Picture crossing a river in four different places, hiking across boulder fields and two hours through the forest along tiny muddy paths to find a half-hidden set of narrow, mossy, worn-down stairs leading steeply up a hillside.

The ruins are huge.  I was expecting to find one or two smaller sites, but this actually is a whole city with citadels, a marketplace, a shaman’s house, and rich and poor sides of town.

Omar told us that there used to be a shaman here who was famous for being able to cure all sorts of diseases – so people would come from all over the region to be cured, and the city prospered.  When he died, a new shaman took his place…but he didn’t know all the remedies yet.  Rather than be cured, the sick began to die when they visited the city.  Rumor spread that the area was cursed, so the inhabitants fled.

The houses all used to look like this:

The best (and most famous) part is the view from the top of the hill:

 We made it!

I know, I know.  TOURRRRR-IIIIIST.  I wasn’t going to…but then I had to jump on the bandwagon