Chachapoyana

Chachapoyas is a small city.  Population of under 50,000 for sure. But as the most appealing large town in a region whose tourism gems are just beginning to be discovered it has no shortage of infrastructure for visitors.

E.g. When we disembarked from our minivan into town from Cocachimba, we walked about 20m towards the square and found a pleasant, cheap hostal in an old colonial building.  This would have happened on pretty much any of the streets leading towards the square. Similarly, you could pick a shopfront on the square at random and have a 50/50 shot of getting a tour company.

But this in no way detracts from the charm of Chachapoyas.  Lots of the town, including the central plaza, was under construction while we were there, but the remainder of the central city was all old whitewashed two story buildings with exposed timbering and pretty balconies.

The central market had the upstairs food court area that I remembered loving at many markets during our first visit to Peru. A restaurant, half a dozen bakeries and as many jugerias (juice bars) and cevicherias.  We had a fixed menu lunch at the restaurant (with a ceviche appetizer!) and then went for a wander around the town to see its sights.

There actually aren't that many sights as such in Chachapoyas (or Chacha as most of the locals call it).  A couple smaller subsidiary squares, a few churches, most of which had been at least partially rebuilt after being damaged in earthquakes and a hillside park surrounding an ancient well (supposedly single men who drink from the well will never leave Chachapoyas, enchanted by the beauty of its female residents).

No, the real beauty of Chacha lay in the pretty old central city neighbourhoods and the many (many) attractions in the surrounding countryside

Thus much of our time in Chacha was spent outside of Chacha.  On our first full day we planned to take a collectivo (minibus) up to the village of Levanto.  We went to the spot the iPeru office had told us the twice-a-day service left from but, in a rare iPeru failing, were met with confused looks with everyone saying "no, no, not here".  Maybe try the main terminal someone suggested.

So we walked over there and were met by similar confusion.  One minibus driver said there was a Prado de Levanto, that it was about 8 blocks away and that we should take a taxi there.  The taxi driver we spoke to however, had never heard of the place. We'd arrived good and early, so still had time to go back to our original spot and see if maybe folks there were mistaken.  We got there at 11 on the dot, just as the minibus was supposed to be leaving, bit there was no sign of it.

We were about to head back to the hostal, and maybe try again the next day when we saw a minivan with "Chachapoyas-Levanto" written on its side drive past.  Follow that van! Fortunately it turned into a petrol station, so we caught it. It was empty, but we talked to the driver anyway. We didn't get everything he said, but it sounded positive.  He got on the phone called someone, said "yeah, two people, Levanto," he turned back to us "two people, right?" Then he told us that we should get a taxi to the Prado de Levanto. This again. But this time the taxi driver knew what we were talking about and said "sure, three soles," (about NZ1.20, and a very reasonable price for a trip in town).  We zipped along to the outskirts. On the way we passed the original minivan and the taxi driver tried to get him to pull over to pick us up, but the van driver just told him to carry on to the Prado. Which turned out to be a totally nondescript corner on the outskirts of the city. The taxi driver told us to just wait there then drove off. And lo, not five minutes later up pulled a different minivan, completely full, but with one row of people squishing a bit and a stool placed next to another there was room for precisely two more passengers.

I'm still completely flummoxed as to how all of this worked.  This corner was clearly not where the bus originated. So I've no idea how the taxi driver knew to take us there.  His convo with the original minivan driver wasn't long enough. And the whole coincidence of just happening to spot a different collectivo that wasn't headed to out destination, but had it written on the side, three kilometres from where we boarded was just so weirdly convenient.

Anyhow, the drive up to Levanto was beautiful, with fabulous views of Chachapoyas and the surrounding mountains and valleys.  And when we arrived, Levanto was beautiful too. The plaza was bright green with pink flowers and a positively ancient (constructed in 1588) church on one side, a leftover from when Levanto was the Spanish district capital before it was moved down to Chacha.

We had lunch at a charming little restaurant.  Fried trout with soup and mountains of rice, beans and salad.  So fried and salty was the fish that you could just crunch on the head and fins and find them pretty tasty.

After lunch we climbed up to the almost new mirador over town and then joined a thousand-year-old, but remarkably well preserved Inca road for a half hour walk through the countryside to Yalape.

Yalape was an old fortress built by the Chachapoyas culture, contemporaries of the Inca who were eventually conquered but not fully absorbed.  Given the 3000m altitude, the climb up into the site was hard work (and featured hundreds and hundreds of 2-3cm spiders crawling around in the grass) but we were rewarded by a series of large stone platforms and walls, completely out of sight of the road.  They were overgrown with trees and grass and it felt like a real adventure to follow the narrow worn path through the site and discover it as though we were the first people there in years.

When the time came to return to Chacha we headed back down to the main road and followed it a bit before turning off on what seemed like it must be the continuation of the old Inca road that led back down to the city.

After a while this seemed to be in doubt.  There had been a sign indicating "hiking trail" where we left the road.  And the intersection was exactly where the map and GPS said it should be.  But after a km or so of walking past more Chachapoyan ruins and potato fields, the GPS said we were 200m from where the trail should be.  And it didn't look much like the beautifully preserved road we'd been walking on earlier. But we were heading in generally the right direction.  We carried on for longer than we probably should have and eventually I set off looking for a way to get us to where the trail may have been, but was stymied by a steep valley in the way.

Not long after we gave up and, blackberry scratched and grubby, headed back the way we'd come to the road.  This was less than ideal, as it was now 17:09, 2.5 hours til full dark with 18km to walk back to town.


After about twenty minutes of walking we managed to flag down a taxi.  The driver, who had actually just been taking some friends (relatives?) on an outing kindly stopped for us.  Sarah squeezed in the back seat and I in the boot of the station wagon and we had a fun trip chatting with the other occupants as we drove back, talking about ourselves and teaching one another bits of our languages.  When we got back to town the driver even refuse payment.

As it was nearby, I decided to pop by the bus terminal to check on the time for the collectivos to our next day's destination, trying to avoid a similar debacle to that day's, no matter how fun and well-ended it had been.

The next morning we set out for a look at another outlying village, Huancas, about 10km from Chacha.  The village itself was similar to Levanto, right up to the big rough stone church in the centre, but wasn't quite as green.

What it did have, however, was the Sonche Canyon. We walked about a kilometre from town to the series of walkways and viewpoints on the canyon rim that the community had built. We paid our 3 Sole entrance fee and spent a good half hour peering down into the 800m deep chasm and across to the towering waterfalls on the far side (even these, not major tourist attractions at all were at least four or five hundred metres tall). It was reminiscent of the inner grand canyon, but greener and not quite so hot!

We headed back to town, collected our belongings and headed to the terminal terrestre with plenty of time before the 14:00 collectivo to Pueblo (village) Maria departed.  Except for the fact that there wasn't one going at two. Once again, our information had proved faulty, despite the fact that it had come from a driver for the same bus company the night before.  There had been one in the morning, but wouldn't be another til 17:00.

We went and ate lunch and decided that we'd head to Tingo, the last village on the main road before the turnoff to Maria, in the hopes that we could get going to Maria a bit sooner.

Tingo is the main centre for visits to Kuelap, a big complex of Chachapoyas culture ruins that is often called The Machu Pichu of the north (or other things to that effect).  

Previously it was difficult to reach Kuelap, requiring an hour's drive to Tingo, then another 90 minutes up a winding gravel road to Maria, then another 7 or 8km walk to the site.  Either that or a 9km walk, 1200m uphill from Tingo. However in 2017, a gondola (the first in Peru) was constructed taking passengers from just above Nuevo Tingo to Kuelap in an easy 20 minutes.

We'd decided to make the journey the old way.  Partly because of the (modest) cost savings, partly because we wanted to send some business the way of the tourist industry in Maria, but mostly because we wanted to be at Kuelap as bright and early as possible.

In Tingo we discovered why the collectivo hadn't been departing at 14:00. The first section of the cable car journey, from Nuevo Tingo up to the bottom station was done by buses.  This seemed confusing until we saw the station and realized there was not a chance of building a parking lot anywhere near it. Anyhow, the road connecting the two, which was also the start of the road to Maria, was being upgraded, and was closed in the early morning and from 14:00 to 18:00.  Talk about adding insult to injury. Not only did the gondola destroy Maria's tourist industry, it cut off access to the town for half of the daylight hours to facilitate the destruction!

Anyhow, Nuevo Tingo was a nice place to wait for a few hours.  Certainly nicer than the Chachapoyas bus station. It had new and nice looking schools, shops, hotels and a church surrounding a main square that was filled with topiary bushes cut into the shapes of animals.

I'd figured Nuevo Tingo was built 100m or so above the old town to take advantage of the increase in tourism but no, most of the residents had been moved uphill after severe flooding lower down in the valley in 1996.

I spent a good chunk of our wait chatting with an old lady in the square.  A good saleswoman, she convinced me to buy some delicious sticky peanut taffy and later crispy fried corn kernels just by being friendly and a good talker.

When the Maria collectivo finally appeared at 18:00 we joined the other passengers having snacks of grilled chicken skewers in town before we made the long and (in parts, especially near the start) nerve wracking drive more than 900m up following the hillsides up and around to Maria.

The collectivo dropped us off in front of a hospedaje/shop and the proprietress immediately popped out to greet us.  She seemed delighted and not entirely unsurprised to see us. We briefly chatted with her and her husband, bought some picnic brunch supplies from there and another shop down the road, then snugged up for a cool night at 2800m and an early wake-up call.

The wake-up call came not from our alarms, set for 05:45, but almost an hour earlier from roosters and a motor beneath our window.  We started out on the road for the 9km walk to Kuelap just after six. Being out on a quiet road in the mountains in the cool, fresh morning air reminded me of walking Te Araroa (amazingly, still only a year ago).  Joining us on the road were schoolchildren in uniform walking to school, people on motorcycles heading for their farms or pastures and just one or two four wheeled vehicles in the two hours it took for us to reach the top of the gondola and for the direct sun to finally come and greet us.

Towards the end of the walk, including on the one steep section, we were joined by several women from the surrounding villages who knitted and chatted as they walked.  When we arrived at the Kuelap ticket office they started to lay out their knitted wares in stalls provided to try to offset at least some of the losses that removing the tourist traffic through their town had wrought.  Sarah bought a lovely scarf (and bought a coffee from the fancy café) while we waited a little while for the ticket office to open.

Having taken the route we did proved to be doubly (or more) worthwhile, as while the road down at the bottom was under construction, the gondola didn't start operations until 10:00, meaning that we (plus two old Peruvian tourists who had taken the 04:30 collectivo from Chachapoyas that morning) had the site entirely to ourselves for the first 2.5 hours of the day.

It's still a one kilometre walk from the ticket office/gondola top to the Kuelap fortress itself.  But this merely serves to help the awe and excitement build as its massive stone walls get closer and closer.  It reminded me surprisingly strongly of crusader era castles like Krak des Chevaliers and Qalat Saladin in the Levant.

We arrived well before the other two visitors, passing the main gate to the complex just as the crew working to preserve it  were getting started for the day. At entrance #3 (of three) the security guards opened up the gates for us.

Inside was absolutely magical.  Dozens upon dozens of stone rings that formed the bases for the homes of four thousand or so Chachapoyans who lived in Kuelap at its height.  Towering stone exterior walls and retaining walls up to maybe 15m high. Towers from which the Chachapoyans would fling spears and stones in an attempt to stimulate rain.  Extraordinary views of the surrounding mountains and valleys from over 3000m above sea level. All surrounded by gnarled trees thick with bright red bromeliads and brilliant blue sky.  Cool breezes and brilliant sunshine.

Sarah and I took our very sweet time walking through the site, whose constructions range from 500 to 1000 years old.  Several times we just sat down to sip coffee, eat a slow breakfast and marvel at how lucky we were to be all alone in such a special place.  

And it got still better when we got back to the main gate.  True, there was scaffolding and a little bit of construction noise.  But there were also llamas, brought up to keep the grass around the site trimmed.  There is perhaps no more Peruvian sight than a llama standing proudly amongst pre-Hispanic ruins at 3000m in the mountains.

We spent tons of time photographing the llamas and the site, finally departing after a nice sit in the sun and chat with a security guard (who very much appreciated what an awesome job he had).

We'd spent almost three hours walking the trails through Kuelap, so just as we were leaving, the first gondola visitors of the day were arriving.  It was kind of nice to see the begining of the 500 visitors a day that the site averaged in the first year after the gondola construction, if only so we could better appreciate how lucky we'd been to have it to ourselves.

From Kuelap the plan was to walk down the (much shorter and more direct than the road via Maria) trail to old Tingo.

Up near the top it was a nice walk through pleasant, shaded villages.  But after the first three of nine kilometres had gone it became a bit of a hot, dry slog 1200m downhill.  There was almost no shade and three of the five shelters that had been built when the trail saw more tourist use had been burned down in bush fires.

There were, at least, nice views out over the valley, the memories of our amazing visit to Kuelap and the feeling that we were earning it after the fact.

As we neared the bottom at 15:00 clouds covered the sun and provided some relief.  So we arrived feeling pretty pleased with things (even moreso after buying a beer from the restaurant we sat and waited for a collectivo in front of).

As if to prove that our previous difficulties with collectivo schedules were no fluke, we learned that a ride onwards to Leymebamba wouldn't appear at 16:00, but would be closer to 18:00.  Nonetheless it was a nice quiet village to wait in and we had the company of a half dozen or so Peruvians who were themselves waiting for collectivos to other destinations.

We arrived in the small town of Leymebamba late enough that, after I'd scouted out four hotels and picked one, it had grown dark.  We had dinner at a small restaurant on the square, but anything else would have to wait til the next day.

Or the day after. Despite its being a small town with limited nearby attractions and without the easy (hah!) transport links for getting farther afield that Chachapoyas had, we spent two full days in Leymebamba.

While there we spent a while walking around the nice, narrow streets lined with whitewashed buildings and dark wood balconies.  I declined to climb up to the archaeological site of La Congona, as Sarah didn't want to come and paying for a guide (required) for three hours of road walking in addition to the rest of the time to get to an visit the site seemed a bit silly.  Plus the forecast called for rain. Either that or (more likely) I just got a bit lazy.

We also spent a fair bit of time at one of our favourite restaurants so far in Peru.  The soups that come with cheap Peruvian set menus are usually okay, but a bit lacking in complex flavours. At the Virgen del Carmen the soups were delicious, the meals were traditional Peruvian in style but with interesting changes (e.g. tortilla de broccoli, a broccoli omelette).

The main reason tourists visit Leymebamba is to visit the museum 2.5km outside of town.  We walked to it on our first day there. It features artifacts recovered from the mausoleums at Laguna des Condors, some 50km away.  And more significantly than the artifacts, it features human remains recovered from the mausoleums as well. Two hundred nineteen human mummies, as well as several mummified animals.  The museum is very well done, from the architecture to the interpretation (almost all in Spanish, but we managed pretty well with it), too a few interactive touches (e.g. replicas of ancient musical instruments to try).

We'd just arrived at the highlight, the mummy room when the light rain that had started after we arrived turned heavy and thundery and the power went out in the museum.  Spooky times!

I ended up walking back while Sarah and another young tourist couple squeezed into the back of a Mototaxi.  I did surprisingly well walking down a rough, wet trail in my jandals, which are still pretty new to me (believe it or not, I've never really worn jandals/flipflops before!)

Finally we spent a fair bit of time sitting in our room overlooking the main plaza.  We had a little balcony that opened up over the west side, which was fun for sitting and reading and people watching.  And slightly irritating for the sounds of the Saturday night travelling evangelical show and (separate, later) political rally.  Also slightly irritating, but curiously charming were the church "bells". The outside of the church was ancient looking rough stone, but the hourly chimes that sounded from 06:00 to 22:00 sounded like nothing more than a the chimes of a 1970s or 80s doorbell.

We were farewelled by these on our final morning in Leymebamba as we set out for the full day journey across the Andes of Amazonas region for the city of Cajamarca.