Chachapoyas is about 800 km
(straight-line) to the north of Lima and I had
wanted to go there for some time because I had
heard that there was a pre-Inca mountaintop
fortress nearby called Kuelap. It was supposed
to be on the same scale as Machu Picchu and
little archaeological study had been made of
the site. Chacha, as it is known, is in the
department of Amazonas and everyone seems to
assume that because of this name it would be in
the jungle. In fact about one third of this
department is in the eastern slopes of the
Andes highlands with mountains rising up to
4000m and Chacha is at an altitude of 2300m.
So, in the second week of October 1999 I set
off to find Kuelap.
(Note; all the images can
be viewed in full by clicking on the thumbnail
image. The first image is of the main square in
Chacha: the remainder are all of Kuelap
fortress.)
In order to avoid a long
bus ride through the Peruvian coastal desert
north up the Panamericana Highway I took a
seventy-minute flight from Lima to Chiclayo
where I arrived about lunchtime. After hanging
around this city for the afternoon I caught a
direct bus leaving at 6 p.m. for the eleven
hour journey to Chacha. As buses go I have been
on worse; it wasn't particularly clean and, as
is common, didn't have on on-board toilet (if
anyone gets caught short they have to ask the
driver to stop and then go and find a quiet
spot by the roadside). However, there was a
video on board and we had two films in English
with Spanish sub-titles. There was a 45-minute
stop around 8.30 p.m. at a roadside restaurant
but in Chiclayo I had already bought the local
equivalent of Cornish pasties as a meal for the
journey. After the second video the lights were
turned out and everyone tried to sleep as the
bus climbed up over mountain passes and down
into valleys. I recall the road changed from
asphalt to dirt for about the last three hours
but of course couldn't see anything out of the
bus window. The bus arrived in Chacha at 4.30
a.m. which is no time to arrive anywhere let
alone a small rural town in northern Peru.
However after the bus had parked, anyone who
wanted could stay snoozing on the bus and I was
last off at 7 a.m. It was a short walk to the
main square where I found the hotel I wanted
and got the night staff to give me a
room.
After a shower and some
breakfast I contacted Rob Dover who is an
English guy from Bristol married to a Peruvian
girl and who is a partner in a trekking and
adventure travel business in Chacha. Later
we had lunch together and he told me of the
interest shown by major TV documentary
producers in this area; he had just recently
returned from guiding a film crew from
Discovery Channel and before that a UK channel.
In the afternoon I arranged with my hotel to
take a bus tour to Kuelap the next day.
Next morning the bus turned
out be to be a small 12-seater lacking both in
leg-room and width, hence I did not fit too
well. Even the Peruvians, who generally are
smaller stature than gringos, have trouble
squeezing into these. The bus left at 8.30 a.m.
and within 10 minutes of leaving the town I had
my first experience of local roads; they are
narrow, rough, dirt, and with terrifying drops
several hundred metres down the steep slopes
into the river valley below. (I had travelled
up this road in the overnight bus without
realising it.) From then on, and for the whole
of my time in Chacha, whenever I travelled by
road my palms were sweaty. The route from
Chacha took us down to the Rio Utcubamba, a
height loss of 500m, followed the river going
upstream for half an hour then started climbing
again and continued climbing for the next two
hours along similar rough, precipitous roads.
We passed through small villages clinging to
the mountainside, over one ridge then into a
valley then round another ridge and so on,
climbing continually. Finally we arrived at
the carpark just below the fortress about
mid-day having gained nearly 1200m from the
river. From the car park it is about a fifteen
minute walk uphill to arrive at the outer walls
of the fortress. Gringos have to pay just under
US$3 entrance charge to the fortress but for
this you get a Spanish-speaking guide (who
expects a tip).
Kuelap fortress is on a
mountaintop at an altitude of 3000m, there are
steep cliffs dropping 1200m into valleys to the
north and west, a similar but less-steep drop
to the east and the approach from the south is
along a ridge about 80m wide. There are
mountains going up to 4000m on the other side
of the valleys. The fortress pre-dates the
Incas by several hundred years. It was built by
the Chachapoyas who thought it was impregnable
but the conquering Incas easily found the weak
point - it didn't have its own supplies of food
and water - so it fell after a siege. The
Chachapoyas got their own back because when the
Spanish conquistadors came along about seventy
years later they fell in with them and drove
the Incas back out!
The fortress measures 500m
north-to-south and has a total area of about 6
hectares and it is on three levels. The outer
perimeter wall varies in height from 10 to 15
metres and is constructed from limestone blocks
weighing up to three tons. There are three
narrow entrances with steps rising up to the
first level. Inside the site there are ruins of
nearly four hundred stone buildings; nearly all
are circular. Most of the buildings have been
demolished down to their foundations; a few
remain standing as high as three metres. The
second level is contained within another wall
10m high with one narrow entrance. On the third
level are fewer buildings but at the north end
there is a square tower called Atalaya (used as
a watch tower and as a store; excavations
revealed 2500 slingshot missiles). At the
south end there is an inverted conical building
called Tintero and its use is the subject of
varying speculation; both human and animal
remains have been found there, but there is
also a theory that it had astronomical use.
There is sorrowful-looking human face carved
into a cornerstone. It has been estimated that
as much stone went into the construction of
this site as was used to build the Great
Pyramid in Egypt.
About 90% of the site is
overgrown with trees and bushes (and an
abundance of bromeliads) but the foundations
and decorated low walls of the mostly-round
buildings have been cleared away and are easily
visible. It is estimated that the site was
occupied between 800 and 1500 A.D. It had both
military and ceremonial use unlike Machu
Picchu, which had much greater significance to
the Incas. Many human remains have been found
in the site. A house has been re-constructed to
resemble the original structure as determined
by archaeologists, and there was a dig in
progress while we were there. Our guide was
very conscientious and thorough and we spent
about one and a half-hours with him; he earned
(and received) his tip. In total we spent over
three hours at Kuelap and set off back around
3.30 p.m. We stopped very briefly for a very
late lunch at a small village and arrived back
in Chacha around 7 p.m.
Next day every muscle and
joint in my body ached from the hours spent in
the bus on rough roads the day before so I
spent the day quietly. I discovered that
Chachapoyas is a small, quiet, rural market
town with very friendly people. Hardly anyone
speaks English so my Spanish was stretched
while I was there. Very few tourists get to the
area and apart from Rob I was the only gringo
in town. By asking around I found out that the
library at the offices of the government health
authority had a PC with Internet access so I
was able to fire off a few e-mails for a small
charge. I also found the tourist information
office down a back street and although it
didn't have much in the way of leaflets, the
staff were extremely helpful.
This whole region is the
richest archeological area in Peru and I hoped
to see some of the few easily accesible sites
(many are difficult to reach). The following
day I wanted to go to Karajia where some very
unusual sarcophagi containing mummies have been
discovered on a ledge on a rockface, but I set
off too late. The first stage in getting there
was a local bus to Luya (another tight squeeze)
but I discovered that rural buses don't run to
a timetable; they set off when they are full
and I waited in the bus for 45 minutes. By the
time the bus reach Luya (nearly one and a half
hours over more rough terrifying roads) I
realised I wasn't going to have time to get to
Karajia so I continued on to Lamud which was
the end of the bus route. Here I contacted the
local director of the National Cultural
Institute, an archaeology professor, who has a
small museum in the village. The museum turned
out to resemble a junk store with unlabelled
artefacts from different pre-colonial and
colonial periods all lumped together. However
the professor was very enthusiastic and was
delighted that someone should come to see his
museum. He also showed me his photo albums of
the many archaeological sites in the region
that he had investigated. The only problem was
I understand barely a quarter of what he said;
his local accent was incomprehensible for much
of the time; I have enough trouble
understanding Spanish at the best of times. He
refused my offer of a donation to the museum.
After some lunch in the village I caught the
next bus back to Chacha.
The following morning I
took a short ride by collective taxi to the
village of Huancas - a journey of 20 minutes.
The village is semi-deserted with many
abandoned buildings and a lot of the fields
around the village are uncultivated. It is
apparent that much of the population has left
due to poverty. A short walk up to a low ridge
behind the town brought me to a spectacular
view down into a very deep river valley with
mountains rising in the distance.
The next day was my return
journey to Chiclayo. The bus left at 3 p.m. and
after descending the, by now, familiar road to
the Utcubamba river it continued following the
river downstream for the next two hours. Now I
was able to see the road that I had travelled
five days earlier. At times the steep-sided
valley becomes a canyon and the road is
actually cut into the rock wall with an
overhanging rock roof. Once it goes through a
tunnel in the rock that is only just big enough
to take the bus. Eventually the valley broadens
and this road joins the main asphalt-surface
highway connecting the jungle town of Tarapoto
with the coastal town of Chiclayo, and after
another restaurant stop and two more videos the
bus arrived in Chiclayo at 2 a.m.
I stayed one day in
Chiclayo and went to the Bruning Museum in
Lambayeque which houses the treasures of Sipan
(the gold and silver artefacts of Sipan match
the Tutankamun collection). I had seen them
before when they were in Lima two years ago but
it was worth the trip to see them again. Some
of the most important treasures are on tour so
if they come your way it is well worth going to
see them.
A superb book has been
published about the Chachapoyas area; it is
called "Warriors of the Clouds : a lost
civilization of the upper Amazon of Peru"
written by Keith Muscott and published in 1998
by the University of New Mexico Press. It has
excellent pictures, well-written descriptions
and an extensive bibliography. Look for it in
your local library.
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