Chachapoyas and Kuelap, Northern Peru - In the Clouds and Away from the Crowds

Chachapoyas and Kuelap, Northern Peru - In the Clouds and Away from the Crowds

Chachapoyas in northern Peru is a small city surrounded by mountains and deep canyons. The Chachapoyas area has been described as the richest archaeological area in the world, because almost every mountain either has the remains of a settlement or terracing.

Most of the obvious sites were built by the Chachapoya, a pre-Inca culture that dominated this area from 6th century until the Inca took over around 1470. The Chachapoya lived in roundhouses usually on ridges and practiced agriculture over a large range of altitudes, allowing them to cultivate many different crops. They had various unique ways of burying their dead such as: human like sarcophagi, mud houses built on cliff ledges and stone tombs.

The most famous of the archaeological sites in the Chachapoyas area is Kuelap. Kuelap sits on ridge 3000m above sea level and has well over 400 round houses inside. In many ways Kuelap is a typical Chachapoya site, but what stands Kuelap apart is the outer wall. This wall is made of large limestone blocks that in places still stand 17m tall. The wall has been back filled to form a massive platform. So really you don't so much walk in to Kuelap as walk on to it.

To enter Kuelap you need to walk up a narrow entrance, passing petroglyphs of mythical creatures, snakes and faces. Once inside the citadel, the visitor can see the moss covered remains of roundhouses now protected by a layer of cloud-forest that grew as the houses collapsed over the centuries. The forest is habitat for many bird and plants and means Kuelap keeps that "lost" city feel.

Since 2005 there has been a team of archaeologists at work doing conservation and excavations. From radiocarbon dating we now know that the construction was started in the 6th Century. There is an area used as a mass burial in an inner wall and another area where 130 males were killed brutally with a blow to the head. In October 2010 the tomb of an important individual was found on the highest point of the city. Around the stone lined tomb are other skeletons of humans and llamas. Who is the person inside? Bit by bit the archaeologists are unraveling the mysteries of Kuelap.

There is a lot to see in the Chachapoyas area apart from Kuelap. A minimum of 2 days in the area is recommended, though 4 days would allow you to see Kuelap, various burial sites and the fabulous Museum of Leymebamba that houses 219 mummies found in 1997 in tombs overlooking the Lake of the Condors. Aside from archaeology there are unique bird species in the area and Gocta the third highest waterfall in the world.

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