Hotel Gran Vilaya Chachapoyas

After a pretty smooth bus ride we arrived in Chachapoyas nice and early and found a really nice hostel to stay at. The hostel we choose was amazing, based right on the plaza in a beautiful setting. Chachapoyas is a beautiful town, really quaint and freindly, we expect that it will grow hugely in popularity in the near future. We decided not to muck around and booked onto a tour out to see Kuelap the same day which worked out perfectly. We had enough time to shower ...

Hola amigos!<br><br>I had decided whilst in Chiclayo that I wanted to visit both Cajamarca and the capital of the Amazonas region - Chachapoyas. Although when looking at a map this seems straightforward, in reality it is anything but. First, I had to catch a bus to the nothing town of Celendin in the middle of nowhere. This was easy enough and I found a cheap hotel for the night. I had heard some positive things about the town so was a little surprised to be ...

... us anywhere, so we moved on. <br> We found a restaurant with a light on so we rang the bell. The desk lady answered, and it looked like we woke her up. We asked if we could store our luggage there if we paid her a sol a bag ($0.30) and she showed us where to leave our stuff. We thanked her and then headed out to the collectivo stop. A collectivo is a taxi that leaves when it is full and all passengers share the price together-almost like a bus taxi. We ...

... pre-Inca ruin that no one has cleared and uncovered yet. Tourism has yet to really kick off here - the region doesn't really attract a lot of people (the south of the country gets the lion's share of tourism) but the area is just starting to gear up for it.<br><br> I got here late on Friday night. Achingly slow boneshaker bus from Tarapoto arrived late in Pedro Ruiz after dark. I half expected to be stuck in Pedro for the night but ...

Chachapoyas - a town few people get to as its more inaccessible than the stuff down south, but is also home to the famous Chachapoya culture ruins of Kuelap, built around 900AD. Set on a craggy limestone cliff 3 hours by dirt road from the town, it was everything that Machu Picchu was not. Unlike the thousands of people per day at Machu Picchu, we saw ...

... still a little concerned when we were all given a pair of gumboots... hhmmm...<br>Turns out stop number one was to be a cave. This worried me slightly, as im not what you would call fond of caves... something about the heat and the dark and the damp and the bats, possibly not my favourite combination of conditions. So this part of the day i didnt really enjoy all that much, but oh well. Stop number two was what we actually signed up to see, a group of pre-Incan tombs ...

... been protests by indigenous people (I believe seeking better availability of medicine, protection of their land and more government subsidies -- i´m not entirely clear but that is my understanding) in different areas of Peru. Roads have been blockaded and people have been marching in the streets. In the city of Bagua (not far from Chachapoyas), there was a major clash between the protestors and the police and over 20 ...

Afin d'eviter la route bloquee, nous prenons un bus pour Pedro Ruiz (1400 m) plus au nord vers 10h. Avant cela, je commande pour le petit dejeuner des rellanas con yucas, ne sachant pas ce que c'est. Je suis surpris de me retrouver avec une assiette de boudins servie avec du manioc... a 9h ! Pendant le trajet, le paysage change rapidement, nous abandonnons le desert pour un decors plus junglesque : rizieres, champs de bananiers, vegetation touffue... meme le ...

... city, forcing enemies into a single file which makes it easier to defeat them. The site consist of hundreds of circular home sites, a military tower and a religious site that is thought to have been a solar calendar as well. It is a truly special site and I was enthralled by the construction as well as the location. Later, Ronal told me that he felt something really special there, as if he was being watched and he kept looking behind him to ...

... hire a private collectivo to ensure we'd get back to Luya. The roads here are rough dirt roads. The kind of roads that 4-wheelers in Colorado negotiate for their weekend fun and games. Here they are the only roads and there are few cars and only a handful of collectivos. In fact, I'm not sure I saw a private car the whole time I was in Chacha! What you do see is people walking on these roads and you have to wonder how far they walk! Some have ...