Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Perched on top of an imposing plateau in the province of La Convención, lie the remains of a priceless and strategic stone citadel (*).

Choquequirao lies at an altitude of over 3,000 meters, on top of a plateau which looks out at Mount Salcantay. Just getting to this archaeological complex is an adventure in itself which demands physical fitness and the right gear. The diversity of climates throughout the hike and the jagged terrain along the way make it a bruising, although rewarding experience.

As Choquequirao gets few visitors, travelers can experience the feeling of visiting this remote and enigmatic spot where time seems to have stopped.

How to get there

The city of Cuzco is the best jumping-off point. Travelers will have to follow the road to Abancay. After visiting the archaeological complex of Saywite along Kilometer 154, travelers should take the detour to Cachora, a picturesque village in the department of Abancay. There, Seferina and Celestino Peña, a pair of expert and helpful guides, are always ready to help out travelers with good food, lodging and a friendly smile for exhausted visitors.

The track has been recently repaired and widened, and is in a state of continual maintenance. For two hours, the path climbs up to an altitude of 2,900 meters, where the climate is hot and dry. After a five-hour trek under the fierce Andean sun, hikers will reach the Choquequirao ruins.

The archaeological ruins

Choquequirao is divided into nine sectors, of which the most striking are the political and religious complex -made up of buildings or two-storey palaces- the system of water sources and canals linked to an aqueduct, and the set of stone altars, evidently designed for rituals. These constructions were built around a main esplanade, fringed by well-preserved agricultural terracing.

The ruins are dotted along the slopes of Choquequirao, and are clumped together like small districts slightly separated from each other. This was possibly designed to designate functions and social ranking. The urban quarter occupies the longitudinal section of the descending part of the hillside, while the mountain slopes have been carved into terracing. Some of the terraces are still fed year-round by irrigation canals, while others are believed to be temporary. To date, workers have uncovered 300 terraces in the western sector, which they are working to clear from overgrowth.

The urban and religious sector stands on the main square, and in the upper reaches lie a series of buildings. The archaeological complex is located in a cloud forest region where the particular climactic conditions of alternating hot and cold temperatures have given rise to a wealth of forms of plantlife.

(*) Before COPESCO started working at the site, the achaeological complex was overgrown with trees and bushes of all species that hid even two-storey constructions.


Travelers who reached Choquequirao

Hiram Bingham wrote that when he arrived in Choquequirao, in 1909, he could not help but feel admiration for the odd inscriptions carved into one of the stone slabs, eroded by rain, wind and time.

The inscriptions featured the names of some of his predecessors who discovered this enigmatic citadel lost in the depths of the Apurímac Valley:

1834, M. Eugene de Sartiges;
1834, Tejada y Marcelino León;
1861, Samanez, Rivas Plata y Cisneros;
1865, Almanza y Pío Mogrovejo;

… all of them had tried to prise from Nature and the climate the secrets of the natives who followed rebel Inca ruler Manco Inca into this hideout in the cloud forest in 1536. Charles Wiener (1875), a painstaking French traveler, was to write the following of Choquequirao, “the final refuge of the Incas vanquished by the Spaniards”, and made a reference to another French explorer who had been searching for the citadel: Leonce Angrand, French consul in Peru in 1847.

Nineteenth-century Italian explorer Antonio Raimondi also mentioned the ruins in his writings, although his visit in 1865 was cut short because he had other plans: to explore the rugged terrain of the Vilcanota massif.

What drove these stubborn explorers on, in the nineteenth century, to seek out Choquequirao? The answer was simple: gold. The legend of golden treasures hidden in the middle of the forest and tales of lost cities brimming over with gold were spawned by the myth of Vilcabamba, the capital of the last Incas, the rebels who were never conquered.

The story of the citadel runs more or less as follows: Manco Inca, who in the beginning submitted to the Conquerors, rebelled against them and set off into the depths of the jungle, carrying huge loads of gold and other treasures. There, in the heart of the Vilcanota, Manco Inca was to launch the uprising, creating a new and legitimate nation in the middle of this vast jungle region. Immediately, the Incas set about building the cities which the feverish imagination of the nineteenth-century explorers tried to discover.

Raimondi wrote “in a broken terrain and almost cut across the tumbling Apurímac River” lie the remains of what the rebels built and which are known by the name of Choquequirao.

The legend adds that two Spaniards alone, both of them priests, succeeded in making contact with the rebel soldiers of the Inca: Augustine monk Marcos García in 1566 and fellow Augustine Diego Ortiz a year later. García managed to found a parish church in Puquiura, “two long days’ journey from Vilcabamba”. Ortiz, more daring and less experienced than his Augustine colleague, was brutally murdered by the men of Sayri Túpac, the new ruler following the death of Manco Inca.

García’s writings enabled others to put together pieces of a map to Choquequirao. This was to give birth to the legend of a new El Dorado, this time teeming with fabulous buildings, Vitcos and Vilcabamba, “the Universities of Idol Worship”.

Both explorers and scientists set off in search of the citadel. Wiener noted in his diary: “A discovery like this one, so unexpected, which I owed to chance, has made me realize how many precious finds there may and must be made in this region, before one can fully gauge the land of the Incas”.

The French explorer was referring to the casual discovery of an archaeological complex in the middle of his efforts to reach Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu, the two mountain saddles covered with terracing and majestic constructions that one informant claimed existed in the Urubamba Valley. Oddly enough, the explorer never found Machu Picchu, which is why his observations are all the more valuable.