Advertisement
Published: July 28th 2006
Cathedral in Arequipa
Part of the white cityWhew, it´s been a while, I bet you missed us!
We are now in the beautiful ¨White City¨of Arequipa which is surrounded by high Andean mountains. When we last left you we had just flown over the Nazca lines. Shelagh neglected to mention that one flys over the Nazca lines in a little tiny plane and the pilots are very conscientious about getting you a good view which means they tip the plane on its side then do a tight turn and come back the other way and then tip it on it´s other side. Good for viewing, not good for keeping lunch down. Both of us were VERY queesy (how the heck do you spell that) after that. We then went to a pre-Inca cemetary. I don´t know if we´ve mentined it but it´s absolute desert around here. It literally doesn´t rain. Ever. So it´s so dry that the bodies are well preserved. They actually used to have the tombs open and uncovered for tourist to look at but then El Nino in 97 or whenever it was that created such horrendous weather in South America created a down pour for two hours!(that´s huge considering the area normally gets
Convent
This convent was filled with hedonism for 100 of years... 30 minutes of rain per year) and soaked the mummies. Now they have roofs over them and it hasn´t rained since.
We had a great group dinner in a Criole restaurant that had dancing etc and I ate a very yummy stuffed avocado the size of my head (and I know my head´s small, but c´mon it´s bigger than an avocado). Shelagh decided to have 3 pisco sours (the local drink) and we all had some wine etc. So, when we headed off to catch our night bus we were all in high spirits (literally).
The night bus itself was fine, warm, safe etc. However, about half our group felt pretty rough on disembarking. We got to our hotel and started to tour Arequipa. It´s a beautiful city with a fantastic main square. We had coffee/beer in one of the many restaurants on the second floor overlooking the square it´s an amazing view. One of the big attractions is a convent that was founded by a wealthy spanish woman for the daughters of wealthy spanish families. The nuns lived happily in a life of semi hedonism until some strict mother superior came in and sorted them out. It
Convent
Heather thinks she could live here...the only problem would be the vow of silence... is still a working convent (although with far fewer nuns than in it´s hey day - I wonder why!) It is a very beautiful building inside and out and provided many fantastic photo ops.
Oh, healthwise Heather recovered from her Bus-lag by midday, but Shelagh got worse and as I write this 3 days later is still not feeling great. Several other members of the group are also quite ill. Mmmm South America and tummy issues.
Arequipa is also home to approximately 1000 shops selling items made from baby alpaca wool. I know this because we visited every one!
The next morning we headed off on a two day trip to the Colca Canyon. One route we saw a herd of wild vaqunas (I think I spelled that wrong but since none of you know what I´m talking about you can´t correct me). They are one of the wild species of Camelids (alpacas llamas etc). They were in the distance but cool to see. We later realized that alpacas and llamas (which can be distinguished from each other by the llamas longer body, neck and face - I´d hate for any of you to make an embarrasing mistake
Surrounded by snow capped peaks
Ariquepa is surrounded by peaks all greater than 5000m. Stunning! next time you meet one) are all over the place here
Then we stopped at a very touristy little stopoff that had a mini market set up and most importantly had a baby alpaca that you could take photos of/with. All he asked for was a small tip. In fact, I think the daily income of that baby alpaca far exceeded that of any of the market women and likely this tourist. We also drank some coca tea which I can´t remember if we´ve mentioned before but its actually a handfull of coca leaves (like the kind that are illegal in canada) and some other leafy twig type stuff in a cup of water. It´s very good and helps with altitude. We hit a maximum altitude of 5000 m coming across the pass. For those of you who don´t have a concept of that...It´s freaking high. The effects started to hit the group with several headaches etc.
We got to a little town with a beautiful hotel that we were staying in (certainly outside our normal budget) and they also happened to have a baby alpaca just wandering the yard. We all loved him...well, until he chased one
Animal friendly bullfighting
Not...after the bull died they cut off the horns and chucked them into the crowd. I tried to catch one but Heather stopped me... girl, but his hooves up on her chest and tried to bite her. She was wearing an Alpaca sweater, we think it was made from his brother and he just wanted to play. It happened to be the festival day in the town and what better way to celebrate than Bull fighting. We walked to the arena and saw most of one whole fight. It was complete with matador, S. American equivalent of a rodeo clown, angry bull, yelling crowd etc. Animal rights aside (and the matador did get the bull and someone finished the bull off before he was dragged out of the ring) it was fascinating. It was great to see the local people many of whom were in traditional dress (and drunk I might add) at a traditional event. We then went to some hot springs (it´s all geothermally around here) and ended the day with a buffet dinner at the hotel that included baby alpaca strogonoff!
This morning we got up stupidly early because we had to get a one and half hour drive under our belts in order to get to the Condor viewing point. Yes, that´s right, I woke up at 5 30,
Dead bull
Stabbed in the heart then rode a bus to go bird watching and it was great! At this time of year, the condors are almost guaranteed and sure enough like clockwork they showed up to play in the thermals in the valley. They start out low and gradually ride the thermals up and eventually come swooping overhead. We got some amazing photos and some good video. They are the second largest bird in the world (or so someone told me) with wingspans that can be up to 3 m. And, when they come flying overhead, you believe it.
The landscape is astounding (as it has been all over south america) but the new thing here is inca and pre inca terracing. I can´t believe the amount of work this would have required and I´ve decided I definately could not have been an Inca - too hard. There must be thousands of miles of stone retaining walls. The inca ones even have irrigation chanels and steps built into them. And of course, that land is still in use and grows things nicely to this day. The hotel even had a little pre inca house on the property. You know, those 1500 year old houses
we have in our yards in canada.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.121s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 16; qc: 78; dbt: 0.083s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Lorraine
non-member comment
coffee/beer...yummy
I have never heard of coffee/beer before, must be a local Peruvian drink, does it taste like coffee or beer or some weird combination of both? Love the pics, love the blogs, keep em coming. One other thing, is there some kind of contest for the driest place in the world because the Chileans believe that the Atacama desert is the driest place in the world since they get only 30 mm of rain a year, that has to be a lot less than 30 minutes of rain, or maybe they didn{t get the deluge of 1997, so they now believe they are the driest in the world. All I know is that after spending 7 days in desert like conditions, I look like the mummies that you saw! By the way Heather, good thing you teach Math because your spelling sucks!