Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
painting. The grounds are strewn with chickens and hens and llamas (captive?), and offer occasional exotic bird
flybys.
If you can't swing the cash, the village itself supports a small cottage tourism industry with several cheaper op-
tions, a few restaurants and shops.
LA JALCA (JALCA GRANDE)
This lovely little mountain town, also known as Jalca Grande, is a small, cobblestoned
municipality that has managed to retain much of its historical roots, though modernization
is slowly creeping its way in. Quechua is still spoken throughout much of the town and
traditional, Chachapoyas-influenced round-walled houses with thatch roofs hide around
the corners. Look for
Choza Redonda
, a tall-roofed traditional Chachapoyas house that
was supposedly continually inhabited until 1964. It is still in excellent condition and was
used as a model for the recreation of Chachapoyas houses in Kuélap and Levanto. At the
ruins of
Ollape
, a 30-minute walk west of La Jalca, you can see several house platforms
and circular balconies decorated with complex designs. To get here, catch a Chachapoy-
as-Leimebamba bus and ask to be let off at the La Jalca turnoff, from where it's a three-
hour walk up a dirt road.
YALAPE
On the road between Chachapoyas and Levanto, these ruins of limestone residential build-
ings make an easy day trip from Chachas. With good views of Levanto below, Yalape has
some decent defense walls with some frieze patterns, all impressed with lots of forest
growth. Yalape is four hours' hike from Chachapoyas or half an hour's walk from
Levanto. Occasional
combis
head to Levanto between 4:30am and 6am (S6, one hour)
from the intersection of Cuarto Centenario and Sosiego, 1km southeast of the plaza in
Chachapoyas; they can let you off at Yalape.
Kuélap
ELEV 3100M
Matched in grandeur only by the ruins of Machu Picchu, this fabulous, ruined citadel city
in the mountains southwest of Chachapoyas is the best preserved and most accessible of
the district's extraordinary archaeological sites. This monumental stone-fortified citadel
crowns a craggy limestone mountain and affords exceptional panoramas of a land once in-
