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Me and Chris
In front of one of the big lines. They think it might be symbolicing a temple. The lady of my house is Doris. I don't know how old she is, but she has a son who is 36 and a son who is 26.
In the apartment there is three bedrooms, one for two volunteers from USA who arrived a week before me, one room for me and then one for Doris and her son Lino.
The apartment is of course very different from anything at home, and there is not even a fridge, but it's homie and the area where it is seems fine. And the best of all, it's actually just by the neighbourhood where Chris is gonna live!
Well, going back a bit in time.. to tell you about Colca Canyon and if I have time, Nazca Lines:
We arrived in
Arequipa (the biggest city close to Colca Canyon) very late because our bus was delayed from La Paz in Bolivia. It was a quite interesting journey with police officers looking through the whole bus, probably to check for illegal items brought from Bolivia, they didn't bother us though.. two gringos clearly not involved in anything like that.
We arrived in the hotel and it was a really nice place..
Monkey!
Look to the right of the picture, it's a figure of a monkey, taken from the airplane I wish we would have stayed there longer! But the next morning we were gonna get picked up by a tour company to take us to
Colca Canyon , where we were gonna stay over one night in a little village called Chivey.
Something got wrong though, and when the tour company didn't turn up right on time the old man working (owning as well) the hotel called them up and told them that we were waiting. Apperently they had forgot us and they had to get another tour company to pick us up.
We arrived in
Chivey after crossing through a very high point of 4800 m, seeing strange trees looking more like moss (mossa?) which locals used against tooth ace. We saw Vacuñas (llama look alike) and all the local people in colorful outfits.
When we arrived in Chivey there was a series of trouble, all because our first tour company forgot us, but in the end we arrived in a little not very nice hostel where we were gonna spend the night.
That day we spent in the hot springs, which was nice, except it smelled a bit like egg, and there was a big group
Hummingbird
Right in the middle of the photo is a hummingbird (kolibri) of middle aged Swedish people singing Christmas songs and lullabies like "vem kan ro utan aror...." wonderful.
That night was hilarious though!!
We went to a local restaurants with some of the people in our new tour group, and it was local music and local dances.
The peak of the night was when Chris got to dance over and over and over again! And it's very special dances as well, it was great!!
I got to dance to, and it was fun, in the end almost everyone in the restaurant was up dancing in a circle, it was a good show defiantly!
I'm putting up pictures, so don't worry, you will see Chris dressed up ;-)
The next day we got up really early to go and see the flight of the condors, and that was really good.. a bit too much tourists though, but still cool to see the birds with 3 meter wide wings fly really close to you!
We got back to Arequipa just to be able to spend some time on the net, rearrange our bags and catch the bus to Nazca.
We arrived in
Nazca early morning, and got picked up
Map
Map over the area of the figures (nazca lines) which we flew over to go to the hotel. There we found out that we only had an hour or so before we were gonna do the " Over Flight" over the
Nazca Lines .
The same man who picked us up from the bus station drove us to the airport, which was full of small airplanes. And he told us to sit down an watch a movie about the Nazca lines for a while, which we did for 40 min... until he came and said that it was so full with tourists now in the morning so we couldn't get a flight until about an hour and a half.
He suggested that we could go to see the aqueducts during this time, and that sounded like a good idea since we didn't feel like watching the same film over and over again.
The aqueducts was quite cool, mostly because it was built hundreds of years B.C. and still was functioning. This was the way the Nazca people got water from the mountains and led it down to the village which is in the middle of the desert. It was impressive.
Unfortunately the guide didn't speak any English, or didn't wanna speak any English. So it was for me to try and remember what he said, and try and explain it for Chris... So I don't think Chris enjoyed the whole thing that much.
After this we visited some ruins and some of the lines.. it was an OK way to make time pass by, even though all we wanted to do was to fly over the Nazca Lines.
Eventually we got to do it. And it was so cool! We were in a really small airplane, for 4 passangers, co-pilot (which was also just tourist) and the pilot. And we got to see plenty of the mysterious lines that are found all over the desert of Nazca.
Figures of Monkeys, Condors, Hummingbird, Dogs etc.. which was made 1000 of years ago, and still is there, and there is many theories of why the Nazca people created these perfectly symmetrical lines... and it's mostly theories about astronomy, or god worshipping. Very interesting, and it was both cool to see the lines, and to be up in the little airplane, even though I did feel a bit sick.
When we got back to the hotel we had breakfast and then went to have a little nap. We got woken up by the guide who took us to the airport earlier. He wanted us to do some tours with him the same day or the next day... it was gonna cost 30 Soles to go and see the mummies in the graveyard for example, which we chose to do. And then he also said that the tour we did earlier (the aqueducts and ruins) cost 20/per person, so if we please could pay.
It's funny how we thought that he did that just out of good will, but of course..
nothing in Peru is for free .
( PICTURES FROM COLCA CANYON IS COMING!! THEY ARE ON CHRIS CAMERA)
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