People of the Clouds

This is a story of someone visiting the habitat of chachapoya, the people of the clouds, somewhere to the north from Lima. He rode a bus across the mud town of Chan Chan and the pyramid of Huaca Del Sol, the jumped onto a bagal up to the mountain top with some teens of pre-Inca tombs.

The coastline of Peru is a giant archeological site covered by desert spanning as long as 2,000 kilometers. The site hides hundreds of temples, tombs, and destructed ancient cities. The suitable expression of the view is closer to impressive rather than beautiful. We left the crowd of Lima and got onto a bus heading north. Rivers streaming down from the highland of Andes reached some spots of the desert and make them green oasis.

We walked across the city of mud, Chan Chan, and climbed up the pyramid of Huaca del Sol built in the age of Moche. The construction was huge and impressive. But the most attractive part was the colorful carvings on the walls of the temple of Huaca de la Luna, which has been uncovered by archeologist after buried under the desert for ages.

In the previous century, just after Spanish arrival, many towns and temples were destroyed and the treasures were robbed in Lima. Even until recently, treasure hunter are continuously digging old tombs and sell anything they find to collectors around the world. In many cases authority fails to prevent robbery of these historical artifacts.

Among the cases is the one taking place at Sipan, somewhere close to the city of Chichalayo. Back in 1987, a few treasure hunters made a phenomenal discovery unintentionally. When they pushed a stick into a tunnel, golden jewelries fell down from an ancient tomb. The treasure was then sold in the black market. Police tracked it down. They called an archeologist and a number of treasure hunters (one of them was shot to death for some reasons). Later on the finding was declared as the largest treasure from a tomb in South America.

Treasure hunting in Sipan went along long after the incident. Archeologists dug 23 centuries old tombs. They found corpses of Moche knights and priests buried together with their wife, servants, dogs, and Ilamas. The corpse of the King of Sipan was buried together with a lot of valuable stuffs made of gold, silver, and copper which now are neatly stored in a museum.

We ended the day on a beach at Pimentel. Fishermen cruise the wave on boats made of grass, exactly the same as their predecessors, thousands of years ago. Accompanied by a plate of fried shark we lay down the plan of Andes exploration the following day.

Incahuasi literally means ‘the house of Inca’. The village was found in only one travel book with the following remark “Local festival on September 24th. Indian ethnic is still singing song in ancient language of Mochica. The place is located about 24 hours trip on a truck from Chiclayo”.

On the 23rd of September we were on a truck moving along farming fields. There were a lot of people in the truck, one of which was Oscar, born and raised at Incahuasi. He told us a completely different information from the book. First, the travel time to Incahuasi is 4 hours instead of 24. Second, Incahuasinos do not sing in the Mochica, the forgotten language of King Sipan. They sing in Quechua, the language of Inca ethnic who took over the Peruvian northern land about 600 years ago.

The village of Incahuasi was very beautiful. We passed a church with grass roof. Surrounding it were women with wide hat and colorful dress. A procession was ongoing, consisted of songs sang the whole night long along with buarapo and aguardiente, favorite liquor of local villagers made of fermented sugarcane.

A visitor from Chiclayo who declared himself as a brujo, traditional healer, made a contact with the spirits using San Pedro cactus as the media. Brujo is a popular profession in the coastal area of Peru. At a certain tariff they can heal diseases, find missing people, even make up someone’s revenge. “But most of them are craps”, Oscar said. Then he recommended an old healer living in the hill.

Traveling to the east we stopped at Cajamarca, a city full of dark history. Here 168 Spanish troops led by Pizarro framed the lord of Inca, Atahualpa, with his 4,000 troops. Believed by millions of his people as the ancestor of a god, Atahualpa tried to fight back. But he failed to beat the tricky Spaniards. Atahualpa as supposed to be released after giving away a room full of gold and two rooms full of silver. But the tricky Spaniard broke their own promise, the executed Atahualpa instead. People believes that the fall of Inca started at Cajamarca.

From 300 meters height we saw the road steeply went down to river Maranon. After hundreds of sharp corners we finally got to the riverside. The milk-chocolate colored water was streaming strongly along the river framed by desert, crossing a number of green oasis full of banana trees. The trip along the river gorge was even more interesting, especially when the slope slide down and covered half of the road. In one hour we reached the village of Leymebamba, high up the hill.

We paid a visit to an archeology museum and found a room full of mummies. Men, women, children, babies, all from the tomb dug by treasure robbers around lake Condors. The route to lake Condor presented a beautiful landscape, which became dangerous in certain occasions. The bagal (result of trans species of female horse and male donkey) could fall down to the mud and we have to work hard to take it back.

The lake which rarely visited by tourists in the past was welcoming a lot of visitors after the discovery of the mummies and their accompanying treasures. Most of them visited easily reachable archeological spots such as soil-made tomb at Carajia and Inca’s magnificent fort of Cualep. The later was also popular as Machu Picchu of the north.

We spent the night at a primitive lakeside hut. People were watching their cattle around. The lake was surrounded by sharp topped hills covered by misty forest and line of bamboo trees. There were also waterfall, various orchids, and a few parrots. Far up the hill were dozens tombs with mummies of Chachapoya, people of the clouds, mysterious Inca civilization occupying the forests far before Spanish invasion.

Most of the tombs were located in hard to reach positions. We can only see the details, such as the the wooden boxes and statues, through binoculars. We continued our trip to the east toward the dense forest. No one knew what was in there. Since the last Chachapoya left his house in the forest, no one has ever enter that dark valley. Mystery and myth protected it from visitors. Maybe only courageous tomb raiders would be brave enough to enter it sometime.

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