Peru/Ecuador Border

Day 155 – The long way up

Despite this journey being billed as a two day trip, we decided that we were brave enough and stupid enough to attempt the journey from Chachapoyas to Vilcabamba (in Ecuador), plus a border crossing in one LONG day, mainly in order to enjoy time resting in the lovely sounding Vilcabamba and give Anna at least one day on her holiday without transport.

Up at 4.30am, we were catching our first shared taxi to Bagua Grande (2hrs, S22) at 5am. Following this, the journey went something like this:

• Bagua Grande to Jaén: 45 minutes and S9 in another shared taxi;
• Jaén to San Ignacio: 2.5 hours and S15 in another shared taxi, plus transfer from ‘in’ transport area to ‘out’ transport area in motorcycle taxi;
• San Ignacio to La Balsa: 1.5 hours plus a wait of one hour, costing S12 plus S10 to pay for the shared taxi to just go without the share part.
• La Balsa… wait outside immigration door for someone to notice us, exit Peru border formalities, answer “No” to all questions regarding the carrying of firearms or drugs or attempting to launder money, cross border bridge on foot, entry Ecuador border formalities, drop packs, search for food, cross back into Peru for said food, wait three hours more for truck to Zumba with beers, cards and good friends, watch pouring rain, hope dirt road doesn’t close, hope we don’t get stuck in Zumba for the night.
• La Balsa to Zumba: 1.5 hours and USD$1,50 on wooden bench seat on back of truck.
• Zumba to Vilcabamba: 6 hours in dodgy road coach for USD$6.50 each.

We arrived in Vilcabamba at a bit after 2am, knocked on the door of Jardín Escondido (Hidden Garden) and were kindly granted some rooms. We passed out after that.

Scenery somewhere in Northern Peru.

Yay, we’re off to Ecuador.

Waiting at San Ignacio. After about an hour and too many chocolate Sublime bars (hey, we had to spend our small Peruvian change on something) we just paid the driver to go. We had a schedule to keep!

Peru/Ecuador border bridge. We decided to take the country back way after hearing about the nightmares at the main entry point further west. Still pleased with our choice, despite the long day.

The place we didn’t choose for lunch.

Beers at the border, just before it began to pour with rain.

Mucking around on the truck.

Chachapoyas and Kuélap

Day 154 -  The Living Pantry

Thinking we would arrive in Chachapoyas at around 7am ready to start our day, we actually arrived at around 5am, exhausted.  Luckily there was a night watch man who kindly organised a room for us at the first place we knocked on the door of and we had a bit of a nap, before getting up for our tour of Kuélap at 8am.

We were picked up, along with about a dozen others and driven out of town two hours to the site where the ruins of Kuélap are located.  Kuélap is a 600m long 110m wide fortress associated with the Chachapoyas culture.  It was occupied from around the 6th century AD until the 1500s.  After that it lay untouched until 1843 when it was ‘rediscovered’ by a local judge carrying out a survey of the area.

Our first glimpse at Kuelap, high up in the cloud forest.

The path leading around the walls to the main entrance.

The remains of the main entrance, originally reserved for royalty.

Before entering our guide warned  us the be careful of the llamas, one of them had bitten an American tourist recently.  With no American tourists we though we might be safe, but a Quebecois guy in our group certainly qualified for a llama attack, he was so obnoxious I though I was going to have to separate him and Anna at one point.  He also seemed to have a way of getting in everyone’s photos…

The site is mostly unrestored, but picturesquely covered in bromeliad covered trees and cute orchids.

The sheer cliffs to one side of Kuélap and high walls on the other helped protect it from invasion for centuries.  When it was eventually conquered it was via siege, as Kuélap has no fresh water source and insufficient rainfall to sustain the population. 

Our guide secretly removing a stone from the wall of the central building to reveal…

… a huge area filled with human bones.

Another interesting tale our guide told us was about a ceremonial platform where shamans would wash their own blood down a drain that lead to a narrow ledge below.  On that ledge Chachapoyas warriors would fight to gain access to the blood which they believed increased their vitality and general warrior-ness. 

 
That’s the main entrance from above, you can see why invasion wasn’t a successful technique for conquering the place.

Stone ‘Puma’s eyes’ decorate the circular shelters of the Sharmans.  Our guide explained that there were three levels of ‘living’ or classes, with all the royalty living in shelters at the top of the site and the knights living on the bottom level.

 
The offending (some might say heroic?) llama, now safely tied up out of reach of tourists.

 
The remains of a dwelling.  The circular thing in the centre would have originally had a human corpse or two stashed in it (good luck apparently, don’t try it at home though, it’s probably illegal).  The low wall to the left was the guinea pig enclosure (otherwise known as a pantry!).

More dwellings with their corpse holes and guinea pig enclosures.

One of the few restored buildings, this is one of the dwellings.

Erin and Anna huddling in the wind that sweeps through the entranceway.

On the way back to Chachapoyas we stopped in the tiny hamlet of Maria for lunch.  A few brave souls had the cuy (baked guinea pig), but my tum wasn’t feeling too great, so I just opted for the trout.

Just before dark we were back in Chachapoyas and absolutely exhausted.  After running a few quick errands in preparation for the following day we were all in bed, without the energy to even go out for dinner.