Ñaupahuasi

Ñaupahuasi

Ñaupauasi is an Inca (I think) village above the city of Yauyos, Peru. These Inca Terraces run for miles up the valley along the Yauyos river.  Some are preserved and some are in ruins. These are some of the preserved and still used terraces. These are mostly used for growing alfalfa for the cows in Yauyos, but behind the fence to the left someone is growing flowers.

Here you can see walls of the homes in Ñaupahausi. I could not find anything in the Internet on this city. There are no trails to it any only one vague sign (at the end of this blog), although the tourist materials published by the district of Yauyos do mention it several times as one of the important attractions of this district.

 In these three images you can see the keystones and riprap method of construction.

The hillside is covered with stones with flat sides. They probably picked up stone after stone until they found ones that fit. They also used mud, if not as a mortar then to keep out the winds and the cold. Yauyos is about 1,000 feet lower and it is at 9,429 feet above sea level, so Ñaupahausi is definitely over 10,000 feet, maybe 11,000.

Views from the top. Below is the valley of the Yauyos river. As far as you see in this picture there were hillsides terraced by the Incas. On the other side is the Valley of the Cañete river. This town is protected by steep hillside and cliffs.

This is the only stone I found that looked painted. Maybe it is or maybe not.

This is my favorite picture. Look at the stones that are turned to provide shelves, the small hole to perhaps provided light. This is the second ruin in Peru that I have visited and found such expressions of love and family life. In the other, reconstructed ruins I have visited in Peru this personal expression seems to be missing.

These two photos show the beautiful moss covered walls. Some also had ferns and flowers growing from them.

The town of Yauyos way down there by the river of Yauyos. The route to Ñaupahausi is: from the town square, cross the bridge continue on the same street and follow the trail up the hill for about 2-3 hours. You will pass a couple of houses and get to a circle. There are about 3-4 houses near that circle, continue up the road that leaves from the circle. At some point that road goes to the right, the road to the right is the Inca Trail to a different ruin. You want to go left and up, there is no trail so scramble, bushwhack, wade, or whatever you need to do to get to the ruins, which you can see above you.

The mountain above Yauyos

Yes, I really was there.

A patch of corn grown by the road. This shows present day agriculture with all its erosion problems.

This is the "map" that is at the very end of the road that goes up the hill. I found it at the very end of my trek from the ruins.

The Upper Amazon Basin

The Upper Amazon Basin

I often fall in love with wild places; the upper Amazon basin is now one of my loves.  I had expected hot and humid weather that left me unable to move, but no, the weather was perfect! Cooler than the summers here in Cerro Alegre (which are cooler than the summers in Fresno) and only mildly humid. Maybe I visited on a good week but it was wonderful!  
A short list of the adventures: We swam in the birthplace of the Amazon, which is the concourse of two large rivers, the Rio Ucayall and Rio Marañon. The Rio Ucayall is the main tributary, it continues south to a mountain in the Andes south of Cañate. This is where the Amazon River starts. The Amazon begins is in the Peruvian Andes south of where I live.
We saw about 5 species of Monkeys, two dolphin species, the pink dolphin and the grey dolphin, as well as a couple of sloths. We each took turns holding a small caiman then let it go.

Pink Dolphin (that is all we saw too, but it is pink and it swam under our boat without touching it)

Flies, mosquitoes and a monkey bit me, (the monkey was in a zoo) and ants stung me. We were caught in a downpour while in an open boat. I ate a piranha (rather than the reverse). We used smashed termites for mosquito repellent (the only repellant that worked by the way). Tina, my travel mate, was stung by at least 300 ants, which had decided to make a nest in her bed.

These are hanging nests of two different types of birds. The tighter grouping on the right side has a wasp nest in the center of all the birds' nests. The wasp offers the birds some protection and in turn probably gets food from the messy habitat of the birds.

Of course we saw many different insects and spiders and a tarantula. In the wild we saw several of the blue Morpho Butterflies. Our guide pointed out some ants he called fire ants, and some one inch long black ants they call 5-hour ants because the sting leaves you with a fever and hurts for 5 hours.

The leaf cutter ants, left, (they were hard to miss) made trails around the jungle and live in large mounds in the ground, which is surprising because much of the Amazon basin floods during the wet season and other ants make their homes high in the trees, as do termites.
The mosquitoes were horrid. As a group we were allowed to slap each other at any time. By the third day in the jungle I gave up, they had won and I just ignored them. Today, three weeks later, all my bites are almost gone.





The food was excellent.  Typical Peruvian food: rice, a small amount of meat (good for our health and the environment) or eggs and vegetables with tropical fruit.

Fresh Heart of Palm Salad

An example of the excellent food we were served in our jungle hostel.

Monkey

Tina relaxing

Tropical Downpour

Flowers

This boat that cost tourists over $2,000 a week. Many similar boats cost over $6,000 a week.

Night sounds:

These are two of the boats we took. The covered one took us from Nauta to our lodge, close to the start of the Reserva Pacaya-Samiria. At less than 40 dollars a day. We didn’t have air conditioning, but how could you need it?  One of the large boats (at $6,000 a week) left it’s gigantic generator on all night. One fifth of the experience is lost with such interference. (Of course this boat also has gigantic picture windows blocking all the smells, winds so all that is left is the sight...and I guess the taste of whatever food they serve.)

One of the rivers we traveled on. This was during the high water season. At the peak of high water season, in a month from our visit, the water should be one meter higher.

High water mark on the trees.

At that point there is one heck of a lot of water flowing through the Amazon basin. And remember this is the beginning of the Amazon.

View of a river from the airplane. Note the oxbow lakes (dark blue) left when the river changes course and the many different lines which indicate how often the river changes it’s course. The river is brown.

 

A house sitting above the river. In the dry season they would be growing rice and fruit in this same area.










So if you ever want to travel on the Amazon I highly recommend our guide: May Jony Arriaga Chavez at Allpayacu Amazon tours. His English is excellent and he lives in and loves the Upper Amazon basin. The largest city he has been in is Iquitos, which does have about 500,000 people in the greater Iquitos area.