road from chachapoyas to cajamarca. / perú.

You can reach kuelap, the cultural center of the chachapoyas, by cable car. On mondays the cable car is serviced and nothing goes. But there is a rogh road to the mountain station, great for us, because it allowed us – apart from the supervisory staff – to visit the second most important archaeological site in peru on our own.

Kuelap is surrounded by a huge, almost 20 meter high stone wall and has only three passages, which taper inwards and form an almost impregnable fortress. Approx. 300 round houses existed within the fortification and the construction began approx. 300 a.d. Since the chachapoyas settled in a very fertile area of the Andes, the Incas repeatedly showed covetousness. Between these cultures occured many disputes but the Incas could subjugate this warlike people only in 1475, shortly before the Spanish brought the ruin over South America. Of the 500,000 or so people who once lived there, the introduced measles and smallpox survived only 90,000, but a little later the people almost died out completely.

In karajia, the mummified remains of some chachapoyas were found in the base of the unique sarcophagi, which could only be reached by neck-breaking climbing tours. With my companion drone I was able to capture these unique perspectives.

The chachapoyas (this culture is known by kuelap and more about it in a following blog post) built this dwelling (?) and burial place in very inaccessible steep walls. A lot about “Pueblo de los muertos” is still unknown because it has not yet been fully archaeologically evaluated and also it has not yet been discovered by tourists. So we had to pick up the entrance keys to this site at the city administration. A breakneck path leads through the ruins but an overview is literally only available from the air! Here my camera drone gave spectacular, maybe never before seen perspectives. Later we saw some of the discovered mummies in the museum of lámud and the doors there were opened especially for us as well.