Colca Canyon Country

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Chivay

Up at 5AM, we were on a 6AM bus to the nearby town of Chivay. Situated at around 3600 metres above sea level, we arrived at around 9AM with a dire need for breakfast to survive the day at an altitude that was around 1000 metres higher than we’d been at in Arequipa. After purchasing our s/35 “boleto turistico” (tourist ticket - good for a week and needed by anyone who steps foot in Canyon country) we took a auto-rickshaw from the bus station in to the Plaza de Armas, which the Lonely Planet told us was 15 minutes walk away and so we thought s/2 was a fair price. Three blocks and less than a minute later, I was curious as to whether the LP writer for Chivay was perhaps wheelchair bound or missing a leg.
We found a cafe and ordered our breakfasts, receiving the kind of hospitality and service that the French would have saved for the invading Nazis of World War II. From there we found a place that rented bikes for the day. It was s/7 an hour or s/35 to do the tour of the neighbouring towns (even though we were told it would only take three to four hours). We forked out the neighbouring towns and were given an A4 map, which may have been drawn by a child on paint, as a guide. It was just before 11AM and with buses going on to the neighbouring town of Cabanaconde at 3 and 5, we figured we had plenty of time to do the 28 km journey.
We departed Chivay over the Inca bridge - a stone bridge over the Colca River ravine and soon found ourselves in a beautiful, rural setting. We rode the first 7 kms to the town of Coporaque at a leisurely pace, taking time to get plenty of pictures of the surrounding mountains. The final push up in to Coporaque was an uphill battle but one we took a few breaks on (again, to take photos, not because I’m unfit or anything).
Coporaque’s Plaza de Armas was undergoing renovations and was totally surrounded with tarpaulins, so photos weren’t really an option. I did however manage to get a photo of the unique trash in the town’s gutters. Where some gutters may have cigarette butts or smashed bottles, Coporaque had piles of corn cobs.
The map said that to the next town, Yanque, it was 5 kms. Corporaque (at 3575 metres) looked down on to Yanque (at 3417 m) and it appeared to be only a stone’s throw away. It turned out the road was far more scenic than it appeared due to the huge valley between the two towns, which was mostly made up of terrace farms. The ride to Yanque was the longest part of the day’s journey and the dark overhead clouds had me starting to worry. After a couple of wrong turns we made it on to a sealed road that took us down to another Inca bridge. At the bridge was a series of hot springs which had been highly commercialised (the Colca Lodge was the nicest looking resort I’d seen since leaving Hawaii). We didn’t stop to test the water.
From the hot springs it was all uphill to Yanque. With the gears set nice and low we made the town, only to be terrorised by two toddlers on little push-cars. Spiderman and Yankee (so named because of their respective hats) took to playing chicken with the Boss and, lover of kids that she is, she made damn sure that they didn’t beat her with her much larger and faster mode of transportation.
From Yanque back to Chivay was all uphill. The hardest part of the day, the spitting rain that started was actually a bit of a relief. After making it most of the way up the hill I pulled over to the side of the road to wait for the Boss. She caught up with me and we had a couple of chocolate biscuits to replenish our energy. As we sat enjoying our respite, a little boy came wandering past. He waved hello and continued on his way but stopped about a hundred metres further down the road to whip out his willy and take a slash in to the gutter - which was running with water. None of this would have bothered me (my teenage nickname of “Nature Boy” coming from such escapades) until my helmet rolled off the grassy knoll we were sitting on in to the gutter. Though I was upstream from the boy, I couldn’t help but wonder what was dripping down my face as I re-fastened the helmet.

Buying a Bus Ticket

We were back in Chivay at 2:45 - just enough time to drop off the bikes and be at the bus terminal for the 3PM bus to Cabanaconde. We arrived at the terminal to be told that the bus was at 3:30 and that we couldn’t buy tickets for it from that company - “pagar bus,” we were told by the company's attendant, which we took to mean the bus was full. We asked at the bus company next door, where the lady told us their bus would be in at 7. She said that the bus for the company with the desk next to hers would be in at 5 but there was no one at the desk. We waited for around half an hour until the woman from the 5PM bus arrived at her desk.
I walked over and waited as she chatted away to the woman at the 7PM bus company’s desk. Eventually she turned to me. I asked (in my best broken Spanish) for a ticket for the 5PM bus. She responded “pagar bus,” whilst turning back to keep talking to the other woman. I couldn’t believe how rude she was. I’d waited half an hour to buy a ticket from her whilst she was God knows where and when she finally turned up she was too busy chatting to even look me in the eye as she answered me.
I finally asked the 7PM woman for a ticket to her bus, “pagar bus” she replied. I finally twigged to what was going on. Just to be sure I checked the Spanish phrase book to discover that “pagar” didn’t mean “full”, it meant “pay”. You had to pay on the bus.
I sat fuming at the rude and dismissive way we had been treated by three different people (my lack of Spanish didn’t mean I didn’t try, all I expected in return was a bit of effort considering these people’s job was supposed to be selling me a ticket) when we were approached by one of the ladies from the bus station information booth. She told us that the bus to Cabanaconde had arrived and we could “pagar bus”.

The Bus to Cabanaconde

Before taking my first bus in Peru, I had imagined them to be like the trains you see in movies about India - people holding on to the sides and clinging to the roof. I was shocked when they had been coaches with reclining seats, meals served and movies shown. However a rural bus through canyon country helped my stereotype to be fulfilled.
We went to board the bus but found it to be absolutely chockers. There wasn’t even room in the aisles to stand. We got off the bus but were told by the information ladies that, within 5 or 10 minutes, the bus would empty up. Turns out the bus from Chivay to Cabanaconde, despite being a coach, was like a city bus which stopped in a number of villages along the way taking people home from work.
Buoyed by being on the bus and away from Chivay, with its bus terminal full of rude women, I put on my iPod and enjoyed my position (having been the last two on the bus, the Boss and I were left to stand next to the driver) and the amazing views of Canyon country it afforded. However the 5 or 10 minutes promised before the bus would be empty again never came. Despite dropping people off at each little town we came to, inevitably more would be picked up. There were no bus stops per se, all it took was for a person walking along the road to stick their hand out and the bus driver would pull over and let them on. I don’t even recall seeing most of these people paying.
Nevertheless, with my music in my ears and a great view in my eyes, I was enjoying the trip. Eventually enough people had got off the bus for the Boss to take the seat next to the driver and I managed to sit down on the console separating the driver from the steps we had been standing on. However, soon after that, a group of elderly women got on the bus. That was where I made my mistake.
Thinking it was what my father would have wanted of me, I offered one of the old ladies my seat on the console. Standing up, I was shoved back in to the aisle of the bus’s seated section by the very lady I had offered my seat to. The door to the driver’s compartment was shut and I was to discover the true nature of the rural bus.
On any given city bus with standing passengers, there is usually a degree of common sense. People filter to the back to allow more space and parents put their kids on their laps to allow more people to sit. On this bus, common sense was clearly not just an English phrase, but a Western philosophy. Kids stood on their seats and yelled as their parents sat amicably by. The crunch at the front of the bus saw people standing two-by-two in the aisle whilst at the back people had their arms outstretched and with an actual bubble of personal space. I stood in the crunch and, for the first time in my life, felt tall. At least a head taller than the majority of passengers, I reached up and grabbed the bars on the top hatch to steady myself and wished that the idiots in the middle of the bus would just take a few steps back to ease the congestion.
The lady who had shoved me in to the back section proceeded with her shoving as soon as the bus took off. She was determined to make the back section and was going to achieve it with force. As she pushed past I said in a loud and completely vain voice “hey, we can all take a step back or you can just shove people to get where you’re going?” Naturally I was ignored (although a fellow English speaker I met the next day said he recognized me as being “that guy on the bus who yelled at someone”.)
It was the better part of an hour to Cabanaconde. I spent my time looking enviously at the people at the back of the bus, angrily at the parents of the kids standing on seats and furiously at the old bitch who was the reason I was back here in the first place. Getting off was another debacle altogether, as people standing in the aisle at the front of the bus merely stood their ground so that people at the back who wanted to get off just had to push past. At the second last stop I got off the bus so people wouldn’t have to push past me, not so much to set an example as to get a break from the constant pushing. I was worried that, for the first time in my adult life, I was going to take a swing at someone and that that person would be twice my age, half my size and in all likelihood a woman.
Watching the bus finally empty at Cabanaconde was like watching one of those clown cars in the circus. Except instead of a ridiculously small car it was a very large bus. I swear there were over 100 people on the friggin thing. I was in the foulest mood I can remember being in. I just wanted to have a feed and a beer. But that was to be another issue altogether.

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Photos

Chivay
Two statues guarding the town

The view
Between Chivay and Corporaque

The Boss
On the final climb to Corporaque's Plaza de Armas

Corn cobs
The gutters of Corporaque

Yanque from Corporaque
With terrace farms in the valley

The Inca Bridge
At the bottom of the hill to Yanque. The bridge in the background is used by traffic

The Boss, Spiderman and Yankee
Chicken was an even match