Return of the sketchy hostel...

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Last Friday afternoon I finally left Lima...for good (or until I return in February to catch my flight home). I was quite pleased because Lima and I didn´t get along so well.

My ultimate destination over the weekend was to make it to Cusco in order to start actually volunteering in the Ancahuasi Posta (small medical clinic). I decided that since I had four days before I needed to start, I would make a little trip out of it and see some essential sites along the way.

The first leg of the journey was from Lima to Nasca, a lovely seven hour bus ride. I booked a hostel online that sounded very appealing and was pleased when someone was waiting for me at the bus station, just as we had arranged, despite the bus being late. However, as soon as I walked into the hostel I realized I had found another ¨Snake Pit¨like the hostel on the north shore of Oahu. The place reeked of urine and was just generally unsanitary and gross. Umm...yeah, the hammock area they described was one tiny and ripped hammock in the middle of this dirty common area. It definitely didn´t appeal to me at ALL. When one of the guys who worked there asked me the next day how I liked the hostel and if I would recommend it to friends I had to stifle back a laugh. I couldn´t say that I honestly didn´t like it because they had my stuff in storage and I wanted it to still be there when I returned. Needless to say, I have made a new policy. I will only stay in hostels that are recommended in Lonely Planet, by South American Explorers or are personally recommended to me by other travellers. The internet lies (or more like it, hostel owners lie and make up fake positive testimonies about their hostels). Anyway, in the end I survived and I suppose it wasn´t so bad.

The main reason of course for wanting to go to Nasca in the first place was to see the world famous Nasca lines in the sand! When I arrived at the Nasca airport, I submitted my request to be the copilot of my flight (they´re tiny little Cesna somethings...seats six including the pilot) and was successful! I had lots of great views out the windows in front of and beside me and it was really fantastic to see the Nasca Lines in person. Noone really knows the deal with them...they are thought to be 1300-2200 years old and most of them are about 100m in diameter - in other words huge. They are simply indents in the sand, with many lines, shapes and figures. Naturally my favourite was the monkey, but the spider and hummingbird were probably the most clearly viewed. Since we had to loop to the right and the left constantly to allow everyone in the plane to see the shapes, it made for a pretty trying ride for those who don´t deal well with motion sickness (aka me) but it was still completely worth the experience.

In Nasca I also was able to see Cerro Blanco, the tallest sand dune in the world, and some ancient Inca aqueducts that were used to channel water in from the mountains to the desert community.

After Nasca I took yet another night bus to Arequipa, arriving around 8am Sunday morning. I had consulted my South American Explorers Guide for hostels and was very pleased with my choice of Arequipay Backpackers - it was clean, the owner lady Evelin was super helpful and it was just great overall. I crashed for a few hours due to a poor sleep on the bus and then spent the afternoon exploring part of the city. I can´t pinpoint why, but within a few hours I already loved Arequipa far far more than Lima. The weather was warm and pleasant, the buildings were for the most part gorgeous (it´s a colonial city, was never an indigenous community and thus is very European looking) and the Plaza de Armas in the centre of the city is simply beautiful. There´s the main city cathedral on one side, which of course is huge and fabulous, and the other three sides are colonial style buildings with shops. The square itself is a lovely garden with a fountain in the middle - I´ve seen quite a few squares by now and I have to say this is probably one of my favourites. However, just like everywhere in Perú, the city has a garbage problem. It makes me a bit sad. I walked to a great lookout point to see the Misti Volcano behind the city and it made for quite a formidable sight. I think one of the coolest things, from a distance of course, would be to see a volcano erupt. I think I´ll probably have to fork out the money to helicopter over Hawaii for that though...but I digress.

In the evening I returned to my hostel and chatted with this American guy sharing my dorm for about two hours. He´s one of those characters who´s been practically everywhere and had all sorts of crazy stories. From playing with orangutans in Borneo to attempting to get through Sudan during a war period (he didn´t succeed) he´s really been all over. This trip he´s already been on the road fourteen months and has plans for another three before his money runs out. Such an awesome life!

Monday was an adventure. It started at 3am with a trip to the Colca Canyon, which I booked through one of those semi-sketchy travel agencies that also sell sweaters and trinkets...but the tour showed up and it was pretty nice! The bus was new, there were blankets, the guide spoke English (with tour type stuff, English is much better since my Spanish is still rough and I don´t know the unique vocabulary that these tours entail). We had breakfast in Chivay, a little town about three hours outside of Arequipa, after that, we drove along the Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world, though we only saw depths up to about 1200m (at its deepest it goes to about 3500m)...still, it looked like something out of Wiley Coyote, though as always my pictures simply don´t capture the sheer magnitude of the scenery at all. I saw LOADS (the guide said 25 000) terraces where crops were/are being grown. It was just like I learned about in social studies in grade 6 and honestly is a large part of the reason I chose Peru in the first place (the fact that I knew a bit about it, not the terraces part). The main reason for getting up at 2am (or rather having a two hour nap for a sleep) was to get to the Colca Canyon in the morning to see the condors riding the air vents. We first went to Cruz del Condor, apparently the best spot to see them, and there were none to be foud. We drove up the road a bit though and saw about seven young ones over the course of half an hour or so and it was FANTASTIC! There were fairly far away and my camera has poor zoom so I don´t have great photos, but more importantly I saw them with my own eyes and it was great. They are huuuuuge birds and they were just circling...maybe looking for dead animals, as they are scavengers, or maybe just hanging out. In any case, it was a pretty fantastic experience. After that, we visited a hot spring and took a dip in the refreshing, naturally heated water. Lunch was a buffet at this great restaurant where I had a bunch of traditional Peruvian food including ALPACA MEAT. It tasted like beef, but a bit more chewy. On the way back to Arequipa we stopped at a lookout point for about six of the region´s sixteen volcanos. I also learned that people of the Colca Canyon also make Inukshuks (called something else but I forget what) for wayfinding. The last exciting part of the fourteen hour journey was seeing VICUNAS in the wild. They are similar to llamas and alpacas but are undomesticated and threatened, so it was fairly exciting to see them!

Once I returned to Arequipa I decided to spend the money and visit the museum near my hostel that contains the MUMMY of a young girl, Juanita, sacrified by the Incas about five hundred years ago atop one of the volcanoes. I managed to swing the student rate, which was about $2, so it was a pretty good deal to get to see a real mummy in person! The most interesting fact from the tour: the Incas (and apparently to this day the people of Puno around Lake Titicaca as well) would dry and save their umbilical cords and placenta following birth and then eat bits of it when they were sick. Similarly, these items along with many other offerings were found with the mummy. Cool and a bit weird!

Anyway this is fairly lengthy so I´ll cut it off now. The next adventure is my six weeks of volunteering in Cusco!

And the latest complete batch of photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2227807&l=7e4d3&id=21003528

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Photos

Copiloting my flight!
Here I am as copilot for my Nasca Lines flight. It was great, if a bit nausea inducing.

Nasca Monkey
Naturally, my favourite of the shapes. Interestingly, there aren´t any monkeys for many (hundreds of kilometres on the other sides of the Andes) so why the ancient Nasca people made one in the sand is a bit of a mystery.

Spider!
The spider was clearly visible, as was the shadow of the plane!

The plane!
The flight in this plane has made me reconsider my ideas about wanting to get a pilot´s license...

Maria Reiche Park
This is part of the park dedicated to the German Researcher who spent most of her life investigating the Nasca Lines.

Inca Aqueducts
There was an extensive network of aqueducts made by the Incas to serve the desert communities. Here is one still in operation and use by the locals!

Monument in Arequipa
I rather enjoy monuments and I think Canada should have more of them. Also notice (if you haven´t before) that the Peruvian flag bears a striking resemblance to the Canadian one.

Misti Volcano
Here´s Misti Volcano forming a splendid backdrop for the city of Arequipa.

Colca Canyon
The canyon is huge and beautiful and pretty much impossible to capture with a camera.

This is why I heart Arequipa
Here is part of the gorgeous Plaza del Armas with the cathedral and fountain in Arequipa. I loved it!

Terraces and the Lower Colca Valley
Here´s a sampling of the 25 000 terraces and a rather nice view of the lower Colca Valley.

CONDORS!
Here are three at once in the background, flying just above the field/over the canyon. They were fairly far away so it was hard to get a good shot.

Lovely Peruvian Buffet
This was one of my plates for the buffet lunch on Colca Day - featuring alpaca meat and breaded mini banana things. It was delicious!

VICUNAS!
I think I might have been more excited to see vicunas than I was to see condors. They´re fairly rare and I think they are much more elegant looking than llamas or alpacas.