Fireworks, Ancient Ruins, and Planning in a Vacuum

Hello friends,

It's been a few days and there are lots of tales to tell. I'll start with the festival on Saturday night.

The Raymillacta festival is held here every year, and is a gathering of people from all over the department of Amazonas. At midday there was a grand parade featuring dancers from all over the Amazon (I believe I wrote about this earlier). In the evening, there was a big gathering in the plaza in anticipation of the firework display to come. Evening things start late here, and we joined the crowd about 10:30. A few fireworks went up every 10 minutes or so, and then they began releasing the "globos". A "globo" is like a small hot air balloon, made of colorful paper in geometric patterns with a hoop suspended beneath. A kerosene soaked rag is ignited and the globo fills, and then takes off and floats away. They are lovely and amazing and would be completely illegal in the States. Each is maybe 5 feet in diameter, some have special shapes, most are round. One was shaped like a Chachapoyan style mummy, but the long thin form didn't fly well, and it tipped in the air and caught on fire and crashed down nearby. We were ready to see the city go up in flames, but instead a group of kids ran to find it and was back with the flaming hoop before the next globo was even launched.

At midnight the main event started. All day a group of men had been working on constructing the "castillo", which is a tower of bamboo scaffolding, maybe 80 feet high, with all kinds of pyrotechnic toys attached to it. When ignited, each level of the tower provided its own show, and the attachements spun, whirled, spelled out words, or flew along guy wires, showering sparks all the while. It was amazing and gorgeous, and again would never be legal in the states. Towards the end, the fireworks lit up words which said "Raymillacta de Chachapoyas" and listed several important Chachapoyan archaeological sites below. It is fabulous to see people who value their history so much! The crowd was really friendly and lots of people talked with us, which was a lot of fun too. What a night!

Yesterday we had a grand adventure. We booked a van to take us up to the site of Kuelap, which is a major fortress of the Chachapoyan people and second only to Machu Picchu in grandeur. The ride there took about 3 hours along unpaved, narrow, extremely twisty roads, but the scenery was beautiful and we stopped along the way to see some smaller ruins and pre-order our lunch. The site is at 10 or 11,000 feet, and is built on top of a hill with absolutely spectacular views of the surrounding countryside (very strategic too). Two main lookout towers, a celestial observatory, and over 500 houses which have been found there. The houses are all circular and include a central pit in which the elders of the family were interred when they passed away. When we asked about the general esthetics of living with your dead relatives in the middle of your living room, we were told that they were first evicerated, stuffed with incense, and mummified. I suppose that would help....

After four hours of exploring, we headed down for lunch and dined on fresh trout which had been caught especially for us that afternoon. They also had the hottest aji sauce (traditional Peruvian chili sauce) that any of us had ever tried. Delicioso!

We returned about 7 pm, having been gone for almost 12 hours, to find that there is still no real information from the archaeologists about our trip. However, I did receive an e-mail from Sonia Guillen (the head of the project) saying that the team leader (Rosio) is supposed to be here in Chachapoyas. I checked at our hostal and the other best guess hostal in town, and she has not arrived nor has reservations for either place. There are no messages, no e-mails, no communications at all. It's all very frustrating. The cavers have decided to leave today, in an hour, to arrange for mules so that they can go up to the cave site tomorrow. The rest of the team has committed to going tomorrow to arrange mules, and then heading up on Wednesday. I have insisted on communicating with the Peruvian team (after all, we are here to support their project) prior to leaving, regardless of when that is. This is not the most popular stance, but I feel very strongly that I have no other option. I really believe that communication will come today and that everything will proceed fine after that, but I'll let you know. For now, I should go back and help the caving folks gear up to leave. Sigh.

So, Peru is still amazing. I really love it here. The expedition is a bit up in the air, but I can roll with it. I'll let you know how it goes!

Karen