Chachapoyan people, a civilisation previous to the Incas. It was pretty incredible. A series of sarcophagi are perched precariously on an easterly facing niche in the cliffs above a stunning valley. Like many of the ruins in this area the sarcophagi had been looted by local bounty hunters but some of the more inaccessible examples remained high in the cliff tops. We picked our way along a narrow path through fragments of human bones left behind by the looters.
From there we trekked back to the taxi and continued to a tiny village for lunch before heading to Karajia, another set of sarcophagi, this time constructed of bamboo and mud with human faces and brightly coloured decorations and human skulls perched above them. As we climbed the steep path back to the taxi we passed through fields of myriad varieties of potatoes being harvested by cooperatives of local people.
Again we hopped in the taxi and climbed higher and higher on narrow muddy roads. The going got tougher and tougher until eventually the car got comprehensively lodged in a deep rut in the road. At this point, having felt strangely queasy all afternoon, I decided that the most constructive thing I could do was lose my lunch on the side of the road as two men, hacking at the deep furrows in the road, looked on in bemusement.
Jose decided that the best thing we could do was abandon the car at this point and continue on foot, knowing full well this would mean a hike down the slippery paths in the dark. Mike and I had our head torches at the ready and were up for the challenge so we set off, me on rather wobbly legs but feeling fine after my little episode. We trudged along the road as the sun set in the Valle de Belen, a bucolic, lush valley filled with gently grazing cattle and criss-crossed by a sparkling river meandering snake-like through the valley floor. Soon it was dark and we slithered carefully down a narrow track before finally arriving at a small cabin on the valley floor. Jose cooked up some hot soup and I had barely finished a few mouthfuls before my stomach turned once more and I was forced to admit that I did perhaps have some kind of tummy bug. I was up most of the night - fantastic preparation for the 7-8 hour hike the following day.
We awoke to the greenest grass I have ever seen, the lush hills stroked by tendrils of low cloud and cattle and horses grazing around the lodge. It was more than enough to erase the memory of my uncomfortable night and we set off full of hope that I was fully recovered. It was not to be. Any attempts to eat anything were met with a violent reaction from my stomach, and there was nothing for it but to keep going, so I thought of all those people, in wars or in famines who walk for miles and miles with no sustenance at all for days. I would just have to rely on the old fat reserves and keep on trudging.
In the mid morning we met exactly the people to give me the inspiration to carry on. An elderly couple on foot and accompanied by two mules with heavy loads came towards us. Like all of the people in the region they were full of smiles and friendly greetings and we asked where they had come from and where they were going. They had left at 4am and had been walking for 7 hours and had a further 4-5 hours to complete their journey that day. They had inadequate footwear, no wet weather gear but it was all water off a duck´s back to them. This was their life.
We climbed through the most incredibly diverse forests on muddy pathways cut into strange ridges by the footfall of countless mules. Jose had a real skill for spotting miniscule orchids glistening with dew drops in the hedgerows and we both learned to listen for the distinctive sound of an approaching humming bird. On route we stopped at an unexcevated ruin almost totally reclaimed by the jungle where round platforms nestled on the steep hills. Eventually in the late afternoon we reached our bed for the night in the peaceful village of Congon. We relaxed on the terrace and watched a group of local children playing in a pile of sawdust and sliding down an earth mound to the side of the house. As we unpacked our stuff in the bedroom a dog strolled through, followed by a chicken, and as we ate our dinner we could hear the squeals of the guinea pigs on the kitchen floor. Tomorrow´s dinner perhaps.
Mercifully my dinner stayed down and we both slept like babies and woke ready for the day ahead - an 8 hour climb followed by 2 hours down hill to the next village. The night before, knowing that we had a tough 10 hour hike to complete in only 12 hours of daylight and with no guarantee that I would be at full strength, we decided that we should rent a mule in case I got ill again so we set off at 6.30am with our four-legged friend in tow. In the morning I managed to walk for most of the time, at quite a pace, and with only a few brief breaks on the mule we reached our destination, the ruin of Lanche and our lunch! What a lunch! We sat at a wooden table overlooking a sweeping panorama of the surrounding hills. The lunch was a tortilla packed full of vegetables from the owner´s garden, washed down with fresh mint tea. While Mike snapped photos of the idyllic spot I snoozed on a bench with a white cat sprawled across my legs. Heaven!
The afternoon was a hard slog up and up into the clouds and I hopped aboard the mule, like a vomitous queen with three muddy foot soldiers, for the most terrifying ride of my life as we navigated steep rock faces and slippery rutted pathways with plunging drops to the side. As I clung desperately to it´s back, imagining my lifeless body sprawled on the rocks below, the mule didn´t miss a step - they are incredible animals.
At the very top, we said goodbye to the mule and his driver and snaked our way down to Choctamal, accompanied by a young shepherd girl and her dog. As she walked down the steep path at quite a pace she nonchalantly knitted a blanket without missing a step or a stitch.
At Choctamal we sat on the back porch of the hospedaje and watched the village going about its business. Mike even had the pleasure of watching our chicken dinner meet its fate! We tucked into some hearty chicken soup and played cards with Jose before climbing the stairs to bed. At 4am I awoke with a familiar feeling - the bug was back. I was up and down the external stairway to the bathroom for the rest of the night, stepping over a gaggle of sleeping dogs. At 6am, on the way back from the loo, the dogs awoke and decided to guard the property and would not let me pass, so I found myself in the street in my pajamas, feeling decidedly unwell, throwing small stones at the bedroom window to wake Mike to come and resue me. Just the ticket!
Dawn broke on our final day and as we waited (and waited and waited) for the taxi to come to take us to Kuelap we had plenty more opportunities to observe village life, including playing with the village dogs and helping to catch an escaped piglet. Eventually our ride to the ruins arrived, complete with a group of astoundingly unfriendly Peruvian daytrippers - so different from the local people - and we finally reached Kuelap.
Set in the middle of a steep ridge with stunning 360 degree views of the surrounding valleys and encased by a steep inpenetrable wall, Kuelap is quite a sight. The ruins are remarkably well preserved and Jose impressed us with his excellent knowledge of the many theories surrounding the lives of the Chachapoyan people and the function of the many circular buildings within Kuelap´s walls. Like the Incas, the Chachapoyan´s had no written language so almost all of the theories on Kuelap´s history are speculation by the few archaeologists who have studied the site. It was a very rare privelege to spend time in a site so impressive, but yet in such an early stage of excavation and still so deeply shrouded in mystery.
We returned to Chachapoyas, a little bit thinner, a hell of a lot muddier but full of fantastic memories of an enchanting world in the clouds.
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