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DAY 1 LIMA PICK UP
Pick up upon arrival at Lima’s airport and transportation to the hotel. Overnight (No meals)

DAY 2 CHICLAYO
Early in the morning transfer to the airport where you'll take the flight to Chiclayo (Airfare Not included).
Upon arrival, transfer to the hotel and rest of day at leisure. Overnight (B)

DAY 3 CHICLAYO TO CHACHAPOYAS: ACROSS THE ANDES TO THE AMAZON
We drive northward from Chiclayo across Peru's coastal plains, following the Pan-American Highway, then turn east onto the Trans-Andean route, ascending gently through regions of dry forest interspersed with irrigated farmland. Our road loops towards the lowest pass of the Peruvian Andes, at 2,135m/7,000 ft, where we cross the continental divide and enter the Upper Amazon basin. Following the valley of the Huancabamba/Chamaya river system we pass broad ribbons of bright green rice terracing, forming a striking contrast with the cactus and dense thorn-scrub vegetation of the mountainsides. Lower downstream we pass the massive dam and intake of the Olmos irrigation project, ultimately destined to divert much of this water through a 23Km/14.2 mile long tunnel to the Pacific slope of the Andes.

We reach the bridge over the Marañon, one of the great tributaries of the Upper Amazon, which was formerly believed to be the source of that mighty river. Here we enter the Peruvian department of Amazonas, former home of a mysterious and powerful civilization, the Chachapoyas, whose remnants we will explore during this journey.

We follow the Utcubamba River, the main artery of the Chachapoyas heartland, first ascending a dramatic canyon then winding up the mountainous valley which leads us to El Chillo, our hotel at the foot of the high road to the mountaintop site of Kuelap, tomorrow's destination. (B, L)

DAY 4 CHACHAPOYAS: KUELAP, THE GREAT WALLED CITY OF NORTHERN PERU
We spend a full day visiting this huge and mysterious site, beginning with a drive through places whose names -- Choctamal, Longuita, and Kuelap itself -- evoke a lost language and a vanished ancient people who spoke it, the Chachapoyans. We don't know what they called themselves, but the Incas who finally conquered these fierce warriors knew them by their Quechua soubriquet, Chachaphuyu “Cloud People” after the cloud-draped region where they lived.

Kuelap's existence was first reported in 1843. For years it was believed to have been a Chachapoyan fortress, and when we first catch sight of it from the fossil-encrusted limestone footpath that leads there it is hard to believe it was not. The massive walls soar to a height of 19m/62ft and its few entranceways are narrow and tapering, ideal for defense. Yet the archaeological evidence now suggests that this was principally a religious and ceremonial site.

Chachapoyas was not a nation, or an empire, but some sort of federation of small states centered on numerous settlements scattered across their mountainous territory. The earliest settlement dates obtained here suggest that its construction began around 500A.D. and, like the Moche coastal pyramids, it was built in stages as a series of platforms, one atop the other.

It is now a single enormous platform nearly 600m/2,000ft long, stretched along a soaring ridgetop. Seen from below, its vast, blank walls give no hint of the complexity and extent of the buildings above. When we reach its summit we find a maze of structures in a variety of styles and sizes, some of them faced with rhomboid friezes, some ruined and some well preserved. Here we can try to imagine the lives of the Chachapoyan elite and their servants who lived here, enjoying a breathtaking view of forested Andean mountains and valleys.

So distant and neglected was this region until recently that little archaeological research has been done at this important site, and our knowledge of it remains vague. An adjacent site named La Mallca, larger though less dramatic than Kuelap, has not been studied at all. Even today, Kuelap's remoteness ensures that only a handful of other visitors are there to share it with us.

We return to El Chillo for dinner. (B, Box Lunch, D)

DAY 5 CHACHAPOYAS: A VISIT TO MACRO TOWERS, AND A HORSEBACK JOURNEY TO THE CLIFF TOMBS OF REVASH
After breakfast we enjoy an excursion to observe the burial towers of Macro, an outpost of the Chachapoyas culture built into cliffs overlooking the Utcubamba River. Its unique location allowed for contact via signal fires with Kuelap, high above in the mountains, and visible through a cleft in the valley hills.

We then follow the Utcubamba valley upstream, spotting herons and perhaps an Andean torrent duck in the river as we slowly ascend the valley. At the village of Santo Tomás we turn off the main highway, crossing the river and ascending a side valley where vivid scarlet poinsettias the size of trees overhang the walls of typical Chachapoyan farms, with verandas surrounded by wooden columns, and topped with tile roofs. Soon we meet our wranglers and the calm, sure-footed horses that will carry us up the trail to Revash.

Throughout this journey we gaze up at huge cliffs that loom ever closer. These limestone formations, laid down in even layers over geological aeons, tend to break away in neat collapses, often leaving extensive overhangs and protected ledges beneath them. In such places the ancient Chachapoya built the tombs where they buried their noble dead.

A gigantic fold in the cliffs, testifying to millennia of unimaginable tectonic forces, lies ahead of us, and at the top of the fold one such cave houses a group of tombs, ruined structures still bearing their original coat of red and white pigment. But they are far off, and this is not yet Revash. Another hour brings us to a viewpoint much closer to the cliffs, and here we see two adjacent sets of caves, featuring cottage-sized structures covered in still-bright mineral-oxide paintwork. Some of them look like cottages, with gabled roofs, others like flat-topped apartments. They are adorned with red-on-white figures and geometrical symbols -- a feline, llamas, circles, ovals -- and bas-relief crosses and T-shapes, which perhaps once told the rank and lineage of the tombs' occupants. They are silent, empty, their contents long ago looted, their facades straining to tell a story whose meaning was lost long ago.

We return to El Chillo for dinner and lodging. (B, Box Lunch, D)

DAY 6 CHACHAPOYAS TO LEIMEBAMBA: A SCENIC MOUNTAIN HORSEBACK JOURNEY, AND A TRADITIONAL ANDEAN TOWN
We follow the Utcubamba valley to Las Palmas, where we meet our wranglers and horses, then set off on a mountain trail among green fields and through small villages and hamlets. Our wranglers are, like most local people in Chachapoyas, friendly and obliging. Here and there we find ourselves riding upon remnants of the original stone road built by the ancient Chachapoyans to access the settlement of La Congona. After about two hours of steady climbing we reach the place where the Chachapoya built hundreds of structures along the ridge. Some are just foundations today, but many are standing, their walls rising from stands of trees and shrubs.

Large archaeological sites as undisturbed and deserted as this one are becoming rare today. National authorities understandably like to clear, restore, improve access and prevent further deterioration of ancient ruins. But for adventurous visitors it is still a special treat to come up against ancient walls looming through the brush, as if we were discovering them for the first time. Buildings with bands of rhomboid and chevron designs over thresholds once crossed by Chachapoya chieftains stand silently among the vegetation.

There have been no investigations at La Congona, so our imaginations are free to tell the story. We work our way along the ridge to a tower, the highest building at the highest point, where we climb the intact stairway to the platform from which lookouts must once have scanned the vast sweep of mountainous country around us.

After a picnic lunch we remount and work our way back down the mountain slopes to the village of Leimembamba, where we spend the night. ( B, Box Lunch, D)

DAY 7 LEIMEBAMBA TO CAJAMARCA A MORNING MUSEUM VISIT, AND A ROAD JOURNEY ACROSS THE MARAÑON CANYON.
Leimebamba was established by the Incas during their conquest of the region, and continued as a colonial town under the Spanish. It retains much of this antique charm in its balconied houses with narrow streets where more horses than cars are parked. This morning we visit a delightful collection of extraordinary artifacts recovered from another group of cliff tombs discovered as recently as 1997 at the remote Laguna de los Condores, high in the mountains east of the town.

Here at the Leimebamba museum, the exhibits, cheerfully displayed in well-lit rooms, offer a sample from the mass of artifacts recovered from this amazing discovery. In 1997 a group of undiscovered cliff tombs -- similar in style to those of Revash -- was spotted above the remote Laguna de los Condores by local farmhands. Although they looted and damaged the site, a mass of priceless objects and a trove of vital information was rescued. We see gourds carved with animal and geometrical symbols, an array of colorful textiles, ceramics, carved wooden beakers and portrait heads, and a selection of the dozens of quipus (Inca knotted-string recording devices) recovered from the site. A big picture window offers a view of the temperature- and humidity-controlled temporary "mausoleum" where more than two hundred salvaged mummies are kept.

Archaeologists are still uncertain as to how most of this material came to be so startlingly well-preserved, in tombs that during the rainy season were actually behind a waterfall! But perhaps the most striking thing about the tombs is that they contain burials from all three periods of local history: the Chachapoya cultural heyday, the post-Inca invasion period, and the post-Spanish conquest. Archaeologists are continuing to study the material, seeking to learn more about the Chachapoya and their relationship with their Inca masters. The quipu finds have been especially valuable to scholars seeking to decode the Inca record keeping system.

After this fascinating visit, we set off on a journey that offers us new perspectives on the multitude of natural environments of the Peruvian Andes. We climb through dairy country, where cattle graze in green pastures studded with rock outcrops, dells and belts of woodland. As we go higher this landscape gives way to a high altitude puna region of smooth slopes densely covered in a beige bunch-grass known as ichu. We cross a high pass at 3,500m and begin a long traverse to a lower pass, where we look down on the distant Marañon river, which we crossed for the first time four days ago. A long, winding descent brings us at last to a warm, irrigated valley filled with mango trees, coconut palms, papaya and banana plantations. Soon we reach Balsas, a village at the bridge over the Marañon.

We cross the mighty river into the Department of Cajamarca, and climb through an arid canyon environment of tall cactus and gnarled trees. Eventually we reach farmland again, rolling country of wheat, barley and oat fields, and we begin to see adobe farmhouses. And we spot farmers and their children wearing the characteristic large, broad-brimmed Cajamarca straw hat. We pause in the city of Celendín for lunch, and continue on to our destination, the city of Cajamarca. We arrive late afternoon at the Cajamarca suburb of Baños del Inca, where the spacious Laguna Seca Hotel offers us a welcome rest and a room with its own huge hot tub and unlimited piping-hot thermal spring water. ( B, Box Lunch, D)

DAY 8 IN CAJAMARCA: COLONIAL SPAIN AND THE LAST DAYS OF THE INCA EMPIRE
Our hot springs hotel provides a wonderful and well-earned finale of luxuriant relaxation, with delicious dining, spa facilities, and a spacious private hot pool in every room. The springs themselves are famous, the site of a historic first encounter between the Inca emperor Atahualpa and the Spaniards who, unknown to him, had come to conquer his empire. The Inca was himself enjoying a hot soak at the very moment of his victory over rival armies in a long and bloody war of succession, when a small contingent of mounted Spaniards rode out from Cajamarca to visit him, and to arrange a fateful "unarmed" meeting in the city square next day. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today we drive into the city center, and up to the hilltop now known as Colina Santa Apolonia. This was a sacred mountain to the Cajamarca people who held sway in this valley for nearly two thousand years, until the Incas conquered them, and ancient rock carvings can still be seen on its summit. Today we look out over the modern city of some 250,000 inhabitants, spread out over a valley at 2,700m/8,850ft surrounded by low mountains. After viewing the lay of the land we descend the steps into the old city center, which lies directly below us.

Spanish colonial houses line the streets here, and the churches, such as San Francisco and Belén, wear facades of intricate, fantastical baroque-mestizo stonework, although all trace of the Inca halls from which Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors launched history's most fateful and treacherous ambush have disappeared. Nevertheless, we visit one Inca stone building that still stands, its smoothly rounded stone walls and perfectly fitted stones testifying to its noble Inca origins. Local folklore holds that this was the room which the Inca Atahualpa offered to fill once with gold and twice with silver, in exchange for his freedom. This forlorn monument is a suitable spot to hear the story of Atahualpa's fabulous ransom and its tragic denouement.

We visit the Museum in the old colonial hospital of the Church of Belen, to get in touch with and see some fine artifacts from an older culture -- known to us as the Cajamarca -- who occupied this valley for some 2,000 years before finally succumbing to the Inca expansion.

After lunch at a fine local restaurant we pay a visit to the nearby rock formation at Otuzco, where over thousands of years the pre-Inca Camarca peoples left hundreds of elaborate niches, or "windows", hewn into bedrock, in which they buried their dead. We return in time to make the most of the facilities at the hotel before dinner. ( B, Box Lunch, D)

DAY 9 CAJAMARCA TO LIMA:
In the morning we are transferred to our hotel for the flight to Lima (Airfare Not Included). Upon arrival transfer to the hotel. Overnight (B)

DAY 10 TRANSFER OUT
Transfer to the airport where you'll take your international flight and end of the services (B)

END OF THE SERVICES

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