Peru: The Ruin of Me

After I arrived, one of Dover's contacts sent me to Sinecio, telling me that the going rate for guides was $8 per day, plus $10 for each pack animal. Cyana, an Ecuadorian friend traveling with me, decided that she'd travel by horse.

I, unfortunately, subscribe to a masochistic backpacking ethic that makes me determined to personally lug my own gear. I told Sinecio I would walk.

Sinecio, as he often did, looked worried. He was too polite to tell me I was being stupid.

My introduction to the Chachapoya ruins had come a day earlier at Kuelap, an immense ruin about halfway between Leymebamba and the city of Chachapoyas. As I explored the ruin, Jeynar Rubio Caro, my taxi driver turned tour guide, reached into a rock wall and pulled out a human femur. He replaced it, put his hand back in the wall and pulled out part of a hip. Then came a jawbone.

The pieces for Jeynar's ghoulish game of Operation were the remains of the former inhabitants and/or builders of Kuelap, the best known of the Chachapoya ruins. While such "hands-on" visits are not encouraged by the ruin's caretakers, Jeynar had ably demonstrated one of the interesting facts of this citadel: Some of its walls double as graveyards.

With its misty, ridgetop location and 35-to-50-foot limestone walls, Kuelap often draws comparisons to Machu Picchu, the legendary Inca site to the south. Unlike tourist-packed Machu Picchu, however, Kuelap retains a palpable sense of remoteness.

Standing atop a stone watchtower, I saw clouds pinwheel through the valley like phantoms, their edges lapping against mountains and cliffs. Behind me were the ruins of more than 400 stone roundhouses, several adorned with trapezoidal friezes believed to represent the eyes of pumas and snakes. Soon, a mist began to fall.

The ruin's aura of mystery is matched only by that of its builders. Most sources trace the origins of Kuelap and the rise of the Chachapoya to the ninth century, and the culture flourished until the Incas conquered the area in the 1470s. The Spanish arrived about 60 years later, leaving little of the Chachapoya tribe but their constructions.

When I met him in a hotel lobby, Dover, the guide, spread a laminated topographical map over a table next to the bar. I asked him if he thought there were ruins yet to be discovered.

"This area here," he said, pointing to one region of the map, "nobody goes there. And there's no reason why there wouldn't be anything to find."

I've watched Indiana Jones movies way too many times not to love a place like that.

Sinecio was taking us to Tajopampa, a tiny settlement up a river known as both the Atuen and the Upper Utcubamba.