The Colca Canyon

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As it's understood we did not have access to the Internet or even phone because we were up in a canyon. The Colca canyon, which is even bigger than the Grand Canyon in the States. It's a really long way to reach it, imagine that we started at 8 in the morning and we reached the main town at 2 .

Arequipa

Arequipa andthe surrounding towns are build from volcanic ash, and it's needless to say that theyexploit it as. Est they can, the have their volcanic springs and even more they have a cementfactory that uses the white volcanic ash to produce their cement. This Factory is in Yura. Another interesting fact about Arequipa is that it was divided into 3 sub cities Arequipa and 2 others that were divided by Stradivari , namesakes are in Ketchuan language , I dont remember them but we got the translations! ArequipaNSF one of the 2 have the same meaning! Which is "stay here" thatiris due to the fact that when Charles the 5th came he brought a holy picture with him and the locals had tried to move it around , but the more they moved it the heavier it became,and do they decided to leave it there! Or do the myth says😊

The other one is called "black shorts"ax characteristic of their traditional uniform.

Enough with the history lesson. Moving on to more intree sting facts, the canyon produces a certain kind of fruit that looks like a kiwi but is more acidic, the locals have a drink from it called Colca sour, we still have to try pisco sourband maybe that ifwe've get the chance!



Llamas, Alpacas ,Picunas

All of these are species of more or less the same thing , but alpacas have the gooD meat and the ouch as have the good fur, which is trimmed every 2 years only by the local people the communerosInterested tingly the picunas die at 6 or 7 years and their pregnancy is 11 months , not much to live for the poor things!. Llamas are stronger than alpacas that it why they do the hardest jobs, because they are not used for their meat or their wool.



The excursion

So we started the long tide up, needless to say we slept on the way, when theroute guide had finished his speech. He was differed t than the other guide that we encountered in Lima,less enthusiastic but that might have been ecause his English was not as good. For a few moments we were scared that it might have been a Spanish speaking only tour but thankfully it was not. He was very friendly throughout the trip we must say!

Anyway we went to a restaurant to eat lunch , we were not impressed , first of all the plates were not washed well. You could see water on them a d I even found hair on one of them!! Ew the food was okish , we did not eat much . After that we were transported to our hostels/ hotels , we got a 2 or 3 star hotel which can't compare to the ones in Cyprus. It had a funky smell in general, plus the rooms were cold and a bit depressing, I'm a bit snobbish but hsving worked at a hotel makes u a bit judgemental about it.

We rested a bit and then it was volcanic springs for our enjoyment yay, I wasn't sure if I was gointoto go in but I went, it was boiling, very cool experience. We were even chatted up by some brazilianwe who seemed to be in search of a mate. After that we had a folkloric show to go too, that everyone would attend, we were the Last ones thereSand there seemed to be a lot of people going already. The music was better than I expected it to be but the dance was ridiculous, both make and female had turns in hitting each other with a piece of rope that was originally tied around their waist.

An early start once again to see the condors, that we missed seeing because it was very misty and the clouds were too low, we even saw a spooky to our standards church that instead of paintings of the saints it had dolls- very uncanny!

I seemed to havea mild flu, but Joanna had a terrible stomach and headache, how very unfortunate, she is still recovering today , FREE day for us to do as we wish!

More to follow soon!!!😊

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