Our last post ended with a visit to our first Inca ruins near Cuenca in Ecuador. We announced more of those for the coming posts. In the meantime, we have discovered that the famous Inca empire was actually relatively short lived (roughly 100 years long), and was preceded regionally by a multitude of other, now called "pre-Inca" cultures of equal if not superior interest.
One of them is the Chachapoya culture, who dominated the north-eastern Peruvian cordilleras that are part of the so-called Amazonian Andes. We visited their fortress at Kuélap, a 5-day trip from the desert near the Pacific coast up to the highest peaks of the Andean cordilleras to the Western border of the Amazon basin, and back.
That's definitely off the beaten tourist track, although authorities are making an effort to facilitate access to this very remote region by upgrading or constructing narrow gravel roads through the mountains.
Some impressions from our trek into the Amazonian Andes:
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