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IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 3  •  SEPTEMBER 2005 187TRAVELOGUE

The Andes Mountains along the western edge of South
America run more or less due north–south, encompassing

an amazingly large chunk of the latitudinal spectrum. They
straddle the equator in Ecuador, and run north toward
Venezuela and south to southern Chile and Argentina.

Naturally, such a wide geographic span gives rise to a var-
ied and fascinating array of natural and anthropological histo-
ries, from the lush cloudforests and high altitude grasslands of
northern South America to the towering conifer stands of
Patagonia. On the northern half of the continent, the Amazon
Basin dominates the topography east of the Andes.

The northern part of Perú offers a fascinating cross-section
of this extraordinary diversity. As opposed to southern Perú,
which has a well-developed tourist infrastructure centered
around Machu Pichu in Cuzco, the northern half of the coun-
try gets only a small number of visitors and organized bus tours
are all but unknown. Nevertheless, knowledgeable local guides
are readily available for most of the major sites of interest.

I arrived in Perú from Ecuador, entering the country
through Piura, a relatively large city near the coast with little to
recommend. I continued almost immediately on to Chiclayo,
another coastal city that is a major agricultural center. The city
is very nice for several blocks surrounding the plaza, then
quickly degenerates into the usual urban sprawl. However, a very
large market offers for sale all varieties of produce, meat, and
seafood, in addition to any other staple article of clothing, elec-
tronics, or toiletries. Other booths offer indispensable services
ranging from haircuts to cobbling. Although I found the atmos-
phere a bit too hectic to even consider weekly shopping trips for
groceries, I sure enjoyed taking a day or two strolling around the
myriad stalls and gorging on cheap, fresh fruit, many varieties of
which I’d never previously encountered.

From Chiclayo, I headed east into the Andes, stopping in
the pleasant mountain town of Chachapoyas. Chachapoyas is
the capital of the Department of Amazonas and is surrounded
by many interesting archaeological sites representing several dif-
ferent cultures. The most prominent is the Lambayeque culture,
named for the modern city in the south of Amazonas.

The bus I took from Chiclayo to Chachapoyas was old and
cramped, even by Peruvian standards. I arrived at four or five
o’clock in the morning and wandered with my pack to the cen-
tral plaza to wait for the sun to rise. As the cloudless sky shifted

T R A V E L O G U E

Northern Perú: Ocean to Mountains 
to Amazonian Rainforest

Aaron Z. Savit

Biology Department, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana

Photographs by the author.

Northern Perú is geographically diverse and is both a biological and
archaeological hotspot.

JO
H

N
 B

IN
N

S

Tortoises (Geochelone denticulata) are commonly seen in Amazonian
markets for use in soup.



slowly from black to blue and the cocks started to raucously
advertise their presence, the city slowly came to life. The plaza
started to see foot traffic; elderly couples or professionals dressed
for work would take several minutes to stroll around the plaza
chatting amongst themselves or just taking in the town center as
it slowly began to awake.

That same morning, I caught a ride from Chachapoyas
down through a winding maze of river valleys surrounded by
steep, daunting ridges and peaks, finally arriving at the small vil-
lage of Tingo. Tingo sits next to a river in a valley flanked by
steep, rugged ridges. Most travelers stay there just long enough
to get a ride to or from Chachapoyas, and perhaps for a meal in
one of the very basic restaurants. The main reason for coming
to Tingo is the trailhead that leads up the ridge to the impres-
sive pre-Inca site of Kuelap.

Kuelap is a heavily fortified city perched atop a ridge over-
looking the Utcubamba River valley. Although the hike from
Tingo is only about 9 km, you gain about 1300 m in altitude
from your starting point near the river. I arrived just as darkness
was falling, and pitched my tent right next to the fortified ruins,
overlooking the river valley and surrounding mountains. The
ruins themselves are elliptical in shape, with one long side look-
ing down into the river valley, and the other overlooking a large
stretch of relatively flat and arguably arable land that now sup-
ports a small community of subsistence farmers. It is surrounded
by a massive wall of cut stone that is up to forty feet tall in some
places and pierced by three highly defensible entrances.

Walking into the ruins is surreal. The massive fortifications
retain soil and rainwater, producing conditions that allow large

trees, hardly ever seen on the very arid mountainsides of the area,
to grown out of the ruined dwellings. Growing in large numbers
on these trees are several species of orchid — and hundreds of
one Cyrtochilium species were in full bloom during my visit.
Excavations at the site are ongoing, and much of it has already
been exposed. The bases and sides of the circular houses that are
the trademark of this culture have been exposed, and decorative
geometric stonework patterns are visible on several of them, and
one has been completely restored. At one point, a small herd of
llamas found their way in through one of the entrances and set
about gently grazing on the low-growing vegetation. As I sat on
top of an inner, secondary wall, and looked out on the llamas
grazing in the ruins and the farmed land beyond, I was over-
whelmed by the timelessness and tranquility of the area, the
poor campesinos working to scratch a livelihood out of the
rocky soil in the shadow of this monumental ruined city.

Before leaving the area, I visited another, less well-known
archaeological site called ‘Pueblo de Los Muertos’ or City of The
Dead. This is a row of about six houses that were built on a nar-
row rock outcrop about halfway up a vertical cliff face. Only one
route allows access, and the space between the houses and the
cliff edge was sometimes less than two feet. The surrounding cliff
faces are dotted with the mud sarcophagi with stylized human
faces that are typical of the area. The area is dotted with piles of
ancient human bones, and symbols beyond my ken were
engraved in the sides of some of the houses and painted in red
pigments on the sides of the cliff. This site was not impressive in
a monumental way, as was Kuelap, but it was powerful on a
more esoteric and very human level.

188 IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 3  •  SEPTEMBER 2005 SAVIT

Cryptic symbols carved into the wall of a house in Pueblo de los Muertos.A llama takes a break from grazing in the pre-Inca fortress of Kuelap.



IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 3  •  SEPTEMBER 2005 189TRAVELOGUE

The bus ride from Chachapoyas down the eastern flank of
the Andes and into the Amazon basin offers amazing scenery,
with a wide variety of vegetation and habitat types, from rugged,
arid mountains to lush exuberant cloud forest. While crossing
the last foothills of the Andes, you can see the wide Amazonian
plain stretching out endlessly to the horizon. No real forest is left
in the area; most has been converted to pasture. Much of some
secondary growth is in the process of being cut and burned a
second time.

The road runs due east into the Amazon, finally ending in
Yurimaguas, a bustling river town on the banks of the Río
Marañon. This city is an important port for riverboats taking
cargo and passengers downriver to the large jungle city of Iquitos
and to various smaller settlements in between. These boats pass
by several small settlements on the outskirts of Picaya-Samiria
National Park, the largest protected area in Perú. Because it is
well off of the southern tourist circuit, it gets only a small frac-
tion of the tourists of the Manu Reserve in the south.
Nonetheless, some of the larger towns are used to seeing the
occasional tourist, although one shouldn’t expect luxury or an
English-speaking guide. This area, however, is probably the best
place to arrange a tour into the rainforest — if you cannot pay
the often outrageous prices charged by tour operators in the
south of Perú.

I disembarked at Lagunas, a town of about 5000 residents
that is the most popular place to arrange a jungle tour into
Picaya-Samiria National Park. Even before we got off the boat,
several folks were visibly anxious to arrange a tour for us. We
spoke with both of them, asked many questions, and ultimately
went with a well-established tour operator who seemed fairly
professional.

A nocturnal Boat-billed Heron (Cochlearius cochlearius) in Picaya-
Samiria National Park.

A large nocturnal treefrog (Osteocephalus taurinus) in Picaya-Samiria
National Park.

Waters were just beginning to recede from seasonally inundated
forests.



After registering with the local police and the park rangers,
we loaded our large dugout canoe with our gear and set out
downriver. Most of our equipment was fairly traditional; our
canoe was made from a single piece of wood in the same way
they have been made for centuries, our guides used heavy, spade-
shaped paddles made from a very dense wood, and our fishing
equipment included a net and a three-pronged spear for fishing
shallow water.

Picaya-Samiria contains a lot of seasonally flooded forest
and, at the time, the rivers were still receding. For the first cou-
ple days of paddling, we saw almost no dry land. Our camping
sites were no more than small islands in what was otherwise an
endless expanse of flooded plain. The vegetation shifted notably
as we passed downstream into the uninnundated forest. The

flooded parts of the forest were dominated by several species of
palm. The tufts of fronds perched atop the 30+ meter trunks gave
the forest a sort of Dr. Seussian feel, and gregarious groups of bril-
liantly-colored Blue and Yellow Macaws (Ara ararauna) called
raucously as they foraged in the trees or flew over the forest.
During our first night, we camped on a small patch of dry land,
with only mosquito nets between us and the moonlit jungle.
Surrounded by the surreal sounds of the night, I listened to the
haunting melodies of Howler Monkeys (Alouatta sp.) and a cho-
rus of frogs and insects until they eventually lulled me to sleep.

I awoke the next morning to see our guides paddling back
to camp. They had pulled in the fishing net that they left out
during the night, and had met with some success. They had
managed to catch a meter-long catfish of a type that usually
swims too low for the nets to snag. The meat was a darker red

even than tuna, and that fish kept me, two other tourists, and
our two guides satiated for several days.

As we passed downstream, the palms were replaced gradu-
ally by the towering hardwoods that come to mind when we
think of the Amazonian rainforest. Monkeys were abundant and
easily approached with our noiseless, motorless canoe. By night,
we would scan the waters for caiman. Most of those we saw were
quite small, as all of the larger individuals had been hunted for
their meat. We also spotted some incredible tree frogs I was
unable to identify and got quite close to a nocturnal Boat-billed
Heron (Cochlearius cochlearius).

About midway through the third day, our guide pulled the
boat onto a river bank still flooded under several feet of water and
pointed to a large brown lump about 4 m up the trunk. It looked

190 IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 3  •  SEPTEMBER 2005 SAVIT

Monkeys, such as this Spix’s Night Monkey (Aotus vociferans) are
sometimes kept as pets in the Amazonian lowlands.

Our guides with the evening catch; the catfish sustained our entire
group for days.

The Black Caiman (Melanosuchus niger) that we encountered were
small; larger animals have been hunted extensively and are rarely seen.



not unlike many of the other large, brownish lumps protruding
from the tree and the various vines choking the trunk, but he told
us it was a sloth. He hopped out of the boat and into the knee-
deep water and started to clamber his way up the trunk of the
tree. He proceeded to poke and prod the sloth until it worked its
way far enough down the tree for an excellent photo opportunity.
He also gave an interesting lecture on the behavioral psychology
of the Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus): “If you tap it on
the head,” our guide Raul said, “it will go down.”

I was excited when we finally reached an area of perma-
nently dry forest. This is where you find the towering, 50-m
hardwoods and, of course, all of the interesting land animals that
you are likely not to see in a visit to the Amazonian rainforest.
We hiked for several hours. Having size-15 feet, I was equipped
with the largest rubber galoshes the guides had, but still three
sizes too small. I consequently made obscenely flatulent noises
with each step, sockless and awkward in my rubber galoshes. 

The walk was interesting from a herpetological perspective
as we encountered myriad frogs and toads. Many small, brown
frogs were elegantly camouflaged to look like dead leaves, and
only appeared as they hopped out of the way. We found a
medium-sized toad with two crests protruding from behind its
eyes. I spotted several brilliantly-colored teiid lizards (Kentropyx
sp.) basking and foraging in the small patches of sun that occa-
sionally reach the forest floor. We came across several snakes,

including a black colubrid with yellow mottling that, according
to our guide, produces a mild venom. We originally saw it on
the ground, but it quickly shot about 3 m up into a tangle of
vines when we approached too closely.

Botanically, the walk was very interesting as well. Raul
showed us plants with traditional culinary and medicinal uses,
including a small palm nut with a pill-shaped hollow contain-
ing a white coconut-like flesh. After these nuts fall to the
ground, a large grub develops inside the nut, eating away the
white flesh. It tastes pretty good — as long as you get to it before
the grub does.

At one point, we came across a massive leafcutter-ant
mound. This mound was about 2.5 m in diameter, over a meter
tall, and the center of converging trails composed of thousands
of ants scrambling to get leaf sections or carrying huge chunks
of leaf back to the nest. Also clearly visible were large warrior
ants with extremely big heads and powerful jaws, and even the
tiny ‘rider’ ants that hitch a ride on sections of leaf and are car-
ried back to the mound. The function of this odd caste of rider
ants is unknown.

During our paddle back upstream toward Lagunas and rel-
ative civilization, our guides pulled the boat to the side of the
river and urged us to be quiet. We first saw a flash of pink and
then a large splash, then, after a wait, another. We were lucky
enough to be seeing Botos (Pink Amazon River Dolphins, Inia
geoffrensis) splashing and playing in the river. Due to the murk-

IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 3  •  SEPTEMBER 2005 191TRAVELOGUE

The expression of an irritated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus)
bears a striking resemblance to every other expression of which the
sloth is capable.

According to our guides, this colubrid snake (Chironius fuscus) has
only a mild venom.



iness of the water, you only learn of a dolphin’s presence as it
jumps playfully out of the water. After watching for a while, we
realized that not only were we seeing Pink River Dolphins, but
also at least one member of the other Amazonian freshwater 
dolphin species, the Gray River Dolphin (Sotalia fluviatlis). We
sat and watched in rapt amazement until ten minutes went by
with no dolphin surfacing, at which point we shook ourselves
out of our daze and continued paddling upstream.

Paddling back to the village was like slowly coming out of
a daydream. The vegetation gradually shifted back to its dis-
turbed state surrounding the village. The massive hardwoods
became shorter and shorter, and the choking vines began to be
replaced by the Seussian palms. With the palms came the groups
of screeching macaws that flew by to bid us farewell. As we
slowly shifted from one set of surreal surroundings to another, I
had already begun to think back on all that I had seen and to
plot my eventual return to this humbling forest. Before I knew
it, we had traded the dugout for our own two legs, and were
walking past burning fields of dry ferns and grasses, with most
of the trees relegated almost to the horizon.

Back in Lagunas, my plan had been to catch one of the daily
cargo boats heading down the river toward Iquitos. Once we got

back, however, we quickly learned that this was no longer an
option. Just a day or two before, the Peruvian government had
started allowing rice imports from southeast Asia, which sent the
cost of rice plummeting from about $300 per 1000 kg of rice to
about $120. This prompted all the rice farmers nationwide to
strike, setting up roadblocks on all the major roads and essentially
bringing all ground transport to a halt. No transport meant no
cargo and no cargo meant no boats heading downriver. I even-
tually ended up catching a boat back to Yurimaguas, and waited
there for almost two weeks until I could start retracing my steps
over the Andes. The road down from the mountains and into
Yurimaguas was the last to open and, by the time I actually
started making my way back, several roadblocks remained, forc-
ing me to walk across and switch vehicles countless times.

With the little time I had left before my return to the
United States, I decided to explore some additional archaeolog-
ical sites. My first stop south of Chiclayo was Trujillo, another
large city very near the coast. A few sites around Trujillo are of
interest, including the massive mud-brick city of Chan-Chan.
Chan-Chan was built by the Chimu culture from around

192 IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 3  •  SEPTEMBER 2005 SAVIT

Piles of human bones, Pueblo de los Muertos.

This young Matamata (Chelus fimbriatus) shows the elaborate head
camouflage typical of its species. Adults with carapace lengths to 40
cm have been found.

Stylized mud-brick reliefs in the Tschudi Complex at Chan Chan. Mud-brick reliefs of birds in the Tschudi Complex at Chan Chan.



IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 3  •  SEPTEMBER 2005 193TRAVELOGUE

850–1470 AD. One large complex, the Tschudi Complex, has
been excavated and studied, but many more temples and other
large complexes await systematic examination. The excavated
parts of the site include a number of beautiful mud-brick reliefs
centering on several motifs that included fishing nets, fish, birds,
stylized figures, and basic geometric shapes such as circles and
squares. A small on-site museum was accompanied by several
overpriced gift shops.

Chan-Chan makes an interesting comparison with a nearby
site that was built by the Moche (ca. 100–800 AD), the culture
that immediately preceded the Chimu. The site is called Huacas
de la Luna y del Sol, and its main features are two pyramids at
opposite ends of the site. Excavations at the smaller pyramid,
Huaca de la Luna, are uncovering many magnificent poly-
chrome reliefs. The pyramid was actually a series of stepped
structures superimposed upon one another, and it seems to have
had regular resurfacing with the addition of another level every
hundred years or so. Each time another addition to the pyramid
was made, the underlying reliefs and painted patterns were
sealed in a layer of mud-brick and mortar, which effectively pre-
served them.

The Moche were a coastal people living in a harsh, semi-arid
region where life was centered around rivers and streams, and irri-
gation was almost essential for the growing of crops. Their reli-
gion centered on mountain worship and the god Ai Apaec, which
translates to “The Decapitator.” Huaca de la Luna is situated at
the foot of a solitary peak in what is otherwise a very flat, dry
region. Remains of several dozen human sacrifices have been
uncovered, and some evidence suggests that some victims may
have been tortured prior to being killed. In many of the reliefs
and murals, the Ai Apaec, who assumes various forms such as
felines and spiders, is depicted holding a severed human head.

Several of the murals are still being renovated and are not yet
open to the public. However, you can view them from a distance.

My last archaeological stop was in the small coastal city of
Casma. Just outside of town is a fascinating and ancient archae-
ological site called Séchin. The site consists mainly of a single
temple, which is fairly small in comparison to the other sites I
visited. What sets this site apart is its age — it is about 3600
years old, outdating the Moche civilization by some 1700 years.
The outer wall of the temple is covered with stylized and often
gruesome reliefs. These consist mainly of warriors and decapi-
tated heads, although various dismembered body parts and
organs also are obvious. Compared to some of the other ruins
in Perú, the site may seem plain, but the very age of the temple
renders it impressive. Despite some discouragement and derisive
reviews from the locals, I was enthralled with the reliefs and
some of the relics in the small, on-site museum.

The northern section of Perú certainly has a lot to offer to
the intrepid traveler with a keen interest in nature or archeology
or both. The lack of tourists offers a more authentic glimpse of
the challenges most Peruvians face and of the daily rhythms of
Peruvian life. Smiles from the locals seem more genuine, restau-
rants and markets have more character, and a wide range of nat-
ural and cultural wonders await those curious and eager enough
to seek them out.

Ai Apaec, god of the Moche, also known as “The Decapitator,” Huaca
de la Luna.

Depiction of a warrior on the outer wall of the temple at Séchin; note
the severed heads decorating the warrior’s outfit.




