Chachapoyas, Iquitos & the Northern Amazon

The north-eastern Andes were the home of the Chachapoya, a cloud-forest people who from around the 9th century built walled towns of round stone houses and buried their dead in cliff-face tombs and upright clay sarcophagi. Their greatest site, Kuélap, commands a ridge above the Utcubamba. The Inca conquered them in the later 15th century, and Chachapoya resentment led some to side with the Spanish. Cajamarca, in its fertile highland valley, was a regional centre that the Inca turned into an important town, and in November 1532 it was here that Francisco Pizarro ambushed and captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa, who paid a room of gold and silver for a ransom and was executed the following year.

Spanish missionaries and explorers pushed into the lowlands from towns such as Moyobamba, but the Amazon stayed on the edge of the state until the rubber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries made Iquitos a wealthy port, linked to Europe by steamers down the Amazon, and brought forced labour and violence to Indigenous peoples. Loreto was also at the centre of border disputes with Colombia and Ecuador.

In the 1980s and 1990s the Huallaga valley in San Martín and Huánuco was a centre of coca growing, and the Shining Path and the MRTA were both active there. Oil extraction in Loreto, the Yanacocha gold mine near Cajamarca and a deadly clash between police and Awajún and Wampís protesters at Bagua in 2009 have made the region central to Peru's debates over land and resources.

The highlands and the lowlands are two different worlds. Cajamarca is mestizo and Catholic, with a strong dairy and farming tradition, and its carnival, with water fights, paint, competing troupes and satirical songs, is among the best known in the country. In Chachapoyas, the whitewashed colonial town keeps a quiet, provincial pace, and villages such as Leymebamba preserve Chachapoya heritage in their museums.

The Amazon is home to dozens of Indigenous peoples, among them the Awajún and Wampís in the north, the Shipibo-Konibo along the Ucayali, and the Kichwa-speaking people of Lamas near Tarapoto. Shipibo-Konibo women paint and embroider kené, the maze-like geometric designs that decorate their textiles and pottery and are recognised as national cultural heritage. Riverside mestizo culture, known in Peru as ribereño, mixes Indigenous knowledge with Spanish Catholicism and the legacy of the rubber era.

The great festival of the lowlands is San Juan on 24 June, when families eat juane and bathe in the rivers. Traditional healing with medicinal plants, including ayahuasca, is part of local life around Iquitos and Pucallpa and has also grown into an industry of retreats for foreigners.

Iquitos, with more than 400,000 people, is the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon and among the largest in the world that cannot be reached by road; almost everything arrives by river or by air, and the streets are full of mototaxis. Pucallpa, on the Ucayali, is the other big river city and the end of the road from Lima, handling timber and trade. Cajamarca and Tarapoto are growing regional centres, while Chachapoyas remains a small highland town.

The economy follows the land. Cajamarca lives from dairy farming and from gold mining, which has brought jobs and money as well as repeated protests over water. San Martín, once a coca-growing area, now produces coffee, cacao and rice. Loreto depends on oil, fishing, timber and public employment, and its northern pipeline has suffered repeated spills. Illegal logging, gold mining and drug trafficking are persistent problems in remote areas.

Days in the lowlands start early to avoid the heat, with markets busiest at dawn. In the rainy season the rivers rise into the lower neighbourhoods of Iquitos, and life in Belén shifts to canoes.

The Amazon kitchen is built on plantain, cassava and river fish. Juane, rice seasoned with turmeric and filled with chicken, egg and olive, is wrapped in bijao leaves and boiled, and is the dish of San Juan. Tacacho con cecina pairs balls of mashed fried green plantain with smoked pork, and inchicapi is a chicken soup thickened with peanuts and maize. Fish such as paiche, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, and doncella are grilled or cooked in leaves as patarashca.

Markets such as Belén sell tropical fruits little known outside the region: camu camu, rich in vitamin C, the orange palm fruit aguaje, and cocona, used in juices and sauces. Iquitos bars serve liquors steeped with bark and roots, while masato, fermented cassava drink, is shared in Indigenous communities.

In the highlands the food changes completely. Cajamarca is known for its dairy — queso mantecoso, a soft buttery cheese, and manjar blanco — and for caldo verde, a potato soup green with herbs. San Martín's cacao is made into chocolate in Tarapoto.

In the Amazonas region, Kuélap rises above the Utcubamba valley, reached by road or by cable car from Nuevo Tingo; a section of its perimeter wall collapsed in April 2022, and emergency conservation work has followed. Gocta falls, among the world's tallest, is a half-day walk through cloud forest from Cocachimba or San Pablo. The sarcophagi of Karajía, the cliff tombs of Revash and the Leymebamba museum, with mummies from the Laguna de los Cóndores, complete the Chachapoya circuit.

Cajamarca has the Ransom Room, the baroque church of San Francisco and the cathedral, the hot springs of the Baños del Inca, the carved pre-Inca water channel of Cumbe Mayo and the burial niches of the Ventanillas de Otuzco.

In San Martín, Tarapoto is the base for waterfalls such as Ahuashiyacu, the Laguna Azul at Sauce and the town of Lamas, and Moyobamba for orchid gardens. From Iquitos, boats run to lodges along the Amazon and its tributaries and to the Pacaya-Samiria reserve, and in town the Belén market, rubber-era mansions and the Malecón look over the river. Pucallpa's lake of Yarinacocha is lined with Shipibo-Konibo villages.