Tourist Sites

Ok so

I arrived in chachapoyas to the difficult task of selecting a guide.

Everyone knows someone who knows the area really well and was there just last week.

I was doing something which not a lot of tourists do, hiking around the various jungle ruins of the Chachapoyan culture rather than just visiting the main monument Kuelap.

Chachapoyas is about 12 hours inland from the coast of peru and when I first asked the information people in chiclayo which bus company was best to get there the woman told me that there had been a landslide and that they could take you to within 4 hours walk of chachapoyas but you would have to hire a donkey and walk the rest of the way.

After a bit of consideration I thought yeah I can do that why not.

When I returned to the independent information centre again the next day the woman told me this wasn´t the case and that the road opened for 2x2 hour periods and that the bus timed it so the wait was minimal.

Movil tours is the nicest bus company i have ever been on. I don't think locals really fly here and so there are some really nice bus companies, heaps of room and they gave you food and coffee (for a 12 hour bus ride).

Cha cha (as the locals call it) was a little bigger than I expected but I had no plans for a hostal and after wandering aimlessly around the plaza trying to decide followed a random person to his hostal and decided there was a good as any. they offered me the guide that works with their hotel. And after giving me the spiel and the price he seemed pretty reasonable. Compared him to the other tour agencies and decided to go with him (mainly cause he offered me a free day around chachapoyas hence I could test him out).

After my free day around the area I fired him. He was a recovering alcoholic christian who because he had church couldn´t leave until 12:30 and had to return by 7 30 pm which I thought would be fine....expect we needed more time than that for the walk. Especially when he got lost. We walked for an hour in the dark and still had to catch a taxi back to the town. I got quite pscyhed up about firing him because the wage he was going to make was quite a lot for the week compared to normal for him, we had already bought food to share for the week and I thought he would try and kick up a stink....I was really ready to have a good argument with him and think I was kind of excited about the idea of firing my first person...unfortunately he didn´t kick up a stink he sought of said that is fine I asked him if he understood me and he said yeah its fine.

In his defence he did find the ruin that we went to see which was about 1000 years old and had a cool vibe to the location which a massive frieze of an eye that was supposed to the symbolic of a lookout (he may have been making this up the other guide seemed to think differently).

For the fact that he didn´t kick up and stink (oh and the fact he was a bad guide who really didn´t know the area) HATED HIM.

Went to a different company and hired their guide for something similar that would start one day later.

Armado hardly looked like a hiking guide (he was a big guy). He knew heaps about the chachapoyan culture which was cool but really didn´t know the trails and we ended up hiring another guide on the 2nd and 3rd days and couldn´t complete the walking that we were supposed to on the 3rd day.

But he was great on the first day. After about an hour of walking we went off the trail and into the jungle to look at the ruins of houses at pilcapampa. This was amazing. It was effectively bush bashing behind a machete weilding local for about 2 hours. Down and around quite large ruins of houses and also fotresses that he said were from about 250 years after christ (this may have been an exaggeration).

We had dinner, breakfast got a room each for 20 soles (about 7 dollars) which was great and headed off (this time with my mochilla on a horse= for a gruelling day.

after 6 hours we reached the town near the next ruins hire another local guide and after 90 minutes of uphill through a muddy track we reached the ruins of paxamarca. These were a mix of rectangular and circular buildings which was a mix of chachapoyan and incan influence (the incas conquered the cha chas about 30 years before the spanish arrived).

We did some more bush bashing around funky houses hypothesising about which were temples. Armado took more photos and also took video....this is never a good sign for a guide.

He really didn´t know anything about this site and the reason why was cause he´d only been there one time before. After another hour of decent (about 9 hours walking around in total) I had a cold outdoor shower (which was basically just off the main road of the town behind a brick wall)...that was fun.

The next day had another early start and this time the promise of coca chewing (a leaf that the locals chew). Basically in these leaves there is a minute amount of cocaine and they then put calcium in their mouths to speed up the release of the cocaine. The idea is that you aren´t supposed to be thirsty or tired while you do the absurdly difficult and long walks between towns....lets just say I was both tired and thirsty after 7 and a half hours of uphill walking and when I was told we had another 5 to go I jumped at the suggestion of hiring a car.

Found the cutest puppy and a comfy place for the night. Hired a car for the whole next day when we visited Kuelap and a museum at Leymebamba.

Armado was very knowledgable about Kuelap (yeah so what all of the guides are it is the major attraction in the area). I later found out he had probably visited the fotress over 1800 times. Some people say that kuelap is better than macchu picchu cause there are less tourists there (stay tuned for macchu picchu vs kuelap). We were alone for the whole 2 hours and it was great.

The fotress is huge and has two different levels (the first was the original fortress then the second when the population had grown). At some points the wall is 19 metres high. There are some cool masoleums and a little bit of carvings on the wall but the impressive thing is just the sheer size of it. It is at 3000 metres mas o menos and was frankly astounding.

I loved it and was enthralled by the visit.

We then visited a cool museum about the culture which had artefacts from one of the moseleums that this culture built on ledges halfway up cliffs.

This one is a tough call. the area around Chachapoyas was so cool. Beautiful sceneries and valleys. Great ruins which were that little bit more interesting cause they were still covered in jungle so there wasn´t that touristy feel.
So the area around chacha is great.

The guide armado - slow at walking (not as bad as chin fringe) didn´t really know a whole heap about the other sites and when he did try and hypothesise about it with me his ideas seemed pretty stupid and he really didn´t know the area that well.

In the end the thing that tipped the scales was the fact that he woudn´t camp any of the nights...he needed his big meal and his bed....also i think sometimes when he didn´t know the answer to a question he just made things up (not that I know this for a fact)...so HATED HIM.

Cha cha is a tiny town (although it is the capital of the region) and to be perfectly honest I am starting to hate it but I am here for a couple more night cause they ahve the cheapest spanish lessons I have been able to find in peru.

At the moment if you asked me to pick between the ecuadoreans and the peruvians I would pick the ecuadoreans in a heartbeat...but we´ll give the peruvians a few more weeks before we pass judgement.