Cloud People in Kuelap

Alex working hard
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We had been wanting to visit the Kuelap fortress/citadel for a while.  It is a bit trickier to get to than most of the places we´ve been to recently, but it was worth it.

Firstly, you have to take a windy overnight bus ride to Chachapoyas.  Then a taxi or collectivo into the valley.  And then walk or hitch from there.

25 kilos of garlic

We decided that after the long bus journey we´d stay in a fancy lodge place.  On the phone the nice lady from Choctamel lodge said that it was only a 6 hour round-trip walk to Kuelap.  When we arrived at the lodge however, it seemed as though it was more like 10 hours.  Not so good for a day trip.

Alex with a dog friend waiting for the shop to leave
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But we decided to give it a go anyway, and we ended up with getting lifts most of the way there and back.  Almost as soon as we stepped out into the road, a taxi came passed, and the driver let us come along with his other passengers for less than a pound for both of us for the 20 minute ride to Maria.  From here it was a further 10kms.  And we got a nice free ride in the local mobile shop van.  Very friendly chap didn´t even take any of our money, although it took them about an hour and a half to load the van with tomatoes, pasta, rice, batteries, and about 25 kilos of garlic.  Mind you we found some nice puppies to play with to pass the time.

Some of the amazingly well preserved/restored reliefs
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The ruins themselves are still being renovated, but plenty of the site is still as it has been for years.  The huge wall around the fortress encloses the ruins of around 200 circular buildings.  Most of them are in pretty bad condition and overgrown with vegetation, but you can still see the detailed craftsmanship that went into some of them.

At the northern end of the site where the renovations are taking place it is easy to see what the site used to look like with many of the ruins cleaned up, and one of the buildings has even had its roof reconstructed.

After about 3 hours of wandering around we headed back to the lodge, this time after around 90 minutes walking we hopped into the back of a pick-up belonging to the manager of the chaps working on road maintainence, after a couple stops to check they were all working hard enough we got back to the lodge, having done very little walking indeed...

The lodge itself was nice, especially the hot tub, which a small boy put some smelly leaves into for us.  But we only gave 2 days notice, so rather than the normal food menu, we had the local food option.  This basically meant beige things, boiled potatoes, rice, tuna, tough old chicken and eggs.  But at least the price was right.  We were worried at one stage that we might be eating their pets one night when we saw Normita (our host) chasing a guinea pig around the kitchen with a small axe.

Oops internet cafe closing soon.  More later