Festivals and Kanikapila

Tonight, our last night in Chachapoyas, we only have 15 minutes to blog about two wonderful days.  Day 1, we went to see a couple of ruins in the highlands but more importantly to a village celebrating its yearly festival with performances of dances and music from villages all over, and, to celebrate some new friends birthday with shared guitar, singing, dancing and blackberry wine.  Day 2 we went to Kuelap which is fantastic! more on this in the next section.

The variety of landscapes and towns in this area is so terrific.  the area is so vertical, that you can be down on a riverbottom with bananas, sugar cane, and cactus, then up in a wonderful rangeland with fields and large views, then up in the foggy highlands with bromeliads and all kinds of wildflowers and wild birds. On Tuesday we got some of all of this, when we went to the town of Lamud for its festival, and to two nearby cliff ruins, where the chachapoyans had buried their dead in tombs in the cliff faces.  steep hiking and deep drops but incredible views and also a lot of these hikes, you get accompanied by small children bringing their pony to you in case you poop out and need a ride up.  you see their parents in the fields ploughing and spinning wool as they walk along and every now and then an older person with wonderful highland clothing and character filled faces.  The place is magical.


also magical, after our adventure, getting an impromptu party where our hotel-tour manager carlos played exquisite ballads from  Mexico and Ecuador, a peruvian lady danced local partner dances with her italian boyfriend, a dutch guy played classical guitar and craig and I offered up some hula and mele. it was washed down with plentiful home brewed spirits and cream filled birthday cake, then we all went off to the restaurant called Sabores De Peru where we were seated in a private banquet room to try new flavors and dishes. was fun.