Kuelap!

Thursday March 6th, 2008

Waking up at 5:45 AM in our hostel high above the valley floor, we strapped on our packs and headed out into the darkness on the only road out of Maria, which would take us up to the Kuelap ruins. All the people in town assured us it was only an hour hike up the road to the Kuelap.

So we assumed 2.

It took 2 and half.

I yearn for the day I can expect an honest answer out of someone. I understand optimism, but this optimism borders on the destructive... Despite this, the hike was one of the highlights of the trip so far. As we set out from Maria I initially groaned under the weight of my 45 pound pack, but after 15 minutes of adjustment I fell into a rhythm becoming one with pack like I had countless times in boy scouts as kid. In the early morning light we trodded up the road, passing small homes with clay tiled roofs, the smoke from breakfast billowing through the cracks. From these houses no larger than my kitchen, families of 5 or 6 lived. The father, most likely a farmer, had already loaded up his donkey and headed to the fields to farm and plow a 20% grade by hand. The sun rose over the farms and casted a clear line of orange along the higher mountains to our back, while we still hiked in silence and in shadow. Clouds hung a thousand feet below flowing through the assorted valleys like a river in pause, and the air was moist with evaporating dew. For anyone who is an early riser, you know this morning smell, when the water that has sat along the edges of leaves or on blades of grass, and absorbed all the oils and smells throughout the night, now rises into the air with the heat of the sun and brings with it a deluge of aroma, a unparalleled freshness.

2 and half hours later we arrived at the entrance to Kuelap, greeted by a pack of Llamas, the first I had actually seen in Ecuador or Peru, it might have actually been the first time I had seen a Llama up close in my life. Llamas are funny looking creatures of long shaggy fur, and a thick neck, twice as high and long as the stout legs they stand on. They greeted us where the road to Kuelap stopped and the dirt path began. By this time Stewart and I had hiked 4-5 miles, and climbed several hundred feet, topping out at about 10,000 feet of altitude. Although it was still cool in the morning air, we had broken a nice sweat and were more than eager to reach the top.

Notice road behind Stewart that was taken out by landslide. This is the same road that led to bottom of where we would hike.

The Kuelap ruins were pre-Incan ruins, meaning that they were built by people before the height of Incan Empire of the 1400s, who are most famous for the ruins of Machu Pichu further to the south. The people who built Kuelap were known as Chachapoyas, a name derived from Sacha Poya, which means Cloud people in Quechua, the language of the Incans. The Chachapoyas civilization lasted from 800 AD until the 1470s when they were sacked by the Incans, and then killed off by Spanish disease in the 1500s. The massive city fortress of Kuelap was constructed on top of a mountain, and would have been the capital of the empire, supposedly with more stone than it took to build the pyramids of Egypt. It was "discovered" by Peruvians in the middle 1800s but remained largely untouched or excavated for over a hundred years. Its significance, size, and integrity have really only become known to the international community in the last 20 years, and still it is relatively unvisited.

The base of the fortress is wrapped by stone walls 30-60 feet high, 1300 feet long and about 300-400 feet wide. It has been able to withstand the numerous earthquakes over the last millennia because the design of the outer walls and most of the inner structure is all in waves. Thereby the earthquakes simply pass along the fortress in sine waves approximately that of the structure. All of the shrubs have been removed from the outer walls so you get a clear idea of how large it is.

Stewart and I roll up on the scene and walk right up to these ancient walls, still not having seen a single person having to do with this place. We walk around just trying to take in the sheer size of the place for about 10 minutes, still the only people here. Then we spot a man carrying water down the hill, and it turns out that this is the guy in charge of the place. He leads us into a tiny wooden hut which is the "ticket office" and we each pay a student fare of about 1.50 USD to see the place. As we sign in to the logbook, we look down and see that we were the first people there for the day, and yesterday... they had two visitors. The day before that when the road was open? 8 visitors. They said that they usually don’t have any more than 15 visitors a day! Here we have ruins just as impressive as Machu Picchu and they only have 15 people as day! We inquired about a guide, and he said he could call one. Sounds great as we walk outside back out to the hillside beneath the behemoth of Kuelap and all of a sudden the man starts yelling "Riccaaaaaaaardo, Riccaaaaaaaardo, Riccaaaaaaardo" across the valley. This is what he meant by "calling" a guide. Sure enough in a tiny hut a mile across the valley, a small Peruvian man came out and waved his arms. The ticket office man informed us that we would have a guide in 15 minutes and went back to carrying water.

Our Guide Ricardo

For three hours Stewart and I strolled around the ruins with our guide Riccaaaaardo, who as it turns out, had lived beneath the Kuelap ruins his whole life in that small house. For three hours we toured this massive city on a mountain, a thousand years old with a guide who had lived there his whole life, completely by ourselves. I mean there was not a single other visitor, tourist, or worker, just us and this hands on tour. By far, the most impressive feature of this place was that it was really only explored 20 years ago, and so unlike Macchu Pichu where turn of the century archeologists cleared and excavated every square inch, this place remains largely untouched. As we climbed beyond the outer walls through one of three entrances, we arrived to first of 4 levels and I could have sworn I was on the film set of an Indiana Jones movie. Hundred year old trees grew up from the ruins between the circular houses and created a canopy of shade where llamas, parrots, and other creatures thrived. Every tree branch, trunk, or twig was covered with some unique colorful type of orchid, and small plants and moss grew out of the stone work. This place was truly as the first people found it.

Passageways to all stairways between levels were only wide enough for one person, so that in the event of attack, the attackers would be forced into single file line, easier to decimate.

Designs on the rockfaces were often symbols of a family and you would find this on all the products they used

After Kuelap, we foolishly decided to hike down the 10km 4,300 foot trail to save 15 soles (5 dollars) Hey its downhill, it’s going to be easy right? Wrong. With a 40 pound pack on back, Stewart and I hiked down what has got to be the steepest, rockiest, and muddiest trail I have been on in recent memory. Three hours, two hurting feet, two trembling quads, and two cramped calfs later, we were on the bottom at Tingo, where we started the same time the day before. After an hour waiting in Tingo, we hitched a ride in the back of a throwback station wagon. So what could happen now? Stewart, I, and packs sqeezed into the trunk of the 1997 Toyota Corolla with no room to move, and then… my quads start cramping like a fat kid running the mile in high school. Then a bump sends my head flying into a screw in the ceiling. It continued like this: head between knees to keep from hitting ceiling, bottom numb from potholes in road, and massaging quads constantly to keep from cramping. Stewart commented on how it must have felt to be a slave crossing the Atlantic from Africa, I concurred.

It continued like this for an hour and half, until... the radiator decided to quit and the car overheated. So we paid the driver his 2 bucks, grabbed our bags, and stuck out our thumbs, actually somewhat relieved to be out of the car. 30 minutes later a mini bus came by with 5 or 6 tourists on their way to Chachapoyas. Where had the tourists come from? Kuelap. They had arrived just as we left and we made our way down the hill. At this moment I was a little envious of tour groups with their personal bus. They got up two hours after we did, saw all of Kuelap in relative seclusion, and had their bus take them back to their cozy hotel all without pain or discomfort. However it is the pain that makes the summit that much sweeter, and the journey that much more memorable, so I am glad we did what we did even if we didn’t save the time.

Arriving into Chachapoyas at 5 or 6, a few pisco sours, and time for bed.