Cajamarca Carnaval
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007I arrived in sleepy town Cajamarca (population around 100,000) February 15th by flying from Lima. I stayed a few kilometers outside of the small city at a hot springs resort. After my first day, I was a bit underwhelmed, but I figured a week of underwhelming events would be good for me. On Saturday I took a tour of Cumbe Mayo about 20 kilometers from Cajamarca. I quickly learned why travel on roads around here takes so long. The roads are dirt/mud, single lane and incredibly curvy. So much that a vehicle can never go fast and we made good time by covering the distance in 50 minutes. I estimate that we really only went about 6-7 kilometers by way that the crow flies. This would have been torture except the scenery was spectacular. First, we had views of the city getting further into the distance below us as we climbed out of the valley. Second, the indigenous properties above the city are incredibly interesting. The best farms were the ones built into the verticle rock formations for which the area is famous. Green pastures and rows of crops with large rocks jutting up, homes and barns built into the areas between the rocks using the stone walls as sides of the buildings and cows, pigs, etc. running around. The area is famous for dairy production.
Cumbe Mayo’s main attraction is an irrigation canal dug around 1500 BC to deliver water from the highlands to Cajamarca. It was dug into rock with amazing precision. In total, it is about 7 kilometers in length. Being that it is 3500 years old, it constitutes the second oldest manmade structure that I have ever seen (Stonehenge and other structures around Stonehenge being the oldest… so far!). I believe Peru has the oldest ruins in the Americas including the oldest city (Caral – about 5000 years old) and many compete with the oldest pieces of civilization that I will see anywhere around the world. Cumbe Mayo also has petroglyphs in caves and on the canal. None of them are very impressive, but I was in awe just knowing that they were created so long ago. The most amazing part of Cumbe Mayo is the landscape itself. The verticle rock formations are a hundred meters high or greater. The trails wind through the formations criss-crossing the canal. We arrived back at Cajamarca at 1:30 PM. I had been told that day’s Carnaval festivities would be limited to one section of the city and the center called Plaza de Armas would be “safe”. Not true…
vagabondrick