So high

Today, Wednesday, was our best day yet, because we took an all day tour up to the huge and extremely high ruin, Kuelap, which is the gem of this area. and it was so nice. I was not looking forward to the drive of 3 hours each way on dirt roads but it turned out to be so exquisite.  in order to rise up from the river, deep in the canyon, to the ruin, directly above thousands of feet higher, you have to drive far back into canyons and up from a canyon that is like a narrow southwest canyon, up into high valleys carpeted with small fields and horse pastures on slanted hills, through little villages like in many mountainous countries like old-timey switzerland or bhutan or nepàl where people are making a living directly from their farms and pastures, and up into the mountains which are full of fragrant flowers, monkey flowers, lupines, tropical bell flowers, lots of bromeliads and orthids in the trees. and then Kuelap, it´s amazing. it is not the boring walled place I thought it might be, it is intricate and lovely and the surrounding skyline is SO impressive and the distant views of more and more valleys and towns, spectacular.  every now and then in these steep walled valleys, the bedrock is exposed and it is beautiful, layered sandstone and limestone that the thrust up of the Andes has quilted and folded in the most impressive ways, and this creates also the caves and nooks that the locals used to stash their beloved dead once they were mummified and placed in lifelike coffins.

Kuelap is SO high up and on a big bluff and then it itself is in several layers, the outer layer wall is about 3 stories or four stories in height, there were many round houses inside that layer and the inner layer is another 2 or 3 stories higher and on it are several temples.  there are higher mountains around but so far away that it is like being on top of the world. and you can look over the edge thousands of feet down to the rivers far far below. amazing. built to shelter the Chachapoyans when they were attacked by headhunting nasty amazonian tribes, it is grand in scale yet very human and so pretty with its trees hung with spanish moss and bromeliads, and little hummingbirds and colored tropical birds zooming around.



the store is closing so we will end here for now! more later from our next stop, Cajamarca which we reach in a 12 hour bus ride that goes as high as 13,500 feet I think and as low as about 2,000 feet. up, up up and down down down and up up up. Cajamarca is higher than we are now, which is about 8,500 feet I think. it is the beautiful colonial city where the spaniards imprisoned, then dispatched, the last inca emperor, Atahualpa.