After the surf town of Huanchaco, we took a somewhat gruelling 14 hr bus journey to the small city of Chachapoyas. In retrospect, it was totally worth it to experience the ruins of Kuelap, an ancient walled city on top of a mountain! It sits at 3100 m elevation, and was built by the Chachapoyas people between the 6th and 16th Century. The Chachapoyas people (translates loosely to people of the clouds) had built the city up to about 3,000 people- mostly everyday workers, but also military specialists and priests.
The site has about 400 homes, some of them completely excavated, but many still sit under centuries of earth, awaiting further discovery.
We first travelled about 2 1/2 hrs to the site by bus. Along the way, our guide explained to us that many mummies were placed in the cracks in the sides of the hills, as was the practice for honouring the dead at that time.
If you look closely, you can see a bunch of semi-circles in the middle of the face of the hill, which was an outpost for agricultural organization. The Chachapoyas people lived on top of the mountain, but they farmed at lower elevations. The Utcubamba Valley that we were in translates to 'the cotton valley,' but there was also lots of corn, potatoes and other crops in cultivation here.
Here we are at the start of the tour. You can see a worker hanging off the wall, cleaning off some of the vegetation. There is lots of ongoing archeological work happening at Kuelap right now.
Walking along the outside wall to the 'service entrance' where they would have brought in llamas, water, produce, etc.
You can actually see the llama tracks in the soft limestone!
We walked to the northernmost point of the city, this watch tower would have been used as a lookout, but also to send messages to the other 'cloud cities' in the area.
Then we started walking through the city, and learned about how they lived their daily lives, including seeing their round homes complete with a little guinea pig housing area inside each one.
This was one of the walls of the city, and inside one of the cracks was a bone- a femur! They would bury an important member of the family in the floor of their home, but other people were buried in the walls of the city.
A partially excavated home
As the city was perched on top of the mountain, pretty much everyone had an amazing view over looking the valley
Our guide, explains about the symbols on this house, and how it was used to organize the city of 3,000 people into smaller groups.
The most picturesque part of the tour was the south platform, it has also been restored to the greatest degree.
A face carved into the rock, archeologists think this might have been a shaman with his cheeks bulged out from drinking San Pedro (a hallucinogenic drink made from cactus) or chewing coca leaves.
One hole in the ground was for the mummy of the house, one for food. Seemed mighty risky to have them that close to each other, just saying.
El Tintero, a temple in the shape of an inverted cone. Apparently there is a chamber in the centre of it that lights up during certain days of the year that would have been important to the Chachapoyas people- like when to plant, maintain crops and harvest.
The wall of the city as we exited
Jared walking out, just behind him is a home that has yet to be excavated.
A few pictures to show how deep the canyon we came through was. It was so awesome, the pictures really don't do it justice.
For scale, you can just make out the ruins of Kuelap on top of the mountain, and to the right
Until Next Time!
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