PERU:CHACAPOYAS:karajia and teacher conventions

Trip Start Oct 01, 2008
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Peru  ,
Sunday, February 15, 2009

our taxi man drops us straight in the square, but on julio popping into a few local hotels, he comes back empty handed...a teacher convention has come to town...(damn teachers!)and ALL the hotels and hostels are booked out!  even a local school owner comes by, offers to help us, and says we could sleep on his school floor if we needed. so friendly, and helpful.  this has never happened to us all the way through our travels, but we imagine this is what it may be like in ´prime time.

we finally find one hotel...an hour later...and have to share with julio and anne.  our first time...but rather than sleep under the stars we agree.  but the reason the room is free is becasue it leaks.  and whilst it chucks it down for the next few hours my bed gets wet, and our bathroom leaks.  we decide to head out for a romantic pizza, it still being valentines evening.

we end the evening watching ´hitch´---- which lukey WILL NOT ADMITT....but he laughed his ass off.  he wont admit he liked a romantic comedy...but who cant like will smith?

the next day, anne , julio and i head off to karajia, to see some sarcophagi, whilst lukey hangs out finding more music for the mp3.  we head off in another cheap cab up the valley, my neck getting tighter and tighter as each bump across the dirt road jerks us this way and that.  3 hours later and we are led by a young girl of about 9 down a dirt farm path, past her fields of corn and potatoes to the river valley.  high up on the valley walls are 6 elaborately moulded sarcophagi ( i still cant say that word!)...but basically its where the warriors bodies of the chacopyas people (500AD) have been mummified and stored.  you couldnt get too close as they were high up on the cliff, which thankfully has stopped these ones being stolen, but originally they think there would have been more.  you find a few smaller, less important ones, further round the cliff.  they have fantastic faces páinted on them, and although they have been a real journey out to find them, i am pleased....

although the 2km hike back up the river valley wall makes me reconsider this.  i am sweating, ´panting and to be honest loving it, but am watching the horizon, begging for our taxi to come into view.

on returning we celebrate annes bday with some cake and hitch our night bus to chiclayo, which then leads us down onto lima.... a total of a 24 hour bus ride....sleeping tablet anyone?

i cannot xplain how much i have loved northern peru.  i can imagine there is much more to see out there then we have seen.  but i feel we have gotten off the beaten path, learnt about the real history, not just about the great incas, and have met some fantastic locals.

now its onto the tourist train... southern peru.  if we had time we would have explored the entral highlands, but again time is getting short, and we couldnt come to peru with out going to nasca and cusco.....
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