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After Cusco we headed to Peru´s second city Arequipa, which feels much more Peruvian than Lima with colonial architecture in the centre of the city. Following our theme for big cities we didn´t see much in the way of sights as such but spent a pleasent couple of days pottering around the city, walking up through an older neighbourhood for a view of the city with snowcapped volcanos in the background and enjoying the in house roasted coffee that Chris had tracked down in his endless quest to find good coffee in South America.
Then we headed to the regions big hitting sight, the colca canyon, which is twice as deep as the grand canyon. We decided to skip the guided tours, so took ourselves off on the local bus 6 hours to the village of Cabanaconde above the canyon. The next day leaving Cabanaconde we set off along the edge of the canyon joined by a local dog who stayed with us for the whole of our two day walk. We walked along and slowly down to the river at the bottom of the valley, being in the full sun and the dusty rocky path made walking down harder
than I would like but we were down in two hours. Next we walked up the otherside of the canyon, around several side canyons and up several hundard metres to a village then a final desent to the ¨oasis¨ a small piece of green flat ground in the bottom of the canyon with several small hostels with cabins and a swimming pool each. We had just enough time to swim to wash off the dust before the sun dipped behind the mountains and it became cold very quickly as we were at 2100 metres even at the bottom of the canyon. We started early the next morning to get as high as possible before the sun reached us, still with our faithful dog (perro) and in two hours forty minutes we had walked the 1200 metres out of the canyon. I had expected to find it a really hard walk given the big height gain finishing at 3300 metres but it turns out all of the high altitude walking has paid off so it wasn´t too bad.
Returning to Arequipa we both had hair cuts, mine (Alice) being the cheapest haircut I´ve ever had at a grand total of
4 pounds although I´m not sure I´ll be replacing my usual hair dresser any time soon, I was mildly terrified of a missunderstanding but all was ok.
Both missing our bikes we arranged to bike down a mountain on the outskirts of the city. Starting at the literally breathtaking height of 4200 metres I was glad we were going down hill, although it was a very bumpy road so our hands and arms were a little on the shaken side by the end but in the pauses we enjoyed the clear blue skys with snow capped mountains in the distance and the very fresh air.
The trip to and across the Bolivian boarder were uneventful, one of the simplist boarder crossings we have done on this trip, I did have a paranoid excess of cash just in case after the last boarder! We were some what confused to be getting off the bus two hours from La Paz to cross part of Lake Titicaca by boat.
Setting our alarms for 12.20am was a new experience but our hostel arranged a taxi for us without issue and we were at the airport to meet Ian in plenty of
time and after Ian's 30 odd hour journey he also arrived on time. We had planned a quiet day in La Paz to allow Ian to recover but the excitement at arriving kept him rolling and we spent the day walking all over the city. The next day we took advantage of the new cable car transport which goes up to the heights above the city. This also gave us an explaination of the area known as the cemetary district, turns out it is a huge cemetary the size of a neighbourhood with numbered multistory high rise memorial sites.
Since La Paz is at high altitude and Chris and I can´t cope with cold any more we ran away to Coroico at a much more civilised height in the cloud forest north of La Paz. We all found the journey down the death road cramed into a combi (a mini van which run on smaller routes in South America) stunning although once we left the paved road it was decidedly bumpy. We stayed in a lovely hostel a steep but worth while walk out of the town with very cold pools spread around the large cloud forest gardens. While
in Coroico we visited an animal sacturary looking after rescued capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys, snakes, a toucan, parrots, turtles and tortoises and one capibara.
A long journey via La Paz took us back to Lake Titicaca which Chris and I had saved until Ian joined us. After a very cold night in a basic hostel in Copacabana we took the boat over to Isla Del Sol. We´d heard great things about the island and weren´t disappointed. It´s a lot like a high altitude (3800m) Greek island, with pretty villages, white beaches and llamas (ok, not totally Greek) and spend a day wandering around, looking at the ruins and trying to find open restaurants in the sleepy lakeside villages. It would have been nice to spend a little longer on the island but ferry and bus connections meant we had to leave the next morning and make our way back to La Paz in order to catch a bus to the town of Cochabamba today. However, the reason we´re writing this blog rather than sitting on a bus south is that a landslide on the outskirts of La Paz has closed all the roads south! For the time being Boliviar´s
principle town is cut off from the south of the country until the road is cleared. The joys of travel in south America.
Only one or two more blogs before we fly home on 30th June now!
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