Pre-Inca Trail

After crossing into peru we headed for a town called Chachapoyas, where it is easy to organise tours to many of the nearby ruins which date from before the Inca period. We decided to book a 4 day trek which ended at the huge ruin of Kuelap.
The first day we went to a place called city of the dead, this is was a burial place and there were many sarcophagus's carved into the side of the mountain. The day didn't begin well we had to be at the tour office for 7am inorder to have breakfast and leave for 8am, so at 9.30am and with no sign of leaving we began to wonder why we had got up so early- our guide was sick and so the manager was just a little stressed. Off we set without a guide and the tour manger in the boot of the car, only to be driven round town in order to find a guide. Eventually one was found and we left Chachapoyas- we didn't get to far before our taxi pulled over, a problem with the car? i got out to have a look and unreassuringly found the driver tightening the wheels with a spanner!! After that short interlude we were off again and finally after an hour or so along dirt tracks we reached our first destination. We followed the guide down the steep side of a mountain to reach the town of the dead. I'm not sure what i was expecting but where we now found ourselves was on a narrow ledge hundreds of metres up surrounded by human bones (yes in real life its true), carvings, the remnants of an ancient civilisation and absolutely noone else. They were very interesting but the most spectacular bit was the location, the cliffs were absolutely massive and the scenery stunning- the walk back up the hill however was tough! After lunch we headed to our next destination, Karyhi where many more huge sarcophagus are carved into the mountain, similar to town of the dead but less bones. Our driver then took us to a huge flat bottomed valley where we were dropped off and began the walk to where we would be staying that evening. We knew it would be basic accomodation............ it was a mud hut, no floors, no lighting, no toilet- i had to poo in a hole in the ground! the evening was spent beside a camp fire talking to the guide and looking at the stars.
The second day we walked for most of the day to a small town where we would spend the night. The walk was very pretty, through much green jungle. We walked along a stony broken path which is apparently the main road along the valley! Many men driving mules laden down with big sacks passed us, going much faster than me i must add. We reached our destination mid afternoon and so spent the rest of the afternoon watching the locals play football. Our accomodation tonight was equally basic except we now shared our ´bathroom´ with the rest of the town and a large population of flies. This town didn't have any electricity either and we spent the evening playing cards by candlelight.
The third involved a steep climb through the mountains and so to make it a bit easier we got to ride............ mules, have you ever ridden a mule? its a totally passive experience, it doesn't matter what you do they simply continue to walk along and just follow each other, but they can navigate the steepest paths that even i would struggle up. Thankfully at the top of the mountain was our taxi driver to take us to our hotel, with hot water!!! wow.
Our final day was to visit Kuelap, i have never seen such a massive ruin, It is a whole walled city that is thousands of years old; i struggled to comprehend just how long it had been there. And the best thing was that in this huge ruin there was not a single other tourist, cool eh! i was very impressed with the ruins, alot more than i expected, just from the sheer size of them and their stunning location. in fact we spent several hours wandering around them with our guide before we sent off to walk back down to the next town and back to civilisation. definately worth it!