Chachapoyas, Peru by Mel

We are in Peru!
After several days in buses, we finally arrived at our first proper stop in Peru. We are in Chachapoyas, the capital of the Amazonas region.
Chachapoyas is the small ish city (32 000 inhabitants) at an elevation of almost 2500m above sea level.
We arrived here on Thursday the 30th of October just before 6am. It was very quiet as everything was still closed. The owner of the place we booked here, messaged me a few days prior, saying to message him when we arrive, but I didn’t really want to message him so early, so we walked around the city, looking for a place to put our bags down and maybe something to eat. We arrived on one of the main place, with a lovely white church. We found some benches and sat there, admiring the view of this big open place, with the view all around of magnificent mountains. A little bit latter a type of bakery opened and we got some sweet things to nibble on. I messaged our host and he came to pick us up. We got to our place and it is lovely as: always a good surprise! We rested a bit, as none of us slept well the night before in the bus.
After a few hours of rest, we went back in the city as we wanted to book some tours for the next few days.
I said before that I am not a big fan of tours, but it has its good point: you don’t have to organise anything!! And at the moment, I am fine with that. We found a tour company and booked tours for the next 4 days! Yeah!
We walked around the city and it has a great atmosphere. This is relax and calm to walk around, yet lively enough. The buildings are often white with wooden carved balcony. The streets are small ish, but not suffocating. The few big places have some garden in the middle and there are a few playground for the kids. We stopped at one of them for the kids and they climbed and swing. At some point, they played with a young girl, who seemed very interested in Emma. Not speaking the same language, they couldn’t quite understand each other, but they played and swing together nonetheless.
We found a delicious vegetarian restaurant, which was nice, as they eat a lot of meat in Ecuador and Peru and I had to work around that for the last month, so it was nice to have a menu where I could eat everything on it! Back home not too late, as we have a big day the following day.
The next day, we visited Kuelap. Kuelap was built by the cloud warriors, the Chachapoyas people, a pre-Inca civilisation. It is located on top of a mountain, 3000 meters above sea level and was built between the 6th and 15th centuries. Most of the ruins we can see now are from the 10th to the 12th centuries. It was a fortified city, with walls all around it up to 18 meters high. This fortified city was once home for around 4000 people. It has around 450 round houses and some bigger buildings thought to be either temples or place for the people to get together. There are still a lot of unknowns about the cloud people, as they were invaded by the Incas in the 15th century, then by the Spanish the following century. Kuelap is still being studied right now, and we can see people working on the place when you go to visit. On the day we visited, they apparently found a full skeleton under one of the houses (as they were buried there by the cloud people) and we could see it. That was pretty cool!
To get there, we had to take a bus for one hour, then another short bus to a cable car! Yep, another thing up high in the air! I am getting use to it though! The cable car is a 4 km long cable car taking you from 2000m high to 3000m high. It takes around 20 minutes to do the trip one way. On the way, you just sit and admire the views of the mountains and the valley around (and if you are like me, you don’t look down too much!).
Visiting Kuelap was amazing. We love visiting ruins. It is amazing to see how people used to live centuries ago. Also Kuelap being located on top of a mountain, the views all around it are spectacular.
Emma added to the growing collection of plush toys that has been following us since the beginning of the trip. We have now, Alex the alpaca with us!!! It was an amazing day.
On the evening, it was Halloween. We didn’t have any dress up, because it is a bit hard to organise when you traveling! But we walked in the streets of Chachapoyas, watching a lot of kids dressed up going from shop to shop with their little basket to ask for lollies. It was raining a fair bit, so we didn’t do that very long, but it was fun. We bought the kids a few lollies as they were a bit shy to ask in the shops: not speaking the language and not having dress up, didn’t help!
The following day, we visited the Quiocta cave. We have visited caves before, so nothing new, but it is always impressive to see nature’s masterpieces. Some of the stalactites and stalagmites in the cave, formed ‘castles’ and ‘villages’: I know it sound weird, but it really looked like castles with houses all around it: look at the pictures! There is a massive column (when a stalagmite and a stalactite meet, it forms a column) at the end of the cave that was pretty impressive.
After that, we visited the sarcophagi of Karajia. They are located in the Utcubamba valley, 18 km north east of Chachapoyas. The sarcophagi are 2.5m high and located on a cliff several meters from the ground. Inside the sarcophagi, are mummys, ceramic and gifts for the afterlife. They have been dated from mid-15th century, before the arrival of the Incas. They are several groups of sarcophagi in that area. The main one has 7 (use to be 8 but one fell during an earthquake) sarcophagi and is the most visible. But there are other groups less visible or less grandiose. This was amazing seeing those: the location and the size of them, made you really wonder how they managed to put them there! It was another great place to visit.
We finished the day at a restaurant in town, but it was not the best. It hasn’t happened often in this trip!
On the Sunday, we did another tour. This time we were the only one in the tour, so a car (instead of a van) came and picked us up with our guide and took us for a 2 and half hours drive on pretty bad roads! This is another thing that we often take for granted in richer countries: good roads!!! The roads we took were covered with holes over kilometres! It was NOT a fun ride!
Anyway, we arrived at the Revash Mausoleum. The mausoleum differs from the sarcophagi we saw the day before as it looks like little houses. The similarity is the location: in the middle of a cliff on a mountain. The reason why all those mausoleums and sarcophagi are there is to be hard to access and to be closer to gods. Those are only assumptions as a lot more research need to be done and not a lot of other information come to help understand those civilisations. Here again, the mausoleum was built in the 15th century before the Incas arrive. The mausoleum is in shape of small house with red painting on it. It was use as a collective tomb for important people.
And again, we were in awe of the view: the mountains and nature around, with this well made and well preserved construction on the wall of the mountain, was incredible to witness. Traces of civilisation now lost, are always incredibly moving to observe. People living centuries ago, with different way of thinking, different traditions, different customs, yet similarities to us: the will to honour the dead, the love of creativity and art... and I am sure much more. If you are in the area, make sure to visit this place: it is worth it.
We had lunch where Kev and the kids tried cuy again (guinea pig) and apparently, it was delicious: way better than the last one they tried (read Kev’s blog, I think he’ll talk about it!).
I forgot to mention that from Revash, we drove another 1 and a half hour to get to the village of Leymebamba where we had our lunch and then visited the museum.
This museum was built surprisingly by using Austrian funds! Another big mausoleum with over 200 mummies and artefacts was found in this area and the Peruvian government refuse to raise fund for studying and protecting them. An Austrian museum asked to have some of the mummies exposed in their museum for 6 months in exchange for funding to build the museum. And it is what happened. There were some really interesting objects there. For example, how pre-inca use to send information: on a big piece of strings, there were adding smaller pieces of strings with different colours and different knots, which each means something! Look at the pictures (it will make more sense!). We also got to try blowing in a shell to make some music and we managed to do it: a big loud deep sound. We saw the mummies, certain were completely wrapped in the fabrics, some were open. The mummies in this area were made in the foetal position. There was a room full of them that you can only see through a big window as they need to keep a perfect temperature to protect the mummies. It was an interesting museum.
Almost 3 hours back in the car and we were exhausted!
The following day was a physically challenging one. After finding a delicious breakfast in a tiny restaurant in the market across the road, we got picked up by a van and other tourists. On our way to one of the tallest waterfalls of the world (the size has been disputed several times and nobody is sure which waterfall is the tallest!): the Gocta waterfall. The track to get there was hard!! It took us 2 hours with some pretty hard slopes: when it goes down, the knees hurt, when it goes up, the lungs struggle!! There is no winning there!!! But the result was worth it. The waterfall is beautiful. Nursed between green mountains, the waterfall falling from 771 meters high, making a lot of mist at the bottom, is a real price after 2 hours of hard walking! After taking pictures, enjoying the views and finding small fossils of shells, it was time to walk back. It took us a little bit more than 2 hours this time, as there were more slopes going up than down. Both kids did absolutely amazing. They walked bravely all the way with no complaint whatsoever! We were very happy to arrive back at the small village where we got some food and an ice cream (we deserved it!) and drove back to Chachapoyas.
On the 4th of November, it was our 10 months on the road. Only 2 months left… I am not looking forward to come back, I have to be honest. I love this life of traveling. I could very easily see myself living like that. I just have to find a way to finance it! I love the experiences we are having together as a family. Discovering new places all the time is wonderful. But I know Kev and Emma are missing home and we need to cater to all of us. I am already very lucky to have a husband who accepted to follow me in this crazy gap year and I am very grateful for that.
On that day we left Chachapoyas for Lima, the capital of Peru. This means a 24-hour bus ride!!! We bought some luxury bus tickets, and it was nice and comfortable. We slept well and arrived not as broken as I thought we would!
Chachapoyas was a great surprise and a must do when in Peru.
Our next post will be about Lima. See you then!
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