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Almost all trips out to The Colca Canyon feature a seven hour trip by packed local bus. I really wanted to avoid this so I ensured that my agency used a “private car” for the long driving sections. I have heard enough stories about flapping chickens, vomit in the aisles and vacuum-sealed stench to avoid public buses for anything more than a one hour trip. As it turned out, the private car was a thirty-seater minibus and I, along with two Californian girls from the hostel, piled in happily to meet the rest of the group.
This was shaping up to be a bit of an uber-tourist experience but, considering I was not fit for the hike, the social aspect was very welcome. With a wide range of nationalities on board, including a decent proportion of South American tourists, the two days were filled with consistently interesting conversations.
After chatting and snoozing for most of the day over an incredibly bouncy “highway” we arrived at a small farming village to do a two-hour walk to a sunset lookout. Being the first of May, a huge holiday in South America, the town was gripped with party-fever and rag-tag brass bands
were noisily dancing through the streets. Around them, bleary-eyed farmers and colourfully dressed women struggled to remain upright against the crushing power of their translucent rocket-fuel. As we disembarked, people were literally being carried home to bed after losing the blood/alcohol battle.
We set off and wandered slowly through the village, stopping to chat to a massive bull who poked his head through an ancient stone wall. When he finally got edgy and “mooed” at us, it was almost loud enough to knock us off our feet.
Over the hill and beyond an impossibly golden field of wheat, we found the epicentre of the celebration. An important home was hosting the party this year and we were dragged into the eye of the storm by stumbling, slurring locals who pressed into our group seeking novel dancing partners.
These people were truly trashed. We gaped as a stumpy little farmer paused mid-sentence to keel over into the mud, as stiff as a felled tree. Women exited the dirt square of the dance floor in wild uncontrolled spins that ended with them thudding softly into the piled layers of their friends skirts.
While being pawed at and interrogated
Technical Knock Out
Her friends gave me permission for this photo. Some friends! by the adults, we realised that we could have far more lucid conversations with the children who were thankfully sober. The local soccer team piled up in inventive arrangements as I took photographs for them so they could see them displayed on the LCD screen. It was like standing in the whitewater on the beach. You would snap a photo and they would immediately crash down upon you to see the result, only to be sucked backwards by an invisible force to form a new arrangement of dirty grinning faces.
Extracting our group from the yard via the one, heavily clogged, doorway was like a special military operation. Us guys were called back in to the fray to disengage the girls from the feverish grip of the farmers and it was then a slow process of backing away with big smiles, bad Spanish and enthusiastic handshakes.
Further up the hill, past an incongruous stand of Eucalyptus, we came to a high rocky outcrop with a fantastic view of the patchwork farmland below. I was amazed at how well these valley-people have developed the land. It is a bone-dry region but there is a fascinating network of tiny concrete
Check out the sombrero sequins!
Dress varies dramatically in Peru, I have dubbed this one: Rodeo-Glam. irrigation channels that snaked alongside our route for the entire trip - gushing with icy blue water steered down from the surrounding peaks.
Dinner was served at a long table in a warm restaurant designed solely for tourists. We chatted, clapped and laughed through a comprehensive demonstration of the local dances - complete with elaborate costume changes. It was not hard to identify the theme of each one as they were heavy with agricultural and fertility symbolism. However, we were all scratching our heads when one of the dancers stood over his partner and enthusiastically lashed at her with a colourful whip. There was no sleight of hand involved here, we saw her flinch away and yelp when he got her a beauty on the leg. She did get to swap places and take her revenge though, and then it was the turn of “volunteers” from our table to lie down and be whipped mercilessly. Interesting.
The next dance bordered on R-rated with a lot of head-up-skirt action and, yes, our group got to participate in that one too. The guy who got chosen for this dubious honour had just finished explaining that his Mum was harassing him
Lost in Mexico?
"CSSHHHK...requesting immediate Evac, we have a man down, I repeat..." to send more photos so we took this opportunity to snap a great one for her album.
The show ended with us all up and dancing around the tables and there was no argument with an early night as we all had to be up before dawn to get to the Condor lookout.
Signing up for this kind of tour is always risky. If it had rained or the condors were elsewhere in the canyon, the two days would have been almost wasted (the countryside is interesting but only as an appetiser for the spectacle at the canyon). However, my luck held yet again and we arrived at the edge of the canyon to a perfect morning and just in time to see the first of these massive birds float up over the edge.
I had lost a bit of respect for the condors when we were told that they were not hunters, feeding exclusively on carrion, but this was quickly corrected as the first dark shape cruised overhead.
The adult condors have a wingspan of up to three metres and this is very, very impressive at close quarters. Over the half hour that we sat at
"That´s not a Pan Pipe...
...THIS is a Pan Pipe!". Awesome bass sound. the lip of the chasm, we were targeted for strafing runs a couple of times and we could actually hear the air rushing over their massive wings. The older birds must have shocking potty mouths by now because they couldn´t fly in close without at least one of us letting slip an awestruck: “SH*****T…!”.
We had about fifteen birds soaring above and breaking off all around us and no one came away unmoved by the show. Our guide told us that we were blessed with a very lucky day, sometimes they don´t turn up at all.
(Even more lucky? When we got back to Arequipa we were told that there was a strike the day after we left. The highway was blockaded and tour groups had to sleep in their buses on the side of the road).
With the birds warming up and moving further away, we wandered along the edge of the canyon to get a good look at how deep it was. It was
deep Standing out on the very edge, as far as I dared, I couldn´t help but picture Wylie Coyote plunging down, down to the dusty floor followed by a little white
Heart stopping
What a creature, what a setting. puff. Again, there are no safety railings here, you are quite free to wander out and kill yourself through lack of coordination or concentration.
We were encouraged to spread our arms and absorb the power of the canyon, I got right into this and, power or not, it felt good to be pushed gently back by the air rising up from below.
On the way back we had our first tastes of cactus fruit (nice) and got to know each other better. I had chanced upon a great group again and there were plenty of laughs that night as we swam in the steaming thermal pools back in town.
It was a long and bumpy ride home but a great way to plan the rest of my trip as there were plenty of people travelling in the opposite direction to me. It was on this ride that I hatched a half-baked plan to jump on a bus out of Arequipa that night, make a flying visit to the desert oasis of Huachachina at Ica and jump on another bus to Lima later that day.
That´s 1010 kilometres up the coast, with a stopover at the oasis, in 24
hours. It could be done.
I was sure of it…
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