wildlife and nature in northern Peru

Not at all in the order of the trip, but I've wanted to see a sword-billed hummingbird for many years, so this has to be the first photo for this post!  My top target for the trip was actually a different hummingbird, the marvellous spatuletail, but as expected I did not get to see it - after all, this was not a birding trip, but primarily one focused on archaeological sites.  But I was very happy to see the sword-billed, and that it sat still for long enough to enable me to get a focused photo!

I did see a number of good new bird species, including the endemic Tumbes Tyrant, White-winged Guan, and Koepcke's Screech-Owl - the first two, with a number of other species, at the Chaparrí reserve.  This was a wonderfully remote place with rustic yet comfortable cabins in the middle of a low scrub forest (I slept so well!), great food and very comfortable hammocks hanging in the porches.  I would have liked to spend another day there, in a reserve which had more than just birds. We didn't see any of the wild spectacled bears, only those in the rescue and rehabilitation centre, but a fox was cheekily walking around near the kitchen.

We drove through the arid coastal desert and up into (and over) the Andes, much of which was also very arid with little vegetation except for cacti.  There was the odd hummingbird - and some tarantulas in their web-nests beside the road - and one just sitting on the side of the road.  Like many people I find these spiders both fascinating and repellent at the same time.  We briefly passed through cloud forest, and also just into the Amazonian region where the Gocta Falls were located. 'Discovered' less than a decade ago, these are amongst the highest falls in the world, and the walk towards them, up and down hills between coffee and sugar cane crops and finally through a small area of virgin rainforest, was hard but very enjoyable.  This picture to the left is a distant view from early on in the walk, but I was one of those who succeeded in reaching the base of the falls.

When we got there our guide took a look in the rubbish bin, and didn't seem very surprised to find an oppossum in there...

The other part of the trip was the chance to see the Raymillacta festival in Chachapoyas.  This has been going for some twenty years, with groups coming from quite some distance to take part.  Rather like a harvest festival really, many of the villages or associations showed off the produce from their area, either through their costumes or through samples of food and drink being carried through the streets.  Many were throwing or giving samples to the crowd and I brought home a little bag of organic coffee as well as having drunk various local corn and spirit drinks.  There was a great deal of music too, from brass bands to traditional pipes and drums, The only part I didn't like were the headdresses of two groups which included real toucan bills.

death in northern Peru part II

The Chachapoyas empire came later, dating from around 800 AD up to the time of the Incas, and was further inland so involved a long and scenic drive to get there from the coast.  At their funerary site of Karajía a number of sarcophagi sit on a high mountain ledge, their anthropomorphic mud and cane structures containing the bodies of the dead, some also with skulls atop their mud heads.  Believed to date from around 1200 AD, there are clear signs that there were originally more of these or similar structures on the cliff ledges, including a number of human bones on the path at the base of the cliff.  For me this was the best archaeological site of the trip.

At Revash we were able to get close-up views of other mountain-ledge tombs, constructed like large dolls houses but with human bones visible inside.


In the same area as Karajía we visited the large hilltop ruins of Kuélap.  Surrounded by a high (up to 20m high) and thick wall it is often referred to as a fortress but it was more likely just a fortified town, as it contains the ruins of over 400 buildings, mostly circular, that appear to have been living quarters or perhaps storerooms.  This was also a Chachapoyas site although a few later additions show that it was fnally taken over tby the Incas.  Perhaps they were responsible for the skeletons unearthed there recently, more than 120 having been thrown into a pit at the site.


A little further on, just outside of the town of Leymebamba, was another great museum.  It covers the history of the area but the clear highlight is a collection of some 200 mummies, found on rock ledges above the Lake of the Condors.  It seems that nothing much is known about them except that they date from the late Inca period.

Amongst all these reminders of death, the twelve of us on the tour were dropping (ill, not dead!) like flies.  Thankfully I only went down with a cold, although the mild temperature that signalled its arrival made a 2km uphill walk, at 2600m, one of the most difficult I have ever done.  Others also got coughs and colds, fevers, dizzy spells, headaches from the altitude and the twisting mountain roads, and a vomiting and diarrhoea bug laid some low.  Worst of all though came from a vicious dog that bit two of the group on the walk up to Revash.  In one case the bite went through skin and flesh and into the muscle, and the poor guy needed anti-rabies injections once we got back to Lima.

death in northern Peru part I

The Incas are so well known that little attention is paid outside of Peru to the various other civilisations that came before them, such as the Moche, the Chimu and the Chachapoya.  But it was the remnants of these earlier civilisations that drew me this time, so I signed up to a two-week Wild Frontiers tour of northern Peru.

We met up in Lima and started with a visit to the Larco Museum with its truly amazing collection of pre-Columbian pottery, jewellery and other relics.  A place that will be well worth a second visit when I next have a work assignment in Peru.

Then we flew north to Trujillo.  The better-known site here is the UNESCO World Heritage listed Chan Chan, with the remains of this great Chimu city covering nearly 30 square kilometres, but I much preferred the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon from the earlier Moche period.  The excavations under way here have recently revealed more than 6,000 square metres of murals and reliefs on the mud walls being uncovered within the Pyramid of the Moon. many in very good condition.  The lower wall here, showing the 'decapitator' god, dates from around 300 AD.

After some time out to enjoy the natural environment (separate post to follow!), we headed further north to the site of Huaca Rajada, or Sipán, where the burial sites of a number of Moche warrior-priests were recently uncovered.  A visit to the archaeological site put eveything into context but another amazing museum showed the remains and the incredible collection of jewellery and other accoutrements with which these important people were buried, including the skeletons of the guards who were buried alongside them, with their feet chopped off to ensure that they never run away from the job.  Like most pre-Columbian sites in the region, the Huaca (pyramid) had been looted, but in this instance the looters had not found two very important tombs so the archaeologists were able to recover the contents in their entirety and display them in this fabulous museum.

Nearly as impressive were the burrowing owls that stood around the site.  The Moche venerated them (there are examples of these owls in pottery form).  I was told that this came from the fact that they move in all three worlds - burrowing into the underworld where the dead go, walking around on the earth with the living, and flying up (at least part way!) to the heavens where the gods live - but as they stood around staring at us with their unblinking yellow eyes it felt to me as though they were guarding the tombs, or even that they were the reincarnated spirits of the Moche rulers, and I wondered if their status came simply from this unnerving presence.