Colca Canyon and Arequipa

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Well, we spent a nice few days in the beautiful, crowded and scenic city of Arequipa. The cabs seem to outnumber the people and they are absolutely flippin´crazy when it comes to spontaneous lane changing, ingnoring stop signs, incessant honking and completely ingnoring pedestrians. They have the right of way and that´s just a fact jack!

We just got back from a 4 day jaunt into Colca Canyon and actually got to see a number of Andean Condors, but not at the famed Cruz del Condor vista area where the tour buses and minivans drop hundreds of tourons each day. Hell no, that place was shrouded in mist. Well actaully we took the locals bus up there from our hotel in Cabanaconde along with the farmer, their shovels, and the numerous local gals and their wares that set up shop at the vista each day to sell as much as they can to the tourons arriving on the aforementioned plethora of vans and buses. So we had nice views of the amazing valley below and the surrounding mountain peaks for about 15 minutes, and then the mist came a´rolling up from the depths of the canyon and that was that. Being the intreped adventurers that we tend to be, well, off we went to walk the 12 km back to town. It was right after we moved some large boulders off the middle of the road, took a a short break, and I instructed Demi in the finer points of chewing coca leaves, that we were blessed by Pachamama herself with the first of numerous overflights by the famed condors. This first one came strafing over us not more that 50ft up and it was just glorious! Well, actually it was quite the learning experience for me in that I now know that you just watch and appreciate what´s happening in the now, and do not get all fixated on getting a friggin´ picture. So that´s what I know now! That and birds in flight, even those with 8ft wingspans look like little specks when taken with my little Canon Elf. Yup.

So we had a great walk back to town, enjoyed a fine lunch at locals place where you eat what they had for lunch that day. No choices, and it was great. Soup of the day with local crawdads followed by stewed alpaca, potatoes and rice. Yummy! All for around $2.50 each. Awesome.

And then the afternoon rains came. Which segued right into the evening and subsequent night rains. Burrrrr! Noone has heat so it´s all about the multitude of blankets that often are piled 4-5 high. Demi loves it but I have to peel it down to just one once the bed gets warmed up. Ahh blissful sleep in the pooring rain at 11,000ft plus. Morning brought breaks in the clouds and views of our hotels cuppola above town of the snow capped surrounding peaks and beautiful terraced farm plots surrounding us. All around the hotel itself was a varitable menagerie of animal life in neetly constructed rock pens. We had burros, dogs, pigs and piglets, horses, chickens, alpaca, and llama. All the owners were busy delivering the daily rations of greens on their own backs wrapped in a lovley handwoven cloth and tied around their front. And I mean these people carried some serious loads in this fashion. I watched one old woman, likely in her 70´s, trudge up a steep hill with a load of what looked like alfalfa that was at least two time her size, forcing her to be stooped forward at about 90 degrees at the waist. These people are tough! And I´m sure that was just her daily morning routine before going into the fields to hoe, plow and plant. Tough!

Anyway, we left Cabanaconde and headed up canyon by bus to Chivay, hit some developed hot springs and soaked ourselves for several hours in the nice mineral laden pools. We decided to walk the 2mi back to town and of course got caught in a nice downpoor which pretty much took all the stored heat from our bodies and left us shivering a bit by the time we got to town. So we sloshed our way to a nice eatery with chickens on a spit and went to bed under heaps of blankets after drinking 3-4 cups of manzanilla tea each. We both had a few trips to the baño that night!

Morning found us in the mood to jump on the bus and head back to Arequipa, so off we went and four hours of bus-time later we were back in our lovely room in the big city. The much warmer big city at only 7500ft or so. So we´ll take a day to gather our wits before heading off on the 10hr night sleeper bus to Nazca to jump in a small plane and fly over the famous Nazca Lines. Yippee-ki-yeah!

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