Well it was one hell of a long journey from Lima to Chachapoyas. Luckily the bus was fairly comfy and fairly empty so we had a fairly good nights sleep but the journey in the daytime was awful. The air conditioning wasnt working so it was unbearably hot. So hot there were two americans throwing up all day. They were the wife and daughter of a baptist missionary form Mississippi. They were moving to Chachapoyas for a year (on the bus, they had huge amounts of luggage) to 'work with the Quechuans'. What made it even worse was that we kept stopping because recent rain had caused landslides all over the region and there were diggers trying to clear the roads. Anyway, eventually we arrived in Chachapoyas (late as always) and headed to Hostal Revash. Its not really a hostel (its only got private rooms) but its by far the nicest cheap hotel we've stayed in with a plant filled courtyard, very comfy beds and some of the best showers in south america. We got straight on sorting out the next days activities at the in house tour agency. It turned out there was an amazing 3 day tour leaving the next day which took in all the archaelogical sights of the chachapoyas region by car, on foot and on horseback. It sounded great BUT as usual after a marathon bus journey we needed to crash and the tour was leaving at 5.30am, only giving us a few hours to repack our bags and prepare and sleep before heading off. We had to turn it down but we did organise a tour to the pre inca ruins of Kuélap which was the reason we came here.

So the next morning after a good breakfast of coca tea, juice, bananas, scrambled eggs and the usual bread rolls with butter and jam, we headed off on our tour. We went by taxi, which had been hired for the day, with our guide and two other people - a girl from france whos living in peru and a guy from our least favourite city, Lima. Along the 3 hour journey into the clouds our multiligual guide (we dicovered later on he speaks spanish, english, french, korean, and some italian and german!) explained a bit about the area and its ancient cultures. Before the Inca empire, there were 12 distinct ethnic groups around chachapoyas who lived up the mountains, which they climbed with ladders, to avoid disease and flooding. Chachapoyas, by the way is the capital of the Amazonas department, is home to about 20,000 people and means 'cloud mountain'.

Also along the journey we stopped at the small village of Longuita for an explanation of how the local people paint their own houses using paint made of powdered clay and crushed orchids. We met an 80 year old guy who showed us his house which he'd painted beautifully.

Finally we arrived at the main attraction, the amazing Kuélap fortress at 3000m above sea level, built by the most important of the pre-inca groups in the region. Its outer walls are 600m long and between 10 and 20m high and it contains 500 circular houses which were once home to a population of 3000-4000 inhabitants. An outbreak of smallpox hit the community and the young fled to low jungle whilst the old stayed and died (109 bodies were found here only 2 years ago). After that Kuélap beacme overgrown with jungle and despite local people being aware of some structure on the mountain, it wasn't until 1843 that a judge from Chachapoyas properly discovered what was there. Today theres still a large amount of it left with other bits being restored or reconstructed.

The fortress has three gates (the magic number): the main gate for the royals, the service gate for the llamas and the escape gate near to where the royals lived. We entered through the llama gate. Once inside there's three levels. The first was where the ordinary towns people lived, 6 or 7 in a house. When one of them died they would mummify them by removing their intestines and other organs through their anus, just leaving their brains and hearts. Then they would fill them with a herbal embalming fluid and bury them in the whole they would have previosly used for storing food in the middle of their house. Then they'd dig another whole for the food and carry on living there!

The next level was for the main shamans and the third for the royals. The royals lived near the escape but also near two large mausoleums which are absolutely full of bones. We were crowding round taking pictures of the bones through a hole in the wall and our guide just laughed, reached in and picked one up and said 'this is much easier'. He told us about the amazing brain surgery they used to do. Because all the royals were completely inbred they would begin to go crazy at a certain age so they used these diamond shaped scalpols to make a hole in the side of their skulls which they'd then plug with cotton which allowed them to live a further 20-30 years.

He explained the history of Kuélap once the Incas invaded. A long, confusing but interesting story which ended up with the natives forming an alliance with the spaniards to bring down the Inca empire.

We also explored a part with restoired and one whole reconstructed house complete with tall thatched roof. Near it was the inca temple El Tintero, so named beacuse it is shaped like an ink bottle inside. There was also a building that had been built and then adapted by chachapoya people, then incas and then spaniards.

It was really quite spectacular. And best of all we were pretty much the only ones there. Not a single irritating American tourist to be heard. Bliss. The setting was so amazing to. We were above and in the clouds and surrounded by these crazy trees with these parasitical plants in them that looked like the leaves of a pineaple but bright red. And there were grazing llamas left right and centre.

On the way back down we stopped for a delicious but very late lunch in a small village and ended up having a multiligual conversation about religion, faith and the soul.

We ended up in the same restaurant for dinner as the other two people from our tour and had some very good meat cooked on the grill. Then we went for drinks with our guide Agusto in this strange little bar that played loud dance music but definately wasn't for dancing. We sat and sampled some amazing local liquors, mostly made from a huge variety of fruits. We were drinking and chatting til 12.30 when every one decided it was about time for bed.

Today we wanted to go to the Gocta waterfall but that was another trip leaving at 5.30am (the road to it closes at 6am) and we didnt quite have the energy for it. Instead we slept in til 11 and had a lazy day. Tonight we get the 10n hourbus to chiclayo. From there we get a 3 hour bus to Riura and from Piura there's a direct bus to Guayaquil (Ecuador).