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A characteristic of the Chachapoyas region is its sarcophagi , elaborately moulded, earthernware coffins, often stuck inaccessibly into horizontal crevices high up along cliff faces and painted in vivid colours. A fine example - and a rewarding excursion from Chachapoyas - are the sarcophagi at Carajia . To get here, catch one of the early morning colectivos or pickups headed for Luya Vieja from Grau and Salamanca in Chachapoyas. At Luya Vieja ask for directions to Shipata , where the path to the sarcophagi begins. From Shipata, walk down one side of the valley, over a bridge and then up the other side for about five minutes before taking a less clearly marked path to your right. The entire, spectacular walk from Luya Vieja takes about 4 hours. Another good example of sarcophagi is at the Pueblo de los Muertos (City of the Dead), some 30km to the north of Chachapoyas. Up to 2m high and carved with human faces, they stare blankly across the valley from a natural fault in the rock face. Each one has been carefully moulded into an elongated egg-like shape from a mixture of mud and vegetable fibres, then painted purple and white with geometric zigzags and other superimposed designs. Savoy described them aptly as "standing like ten pins in a bowling alley", and most of them are still intact. If you get close, you can see that the casings are hollow, and some contain mummies wrapped in funerary shrouds; others are just filled with sun-bleached bones. Protected as they are from the weather by an overhang, these ancestors of the Chachapoyas race may well be watching over their land for another thousand years to come, though recent reports suggest that they have been looted and partially destroyed. The Pueblo de los Muertos is easily reached by taking the daily Chiclayo bus from the market in Chachapoyas to Puente Tingobamba, at the settlement of Lamud. The sarcophagi are about three hours' walk from Puente; ask for directions there
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