October 6, 2011
Well I get up on Thursday morning and about to dash out to get into the minivan when at the last minute I decide to check my camera to make sure everything is there to realize my memory card is still in my computer. That would have sucked not being able to take pictures at these sites today.
I think we might have had a misunderstanding with the tour operator in our hotel because we did get competitive prices from him and did book our 3 days of tours through him so I am thinking he might have thought something else and definitely wasn't trying to rip us off. He was our guide and was very humourous even though he spoke very little english.
So we meet up at the minivan outside our hotel to take us to some caves and an ancient funerary site in the North West of Chachapoyas. There is 11 people in our tour group. 3 from Peru, 2 from spain, a Brazilian, our driver, our guide, Eugene & Megan, and myself. We have a pretty good group that is always joking around and laughing. We drive an hour through the mountains to Quiocta de Caverna which is a pretty incredible cave that goes in over 500+ meters or more and our guide Carlos has a car battery strapped to him along with some lamps to see our way through the cave with some incredible stalagmites and stalagtites which are natural formations that stick out of the ground and out of the ceiling. They give us rubber boots since it is very muddy throughout the cave. The guide is all in spanish so Megan who has studied spanish for awhile in Ecuador gets some of it but Eugene and I are clueless of what is being said.
Carlos shines the light on the ceilings of the caves as we go through and there are big holes in the ceiling with bats in them. As we are making our way through and stopping occassionally we see bats zipping by our heads. Once we get to the end of the cave Carlos shuts off his light and it is pitch black where you could put your hand up to your eyes and still see nothing.
We stopped at the local village for lunch before heading to Karajia which is a funerary site for some Peruvian culture. Wished I could tell you who exactly but like I said it was all in spanish. As I am walking down to this site I meet Jennifer who is from Lima. She works in the Medical field and analyzing blood and gets two 15 day holidays per year and spends that time traveling Peru. I had told her I was pretty tired from the previous days hike to a waterfall and she said she already knew because she was taking pictures of me sleeping in the van and Eugene and Megan had told her about our previous day. I think Jennifer takes 1000 pictures per day and it will take her a lifetime to just look at all her pictures from this trip. These statues were perched high up on a cliff and we have no idea of how they did it. Carlos says that archeologists have pinned the dates of it between 1000 and 1600AD.
We get back around 6pm and the 3 of us are bagged so we shower and go to sleep since the next day we have to get up at 2:30am for our trip to Kuelap.
Well I get up on Thursday morning and about to dash out to get into the minivan when at the last minute I decide to check my camera to make sure everything is there to realize my memory card is still in my computer. That would have sucked not being able to take pictures at these sites today.
I think we might have had a misunderstanding with the tour operator in our hotel because we did get competitive prices from him and did book our 3 days of tours through him so I am thinking he might have thought something else and definitely wasn't trying to rip us off. He was our guide and was very humourous even though he spoke very little english.
So we meet up at the minivan outside our hotel to take us to some caves and an ancient funerary site in the North West of Chachapoyas. There is 11 people in our tour group. 3 from Peru, 2 from spain, a Brazilian, our driver, our guide, Eugene & Megan, and myself. We have a pretty good group that is always joking around and laughing. We drive an hour through the mountains to Quiocta de Caverna which is a pretty incredible cave that goes in over 500+ meters or more and our guide Carlos has a car battery strapped to him along with some lamps to see our way through the cave with some incredible stalagmites and stalagtites which are natural formations that stick out of the ground and out of the ceiling. They give us rubber boots since it is very muddy throughout the cave. The guide is all in spanish so Megan who has studied spanish for awhile in Ecuador gets some of it but Eugene and I are clueless of what is being said.
Carlos shines the light on the ceilings of the caves as we go through and there are big holes in the ceiling with bats in them. As we are making our way through and stopping occassionally we see bats zipping by our heads. Once we get to the end of the cave Carlos shuts off his light and it is pitch black where you could put your hand up to your eyes and still see nothing.
We stopped at the local village for lunch before heading to Karajia which is a funerary site for some Peruvian culture. Wished I could tell you who exactly but like I said it was all in spanish. As I am walking down to this site I meet Jennifer who is from Lima. She works in the Medical field and analyzing blood and gets two 15 day holidays per year and spends that time traveling Peru. I had told her I was pretty tired from the previous days hike to a waterfall and she said she already knew because she was taking pictures of me sleeping in the van and Eugene and Megan had told her about our previous day. I think Jennifer takes 1000 pictures per day and it will take her a lifetime to just look at all her pictures from this trip. These statues were perched high up on a cliff and we have no idea of how they did it. Carlos says that archeologists have pinned the dates of it between 1000 and 1600AD.
We get back around 6pm and the 3 of us are bagged so we shower and go to sleep since the next day we have to get up at 2:30am for our trip to Kuelap.
