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Published: December 17th 2006
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Next time you´re having a rubbish day at work I wan´t you to consider the life and death of the unfortunate Juanita. Juanita is the most well preserved ice mummy in South America and after 500 years she isn´t looking as bad as she might. Here is a girl raised to the age of 12 and kept pure and innocent for the sole purpose of being sacrificed to appease the mountain gods. When the time was right, Juanita was made to walk some 160 miles from Cuzco to the summit of mount Ampato in terribly difficult conditions. Once there she was starved for a day and , already half dead from the effects of altitude and exposure, was drugged and promptly bludgeoned to death. Next she was buried in a shallow hole with all manner of pots and figurines in an attempt to appease the tempestuous volcano gods. Did it work? Of course not. And how do we know she grew up with the knowledge that this was to be her fate you may ask. The answer is that when she was found and defrosted by boffins they found a piece of her umbilical cord wrapped up as one of the
offerings. If that isn´t a rough upbringing, then I don´t know what is. I´ll think twice before complaining about busses again.
We saw Juanitas frozen body in a museum in Arequipa and quite impressive it was too with all the offerings and such. We spent a good few days in Arequipa which is a lovely city. Much like a less touristy version of Cuzco so less hawkers. It does, however, have more than it´s fair share of wandering Andean music bands. With very few tourists around, I convinced myself that they were actually stalking us. We didn´t manage to have a single meal in peace. We even selected restaurants on the apparent absence of long haired, table cloth wearing, pan pipe touting characters but they always sniffed us out somehow. True to form just as the food arrived, the flutes started. The truly galling bit wasn´t the constant butchering of Beatles songs or countless renditions of Simon and Garfunkels - I´d rather have a hammer than a nail... song, but the fact that they would then try and flog you a CD of their music or expect some sort of payment. Made me shudder. I should have told them
Women with birds
I snapped this photo while they weren´t looking so they got no money from me! each time to cram their pan pipes up their arse and leave me in peace but I´m too English so I payed them. The one sanctuary from this madness was a fantastic restaurant called ´Zingaros´ so if anyone reading this is coming to Arequipa I would highly recommend it as the chicken is ace!
One of the local attractions is the massive Colca canyon touted as being the deepest canyon in the world. It is home to a number of majestic Condors so we thought we´d take a look. There are a couple of options for viewing the canyon, namely a hike to the bottom of it and then back to the top over a number of days or a bus trip to the main tourist spots including an overnight stop in a town with hot springs. It wasn´t a hard decision that one.
predictably the bus did stop at numerous craft stalls and villages with poor children made to dress up and dance for the purposes of photos. It was in one of these villages where we saw picture taking opportunities taken to a whole new level with women in traditional dress brandishing massive birds of prey! Just
Vicunia
This is a wild Llama like critter. staggering but sure enough people queud to pay for that shot. The hot springs in Chivay were lovely and relaxing with a guy even bringing beer to bathing punters, brilliant.
To catch a glimpse of the elusive Condors we rose early and made for the aptly named Condor Cross at one of the best vantage points in for the whole of Colca canyon. It is a beautiful place with spectacular views and we didn´t have to wait long for the Condors either. Now I wasn´t too bothered about seeing birds but I was truly impressed by these huge Condors effortlessly sailing by. We would have seen a sight more had it not been for the hordes of school children screaming at full volume every time one came close. Suffice to say my photos of the Condors are rubbish, looking like black specks in the distance. I really enjoyed seeing one of the little schoolkid buggers throwing a chocolate wrapper onto the floor only to have an enraged Emma pick it up, march up to him and thrust it back into his hand. His expression was priceless.
All in all a successful jaunt marred only by the restautant we were forced
to eat in putting on a folk night. This consisted of a band of hateful Andean musicians with dancers ,who just would not stop- for hours. Just as they seemed like winding up, people would clap enthusiastically out of shear relief which was misinterpreted as enjoyment and so on they went. Just painful.
We left Arequipa and Peru for Chile. Interesting bus trip that one with games of Bingo and, bemusingly, Karaoke. I later figured out that if you got up to sing you could knock 4 numbers off your gamecard. I just assumed these people had no shame.
Arrive in Arica and are immediately underwhelmed. Not much to see there so we stayed one night and left for Iquiqe which is being developed into Chiles premier beach resort. Naturally hopes were very high for this place but once more these hopes were dashed as we caught our first glimpse of the place- a sprawling city fringed with a grubby looking beach. Moods weren´t improved when we got dumped in the middle of town opposite a fish market without a taxi to be had. The icing on the cake was the spectacularly rude lady in our hostel of choice.
Undeterred we wandered about and after an hours searching found salvation in the form alovely beach bar overlooking a pretty good beach. After a jug or three of beer things were looking up and the setting sun put us in much better spirits.
The beach has proved to be quite lovely and relaxing and the beach bar definitely helps. trouble is we´re now bored and with Christmas looming we have to find a lively place full of Gringos to celebrate with, so onwards....
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sarah and reiss
non-member comment
sounds like you won't be getting one of those "best of the Andes" CDs for xmas from Em then? sure you don't have a secret pan pipe recording of some Beatles fave downloaded on your ipod Steve? merry xmas!