Walking up the valley from La Capilla on the modern road, you pass through riverside orchards with occasional houses and farm buildings. There are workers in the fields, they are farming their own lands. Behind a simple brick building with a few chickens inside, there is a round boulder as high as a man.
On the south face are animals, perhaps quadrupeds, scarcely identifiable. Lizards climb the rock, low down on the right there appears to be a shark. Looking over the boulder you can see down to the river below, and on the other side, scattered on a flat terrace between the river and the moutain side, there are four or five great black stones.
In August or September, you can descend to the river from the Retama stones, and walk across the stony bed of the river, with the slow flowing water hardly reaching your knees. Approaching from the south you will see engraved on the rock a curious and beautiful stylised bird, with broad wings and a thin curving tail, and with a round eye and sharp beak pointing upwards. It is a remarkable image that resembles nothing in nature, but is very similar to Chimu images from the northern coast.
