Photo copyright Los Tambos Chachapoyanos

“Everywhere has been explored, written about and documented,” my friend lamented a few years ago. Then he said it: “There’s nothing left to discover.”

Although you really can’t dispute the fact that myriad adventure media, be it online, in print or on the screen (big and small) pay the bills by trumpeting the latest “undiscovered” destination and untouched ruin, my friend’s post-modern adventurer pessimism was unwarranted. My instant rebuttal to his musings? One word (okay, two): Chachapoyas, Peru.

Chachapoyas, both a town in the country’s northern Andean high jungle and a massive domain of a pre-Inca civilization that lorded over an area the size of Vancouver Island, is, some claim, the largest unexplored zone in the Americas. But this is no wasteland. From about 600 A.D. until they were conquered by the Inca in 1470 (who then were conquered by the invading Spanish Conquistadores 60 years later) Chachapoya tribes constructed limestone settlements with an almost religious fervour. Roads, hundreds of towns and hamlets, cliff tombs and cave burial sites pepper the region like frosting on a donut.

The hundred or so tour groups that zip in and out each year are stricken with what local guide and owner of Vilaya Tours (www.vilayatours.com), a company that pioneered leading tours of the area, Rob Dover calls “Indiana Jones syndrome.” He claims he’s been stricken. It’s what’s inspired him to forget his native England and set up shop here in the mid-90s.

It’s difficult not to be smitten with a place where most mountaintops in the area have an outcrop of either rocks indicating a millennia-old watchtower or evidence of equally ancient massive farming and irrigation projects. There are few roads in the area, which means the Chachapoyas’ realm remains much the same as the impenetrable choking jungle that extinguished any hope of Spanish settlement in the 1500s. There is no big town today, save for Chachapoyas, a busy colonial provincial capital of almost 30,000 residents.

Today (or is it night… Dover insisted we leave first thing in the morning) we clamber into the Vilaya Tours van and I settle in for the two-and-a-half-hour trip to the crown jewel in the Chachapoya realm – Kuelap, the  largest stone structure in South America. The drive from town descends into a lush valley flanked by the odd rammed earth and adobe house. Dover says that this valley – the Utcubamba (utcu means cotton in the native Quechua language) – is flanked by settlements and burial sites, some by the side of the road, others several days’ walk.

We leave the valley and begin the climb up to the Kuelap citadel, the Vilaya Tours van negotiating the hoof-worn holes, calve-deep ruts in the snaking road that doubles back on itself almost as often as my stomach. Regardless, Dover seems amused by my nervousness and I’m grateful for the A/C and four-wheel drive. Kuelap – at almost 10,000 feet above sea level – keeps teasing. Dover first points it out and all I’m able to see is a jagged cliff silhouetted against a heavy, noir sky.

A few minutes later I’m able to see trees topping what now looks like an abnormally tall, almost fortified cliff. It’s when I begin to make out bricks and masonry in the upper part of the cliff that the sheer magnitude of the citadel reveals itself. By the time we finally pull into the car park (a lawn, really), I find myself running towards this, the largest stone structure on the continent.

I heard rumors about this place – how it was built with three times the amount of stone used in Egypt’s great pyramid of Giza; how it was never overrun; how there’s a sister citadel awaiting discovery east of here. Kuelap’s setting atop a fortified mountain crest offers fabulous views over violently carved valleys that drop 1,500 meters (5,000 feet). Made public to the world in 1843, the 30-meter (100 foot) limestone walls remain relatively undamaged by 1,400 years of earthquakes and erosion. Despite the grandeur of the exterior walls (measuring over 330 feet wide and almost 2,000 feet long), the best part is the ancient village they contain. Hundreds of round, single-room stone houses decorated with zig zag designs pepper the site. Most still have their fire hole and the stone corn grinders used by inhabitants over a thousand years ago.

There are also ruined watchtowers and a massive inverted cone rumored to have been everything from a prison to a calendar (although the latter seems more correct after recent studies revealed its uncanny ability to track the solstice). There are three distinct platform levels that Dover says were likely related to status. The walls seems to roll like lazy ocean swell and rarely is there a hard angle constructed anywhere. The entire city plan contours to the natural topography.

The walls seem to breathe. Since we’re there alone – a common occurrence, says Dover, adding that there are rarely more than a dozen people inside the fortress – the ghosts of the ancients seem omnipresent. Dover doesn’t help matters when he points out the three entrances to the citadel. They face the outside wide and seemingly easily penetrable, only to choke up, leaving enough room for only one person to pass. Defending, conceivably, only required three warriors at each entrance. Their only requirements an unlimited supply of spears… and an affinity for blood.

All this, like the rest of the Chachapoya realm, is wild, uncleared and looks comfortably one with the jungle. Ferns, bromeliads and orchids have taken root in the crevices between bricks, while larger cavities in the ruins sustain entire trees. The entire area is a rare bio-occurrence called a cloud forest, where low clouds and frequent fog dump heavy rain on mountainous terrain, keeping it green and frequently inaccessible. The resulting carpet of moss gives you the sense of walking through a fairy tale. The word Chachapoyas, according to Kuelap custodian Gabriel, comes from Sachapuyos – sacha meaning mountain jungle, and puyos meaning fog.

Kuelap and the Chachapoya realm is not for the tour bus set – at least not yet. It’s an 18-hour bus ride from Lima, the Peruvian capital and a paved road is as rare as regular flights. Still, this area is bound to be the next must-see destination, what with Cuzco the epicenter for South America’s traveling gringos being overrun with the usual maladies of tourism: crime, price hikes and turnstiles at once enigmatic lost cities. With Cuzco well on its way to becoming another Kathmandu, the  gringos are heading north in search of their own lost city.