Colca Canyon

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This entry is mainly for Kirsty who has an unhealthy obsession with alpacas :P

After getting an overnight bus from Nazca (finally!) I arrived in Arequipa on Monday at 7am. I had managed to catch up by email with a Canadian girl called Tanya I met in Lima, and she was also in Arequipa so I headed straight to her hostel. I arrived and found she had managed to book me onto the same bus as her to go into Colca Canyon that morning, so I did a quick rejig of my bags and sorted out some overnight kit, stashed my ruchsack in the hostel and we set off. I probably smelt and I had got no sleep the night before, but when opportunities are available...!

The changing scenery was quite spectacular as we moved from Arequipa at 2300 metres above sea level through the various stages of Peruvian highlands to a final height of 4900 metres. The guide showed us how to determine how high we were - cactus doesn´t grow above 4000 metres, and there are certain types of grass at each stage. One of the first excitments was seeing vacunas which are the smallest of the four camelids in the region. Next are the guanaco, then alpacas and finally llamas. Vacunas are the rarest and they are quite skinny little things. They only eat the very short grass found at slightly lower altitudes than the moss favoured by alpacas and llamas.

Further up we were given coco leaves and shown how to roll them into a package with a bit of volcanic stone in the middle which acts as a catalyst. You then place the package in the corner of your mouth and chew and its quite bitter, but helps prevent altitude sickness. (And increases sex drive according to the label!) We also got coco leaf tea and coco leaf cookies at a rest stop and I was feeling quite light headed and my mouth was numb by the time I finished it all, so sorry if the rest of the trip is more hazy!!

We made a rest stop at the highest altitude toilets in the Andies, basically little stone huts without doors! Its cold at this height but when nature calls you just have to shiver I guess.

We passed through lots of little villages and travelled for four hours, three of which were on dirt track worse than that to get to Mum and Dad´s house. We arrived in Chivay for lunch and had an eat all you like buffet with alpaca meat, local corn (which is the best in S America, of course!) and loads of other local dishes. Alpaca was very tasty, not sure why we don´t eat it at home.

We then went to Cabanaconde village where we went on a trek up the mountain to an pre-Inca burial site where there were many bones and we could see the skulls. Interestingly two local groups both practiced a method of changing the shape of their skulls to please their gods, by tying wood to their babies heads until they were four years old. The resulting skulls were much longer than normal ones! These days they don´t do this, instead each group has a different hat that they wear which represents the same tradition.

We also saw a lot of pre-Inca terracing which the locals still use to provide a suitable area to grow crops. Some was formed naturally when the valley was full of ice and later when there was a large lake which created terraces each time the water level dropped, and they were then reinforced with walls by the inhabitants of the area.

In the evening we got an early night at a nice hostel in Chivay as we had to get up at 5am to go and see condors deeper in the canyon. On the way we stoped in the village of Yanque where local children had been dragged out of their beds to dance a local love dance around the village fountain. They didn´t look much like they were enjoying it and I found it a bit forced, but when they finished they were playing around like any other children and were much happier, and loved posing for photos.

Everyone in the valley wears traditional dress, you walk past fields and they are full of women in long skirts and colourful embroidery working in the sun, often with oxen and donkeys, ploughing fields the traditional way and planting and harvesting by hand. Corn and quinoa are major crops in the area.

When we reached the condor lookout we were lucky and saw about five condors, and although they didn´t come close enough to photograph well I could see them quite clearly and they really are impressive birds. We were lucky to see them at all as this is the start of the rainy season and they will soon be heading to the coast, to Paracas where I was last week, where they will await the tasty treat of sea lion afterbirth in February.

We then headed back to Areqiupa and although I had planned an early night to catch up on some sleep I arrived at my hostel and met three girls from Swansea, so instead we got some wine and didn´t get such an early night!

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