Visiting lesser-known Northern Peru with cazenove+loyd

cazenove+loyd planned and executed for us a wonderful special tour in Northern Peru. This was the fourth of such personal tours we have done with them in Latin America, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, Southern Peru including Machu Picchu and now Northern Peru. It is a shame that few overseas tourists have explored the dramatic landscapes and fascinating sites of the North. Most go straight to Cuzco, the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. However, the North has much to offer. There are the remains of civilisations going back millennia before the Incas with artefacts to rival those anywhere in the world. But there are also the precipitous mountains and gorges of the Andes with luxuriant cloud forests and mountain-top sites, and the wildlife including the birds. In two weeks, we traversed three completely different habitats, coastal desert, mountains and tropical jungle and two thousand years of human development.

Chan Chan and the Chimu Civilization

Our trip included the major attractions but there remain over 3,000 sites still to be excavated. We had flown to Lima and then up the northern coast to Trujillo where our driver and guide Miguel picked us up and took us to our first site, Chan Chan, the largest adobe city in the world covering 20 square kilometres. It was the site of the ancient Chimu civilisation (900 to 1470) and is now a World Heritage Site. It was unexpected to find such a huge metropolis built in a desert and since buried under the sand, and from a distance the pyramids looked like eroded sand dunes and there are hundreds of them. Some have been excavated to reveal huge temples with high walls painted with mud reliefs, the paint still visible, revealing a culture of sacrifice. The Chimu were masters of irrigation and knew how to exploit the desert. The city was destroyed by a ‘super El Niño’ which washed away the adobe constructions. Sadly, the magnificent Pacific coast has been despoiled by litter.

The Moche Pyramids

Next, we went to see two great pyramids of the Moche, Huaca de la Luna (the moon) and its twin Huaca del Sol. The latter has not been excavated but the former is a complex of temples built one on top of another by successive generations, around 450 to 600 AD. We were struck by the vivid painted relief sculptures on the walls of dancers, priests and warriors being led to sacrifice. There were also images from the sea, serpents and crabs.

We then turned inland to Trujillo, the second largest city in Peru and the first founded by the Spanish. It has a pleasant provincial feel. Our hotel, an old colonial house, shared the leafy square with brilliantly painted colonial houses with Moorish balconies. We didn’t linger long for there was much else to see in the area like the 5,000-year-old sacred site of El Brujo near the Pacific ocean and the Huaca Cao Viejo, a Moche adobe pyramid where the Lady of Cao was discovered. Thought to be a priestess or a female ruler in 450 CE, she died in childbirth. She has long dark hair and extensive tattoos. Her jewellery is exquisite, gold and silver lobster earrings and filigree necklaces. The Lady was from the Moche culture, famous for their stirrup pots, a bit like sophisticated Toby jugs, depicting individual people and sometimes animals. Many have been found, preserved in desert graves. The finest collection is in the Larco Museum in Lima.

Into the Mountains: Gocta Natura

We continued on the Pan-American where we crossed the Continental Divide and the Marañón river (a tributary of the Amazon) past rice fields and market gardens. The road wound round the contours, rising to magnificent open views over ridges and canyons spreading to the horizon. This challenging but fertile territory was occupied by different civilisations long before the Inca. We stayed for three nights at Gocta Natura, a rainforest reserve. We had travelled from desert to mountains to cloud forests in one long day. It was a relief to settle into a beautiful lodge surrounded by greenery with a view of the Gocta waterfall. Despite being a short (but beautiful) walk to the waterfall, the altitude made it a bit of a challenge with its many steps. Many locals, wiser than us, decided to ride the docile horses lining up for business. Still walking brought its rewards. We met other tourists, mainly Peruvians, including a feisty young woman who turned out to be a policewoman from Lima travelling without her gun!

The Gocta reserve was an escape from the world, its garden full of exotic plants, orchids and epiphytes which attract the hummingbirds, so tiny and so fast you miss them. A local had set up a viewing platform on his land which had been taken over by American twitchers. Our lodge was comfortable and peaceful. All the food came from its walled garden where I was given a Grand Tour. We spoke the universal language of gardening. I learnt much and made new friends. There was a huge variety of edible plants, all grown organically for our table. The meals were Michelin-grade, subtle flavours, served in candlelight outside the main lodge with its bar and dining area. From Gocta we drove to Karajia, a small local town with cheerful ladies in their petticoats and skirts, knitting as they chatted outside their shops. A 45-minute trek downhill on steep steps led to an isolated gorge. We craned our necks to see what we were looking for, it wasn’t obvious, but there, high up on a ledge on the cliff face, six lonely sarcophagi (made in human form) peered forlornly over the gorge towards the rising sun. One had a human skull on its head, worn like a crown. They were like exiles from a world long disappeared. Miguel told us that despite the inaccessible terrain, grave diggers had been there before us. We stayed some time to absorb the atmosphere before climbing the 45 steps back up which tested our ability to adapt to the altitude.

We found more mummies in the local museum in Leymebamba near the town of Chachapoyas where we stayed in another lodge just over the road from the museum. We had travelled to the Amazonas region, home to the Chachapoya civilisation, known as the Warriors of the Clouds. This was one of the remotest areas of Peru and the gateway to many early civilisations. The lodge was owned by Adriana von Hagen, daughter of the explorer Victor von Hagen, and managed by the warm and capable Arcelita and her family. Several lodges share the greenery, all have roofs layered with banana leaves. For supper all the guests sat together in a small dining room with an open fire (the nights could be cool). The food, which we shared with American twitchers, was fresh and filling, three courses with soup and cooked in the nearby kitchen.

Arcelita’s son was keen to show us the orchids. Opposite the lodge was the Leymebamba Museum set in beautiful gardens which included 100 different varieties of orchids. The museum was funded by overseas donations, and is an example of the policy of the Peruvian government to build small museums to house local finds and, hopefully, to attract new tourists. The main display there was a room containing 219 mummies from the Chachapoyas culture, each tied in a foetal position and wrapped in a cloth bag with a face embroidered on it. There were all shapes and sizes, young and old. There was even a dog. These burials were found on a high cliff face above the Laguna de los Cóndores, 50 miles away, where they were placed, in their bags inside the human-shaped sarcophagi. Despite the impossible climb up the cliff face, looters had managed to reach the mummies. It is possible to visit the Laguna de los Cóndores but it is still a difficult three-day trek and guides are recommended. Other artefacts found in the graves were ceramics, musical instruments, jewellery and textiles. The Chachapoyas created superb textiles. It was said that the Inca, who came after, had their rulers’ clothes made by the Chachapoyas.

Kuelap: The Machu Picchu of the North

We were now reaching the crème de la crème of our tour. Kuelap, the little-known fortress of the Chachapoyas, is sometimes referred to as the Machu Picchu of the North. It is older than Machu Picchu, dating from 600 AD, and is a fortress, not a town. Its site is dramatic, moulded onto a 3,000-metre ridge above the Utcubamba valley. Its walls rise to 20 metres with three arrow entrances that allow only one person in at a time. And what is even better is that there are so few visitors so you can wander freely, peering into the circular stone houses with their thatched roofs (some have been restored) and examining the lively friezes carved on the walls. There were water canals for the storage of water, since the water resources were some way down the valley. Some burials have been found in the walls. The city fell to the Inca and was abandoned later in 1570. It is no longer remote. You can take a long scenic ride in a new cable-car to reach the site. Kuelap is the largest stone structure in South America.

The Road to Cajamarca

The following day we left Amazonas for Cajamarca, an eight-hour drive on challenging but spectacular roads. There were many slips onto the road in stormy weather. But the Peruvian road workers were soon on the job and the waits weren’t long. But what a road it was, climbing up to 3,600 metres, offering huge vistas of canyons and mountains and the folds of the Andes stretching into infinity. It is one of the most spectacular roads in Peru and well worth the long drive. Our driver handled the road like the professional he was; we never felt unsafe. I had always wanted to see Cajamarca, the city where Atahualpa, the Inca ruler, was murdered by the Spanish. The room where he spent the last nine months of his life, known as the ransom house, can be visited. It has its ghosts. Despite filling the room with exquisite gold objects to pay his ransom, he was garrotted here. He had been enjoying a soak in the local thermal baths when a small group of Spanish arrived and took him captive after a fight in the main square. The baths are still used by the local people. Tourists can bathe there too but the water seemed murky. We enjoyed walking around Cajamarca, and we climbed the hill of Apollonia to get a view. There are many fine Spanish colonial houses. We watched dancers preparing their courtship dance, the hat dance, for carnival. The city was very friendly and it felt safe. From the small local airport in Cajamarca we flew painlessly back to Lima and spent a night at the Belmond Miraflores hotel on the coast. A luxurious stay, huge bedroom, good food, a rooftop pool overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We also managed a visit to Amano, a museum full of extraordinarily beautiful and sophisticated textiles which was nearby.

The Amazon: Tambopata Candamo Reserve

We were now on the final lap of our voyage to the Tambopata Candamo Reserve on the Amazon where we were to stay three days on a boat. We flew to Iquitos, a city of over 100,000 inhabitants, which can only be reached by plane. The Amazon was very wide at this point. You could hardly see the other bank. Yet a sign said we were 2,000 miles from the Atlantic in Brazil. The journey up river took three and a half hours to reach the heart of the 700,000-hectare reserve. The boat waiting for us looked like a battered old barge from a distance but it turned out to be a luxurious floating boat with huge bedrooms and excellent cuisine. We motored through the reserve stopping at different places, including early morning and late at night before the boat moved on, usually at night and so silently that we were amazed to find a new view from our window each morning. The banks of the river there were floating carpets of grass that moved with the river, whereas the larger trees were on firm ground behind and in the lagoons, we visited by boat. Our guides were highly trained, and spoke excellent English. Many were recruited from the small villages dotted through the reserve. We visited some of the villages. All had a school and a teacher. In one village a resident had covered his walls with wonderful murals of people and birds and animals. The owners of our boat made a point of recruiting locally, these were people who knew the river, so it was good to see them benefit. They were all highly professional. We went out every day, all day on boats along the open river and into small inlets. The American twitchers lived in a permanent state of excitement. So many, and so exotic, were the birds they saw that they forgot they kept apologising to us for being Americans. We saw animals, among them sloths, pink dolphins, a huge boa constrictor digesting his lunch on a branch, small poisonous frogs with their red bodies and monkeys. We fished for piranha and even swam in the Amazon.

There seemed to be two separate rivers, one side mud coming down from the Andes, and the other side, clean like black tea. We swam in the tea. The pink dolphins came to see who was making all the noise. We did walks from the villages and visited one of the last shamans, a young and beautiful woman whose training involved eight years alone studying herbal remedies in the forest. The company at dinner was always good, as was the food. The three days went all too quickly and we were soon on our way back to Lima and then home. It is worth mentioning that we had better Wi-Fi on the boat (provided by Starlink) than we have at our home in the UK.

Our Guide, and Journey’s End

We had the most wonderful guide. He was an archaeologist but said that he got bored brushing sand off stones, and besides it was more profitable to be a tour guide. Most of his work was bird tours. His English was perfect. We all ate lunch together every day in local diners where we were the only foreigners. The food was hearty, enormous portions of meat and veg with a drink made from corn, which looked like Coca-Cola. We felt part of the culture. Everywhere people were curious, always friendly.

It was a wonderful trip. Northern Peru is a gem waiting to be explored. The sites are spectacular but the price is long days driving, there is no other way to visit them and Peru is a large country with challenging terrain. It was true that we became tired some days and didn’t make it to two small sites on the agenda, but without the car we would never have seen the Andes, its canyons, its rivers rushing to the Amazon and the company of our guide and driver. I was touched at the end when they both presented me with a knitted red rose on a green stalk, better than any rose I have had. It reminds me of a journey literally out of this world.

Afterword by Terry

What I remember of Peru is the diversity of wildlife and plants, the diversity of landscapes and the diversity of its peoples from the ancient civilisations in different parts of the country to the present day. The Spanish conquest and the creation of an independent modern Peru is the culmination of a very long story. I have enjoyed reading since, books about the archaeology, particularly those by Victor von Hagen and his daughter Adriana, who owned the lodge, and also Kirkpatrick’s Lord of Sipán, which is a gripping story of archaeological discovery in the face of danger. I have also dipped into more modern history with a biography of Bolívar, who helped create Peru as well as Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia, and the famous novel by García Márquez which explains so much about the struggles of that period, The General in His Labyrinth, as well as novels by Vargas Llosa, The Dream of the Celt about the rubber industry in the Amazon, and also Death in the Andes. And I have only scratched the surface of a country which is culturally so rich.