*****Oooops! I forgot to publish this entry from my time in Peru******
It was time to some more Peruvian ruins during my last few weeks here. Chachapoyas was billed as a lesser -traveled tourist destination than Machu Pichu, but almost as impressive. The Chachapoyas people were around before the Incans and settled high in a valley between Chiclayo and the jungle.
These sarcophogi are hanging out in the middle of a wall of a mountain and overlook the valley below:
The Chachapoyas people went to the top of a mountain and carried rocks to build this fortress. To make work harder on themselves, they filled the fortress with landfill, elevating themselves high enough to overlook the whole valley. The mountain ends where the trees are on the right side of the photo and they Chachapoyas added enough landfill to plant the trees up top.
The view from the top of the fortress. The Chachapoyas were able to easily see any invaders coming through the valley. To get there, we had to drive along the road in the center of this photo.
These circles are the original stones of the houses of families. Along one side, there is a line of stones. This is where acheologists found bones of guinea pigs underneath and suspect that people would raise them there and sleep above them along the wall to keep them warm. I suspect that they actually ate guinea pigs in bed and dropped the bones underneath their bed. I know that if I was eating in bed, I would love to just throw away bones underneath.
The other thing that I visited in Chachapoyas was a cave with several formations of stalactites and stalagmites. These look very different than the ones I saw in Thailand. These look like milk chocolate and shiny mud drippings.
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