Special meetings were approaching, so these were my last days in the field. Don Roder wanted to take Palmira and I to a tourist attraction in the province. There are a lot of archeological sites there, and the ruins that he wanted to take us to is of an ancient city called "Kuelap". I'd never heard of them, but in fact they're about as grand and incredible as Macchu Pichu. They have been very inaccessible though until a cable car was put in, and now it's easy (and breath-taking) to get there. So..I learned all about Kuelap and the Chachapoya culture. There were many tribes of Indians of course, perhaps the most well-known are the Incas. Well the Incas could never conquer the Chachapoyas as they were such fierce warriors and had such well-built citadels. They eventually did though.
So this city of Kuelap is at 3,000 metres above sea level, and was built around the 6th century AD. Here we are arriving at the cablecar terminal and getting on the cable car to cross the ravines and valleys and climb up and up and up to get to the ruins.
The little town where the cable car takes off from
This was my first impressions of the area where we arrived to to start the cable-car journey. You can see that track cut into the hill, it's probably a 4x4/motorbike/walking track up to the tops. Peru is full of this steep mountain country.
The cablecar trip was about half an hour! So you get an idea of how remote these ruins are.
Steep terrain
Look at the gradient of that hill!
This is a photo I took of a postcard showing you the ruined city in it's entirety. Basically it was a fortified city at the top of a high mountain with walls all around. The inhabitants (which were up to 300,000 at one stage) lived in little round houses, like this:
That's a recreation of the ruins.
Walking in to the ruins after getting off the cable car. (Roder's wife didn't come because she's terrified of the cable car!)
First sight of the beginning of the walls
Skirting the outside of the city to get to the main entrance gate. You can see the walls are in various stages of disrepair. The city was abandoned in 1570, due to Spanish conquest, and then rediscovered by accident in 1843.
The walls are absolutely massive, they go up to 20 metres high. You can see in the photo on the right how there are several layers of rocks. It's all been damaged over the centuries by earthquakes. And all this done without cranes and modern tools...
The main service gate. It's 60 metres long, and is shaped like a funnel...gets more and more narrow as you climb up into the city, to allow entrance for one person only at a time. You can see the alpaca's footprints have worn away the limestone underfoot. (they were used as beasts of burden).
Palmira emerging from the end of the entrance gate.
This is the view from the top...a 360o view like this! Perfect to ward off enemies.
You can see the base of the round house behind them.
The bottom photo is the close-up of the round house at the top. It was fascinating to see the little ledge on the floor that marked the edge of the guinea-pig enclosure! So they've been eating guinea pigs in Peru for a few years...
Breath-taking views from the top
These "pretty little flowers" turned out to be stinging nettle...ouch!!
They put these geometric patterns into their buildings, with stone
More of those geometric designs
Alpacas
Exiting by another gate
It was interesting to me to see how the Peruvian culture still retains many ways and customs which have come from their Indian forebears. Argentina has none of that, perhaps a little up on the border near Bolivia, but it is such a different culture. Argentina has a much greater European flavour and less Indian - most were wiped out when the Spanish came.
Our last Sunday morning meeting before Special meetings. It's held in the home of Roder and Gina (our bach is upstairs here).
Palmira and I with Roder and Gina
Roder and his only professing brother Sergio (think there are about 9 in the family).
Palmira leaving the bach. This pavement is fairly typical!
The stairs go down to the street. Our nice little apartment that Roder built for the workers on 2nd floor.
Stormy sky as seen from roof of our bach, looking over town of Bagua Grande
And finally... this is what a funeral procession looks like. We lived across the road from the cemetery, so would see/hear the funeral processions frequently!
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