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Published: September 24th 2008
AREQUIPA
This town was a nice change from the dunes of Huacachina. Arequipa is nestled in a valley beneath two sleeping, snow-capped volcanoes. In contrast to the sooty buildings of Lima, white volcanic rock was used for the colonial buildings and monasteries. Everything about this city seemed picturesque, and felt European, and we knew we liked it from the start.
As our taxi driver neared our hostel he realized he'd have to go the wrong way down a one way street, so he turned the car around and drove backwards down the street until he reached our hostel. Made perfect sense to me.
Arequipa didn't have a lot to do besides seeing museums which house dead children that were sacrificed to the volcanoes or to see the myriad of monasteries around the city. One monastery takes up a whole block with tall imposing walls designed to keep people out, or in, I'm not really sure. We could have taken a tour but it was expensive, so we decided to see the less expensive Casa de Moral which had a 200 year old mulberry bush in the courtyard.
September 15th rolled around, and while we were hoping to
be scaling the tops on Macchu Pichu on my birthday it didn't quite work out. We're having fun taking it at our pace and wherever we were was fine with me. We ended up walking up to a look out point where we could see the entire valley and then splashing out on a nice meal and having about 3 pisco sours each.
The main attraction of Arequipa is that it's a jumping off point of Colca Canyon, which is the 2nd deepest canyon in the world, and twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. A number of extremely expensive tour operators take tourists to see the sights over a 2-3 day period and bring them back again. We didn't know how yet, but we were determined to do it ourselves and save some dough.
CABANOCONDE
It was a 6 hour bus ride to our first stop in the canyon. No big deal right? Wrong! The road was bumpier than a 16 year old boy's face right before prom. Not to mention the ear splitting changes in altitude. Sure the towns in the canyon were a MERE 12,000 ft but the road at some point soared to
Ammi´s 30 cent Cake
She did a little cake dance that was cute15,000ft! But the scenery was spectacular. Inside the bus as well as outside of it. The women of this region wear incredibly colorful clothing and carry their children on their backs wrapped in beautiful blankets. Our Canyon de Colca experience began in the sleepy town of Cabanaconde. We weren't really sure what to expect other than it was close to some major hikes into the canyon. The bus dropped us on the side of a dusty road in what appeared to be the exact middle of nowhere. As we entered the town we realized that there were no paved roads and the animal to car ratio was surprisingly high. In fact, I think there were more animals than people. As we carried our heavy backpacks to our hostel we almost got run over by a group of bulls. It probably didn't help that Ammi was wearing a red backpack. “No toro! No olay!” A women was herding a group of sheep. I felt like we entered the village of Santa Poco from The Three Amigos. What have we gotten ourselves into! Maybe we should have forked over the cash to the tour people. On the bright side, it was nice
for once not to have to try to fall asleep to a chorus of car horns. Every city so far had more beeps than a Jerry Springer episode.
We had the opportunity to hike down to the bottom of the canyon and should have but did we mention that we were at 12,000 ft and this canyon made the Grand Canyon look like a bath tub? Yeah...pass. Besides there apparently isn't much at the bottom except a swimming pool which really didn't justify the wear and tear on our knees. (Insert dirty joke here) What we do regret is not following a time honored tradition of the Henning clan by pitching a pair of impractical footwear into the abyss. If you know the story it's funny really. Get Ammi drunk some night and she'll tell you all about it. We did however walk to a great viewpoint where we saw the elusive Andean Condor.
As we walked around town that night we looked up to the sky and gasped. It was the first time that I had been somewhere so remote, with so little light pollution, that we could actually see the white cloudy band of stars that
made up the Milky Way Galaxy. It was truly breathtaking and didn't in anyway resemble the candy bar.
It turned out the our time in Cabanaconde was not as daunting as it began. We were able to procure all the necessities to sustain life and despite our fears the the contrary we were unmolested by the local livestock. Quite the opposite, Ammi throughly enjoyed taking pictures of everything with hooves from every possible angle. Take that fancy tour selling guy!
CHIVAY
Chivay is another small hub with slightly more cars and slightly fewer animals. We were both secretly glad that this town had more tourists, because we knew we could get recognizable food (it's not always fun to eat something that's staring back at you). We knew some kind of festival was about to happen, because the church was decorated with colored luminaries and the marching band was warming up. Like most of the festivals we have seen so far in Peru this one was heralded with intermittent bursts of explosive. Unlike at home loud banging sounds don't mean hit the deck or call the police, here that heart attack-inducing sound means, “It time to party!” As
much as we wanted to join in the fest ivies, we were tired from another bone-jarring bus ride so we had a couple of candy apples and called it a night. Weird thing about being at that altitude is it's hot in the day and freezing at night.
Good morning this is your 5:30 am cannon fire wake up call. Will you be needing anything? Dry sheets perhaps? Sure it is quirky little things like pre-dawn explosions that enrich your travel experience, sadly they also make your bed a little wetter as well. Apparently the festival we passed on the night before was still going on when we woke up so we dressed and decided to rejoin the fray. By the time we got out there though the only thing thing left was the compulsory police parade so we decided to search out the local hot springs. Unfortunately our first attempt was thwarted by the fact that we had no idea how far 3 km is and decided to turn back before we found them. We went back to town to regroup and figured we would find the hot springs in a nearby town a short taxi ride away.
Mirador de Yaunahuana
El Misti volcano is in the background The town of Yanque was small and dusty not to mention empty. Yanque looked like Tombstone, AZ after the O.K. Corral. We came upon Estadio de la ciudad de Yanque. “Look,” Ammi said. “It's Yanque Stadium! Get it? I wonder if the Dodgers are playing?”
“That's great, honey.” We walked toward the river and came upon this amazing hotel in the middle of nowhere like a Twilight Zone episode.
That is went it happened.
Out of nowhere and completely unprovoked a llama came running full speed straight for us—her beady little eyes full of fury. Thanks to Kevin's quick thinking he put his backpack between the llama and us and did his best to fend her off. The strangeness of the situation hit us. We were in a deadly stand-off with a creature commonly found in a petting zoo. Kevin started making his way toward the exit, and Ammi just sat there. “Stay behind me.”
“I'm trying to, but you keep moving.”
“We're not going to stay here! Hurry! I think I've seen this on the Discovery Channel. This is when they spit their toxic venom!” Thankfully before anything more happened a hotel employee came
to our rescue. She explained that the llama was pregnant and was acting a little crazy. Maybe she just thought we had the pickles and ice cream she had been craving hidden in our backpack. So though we were nearly attacked by livestock we escaped unharmed. It was a good thing too, because I'd have trouble in the gym locker room bragging to the guys about how I got a scar from a soft, furry animal.
Finally we found a long dusty road that looked promising. We decided to follow it and 'walk until our day became interesting', as a famous travel writer said. After a half hour of choking dust we found our destination: the natural hot springs, but on the other side of the river. In order to cross we'd have to brave a rickety wooden rope bridge. We put one foot on and heard the creaks and groans. In my mind's eye I could perfectly see Indiana Jones holding his sword surrounded by twenty angry Thugees (sorry, I watched too much TV as a kid). Luckily this bridge had strong cables ensuring our safety, but our heart rate still soured as it moved in the wind.
What´s inside this mysterious object?
A portal to another demension? A frightened bunny? Michael Jackson´s hiding place? Only Ammi knows. The hot springs were obviously heated by some underground magma chamber. As we entered the water felt about 80 degrees, but if we got too close to the hot water's source it became boiling. We just soaked, watching the river a few feet in front of us, watching the birds fly overhead, and listening to the sound of the wind through the trees. It was worth the all day trouble of finding this place.
After our long hike out of the canyon, we had a three course dinner for $8 and went looking to get our drink on. We found a place that advertised as a Peña, a bar showing a local dance show, but it blocked with tour buses and packed with long tables of doe-eyed tourists. Now we had gone to great lengths to avoid the tourist scene so we got out of there as fast as possible. Instead the entire city seemed to be partying in the town hall so we headed that way. For a minute we stood in the doorway wondering if we were party crashers but then a man walked up and in a cheerful voice said, “Adelante!” Rough translation, “Come on
in y'all!” There was incredible music and dancing. It was the best party ever!
Thanks for reading everyone. Next stop Puno and the islands of Lake Titicaca.
Chao!
***TRAVELERS' TIPS***
-Cheapest hostels are around the Plaza de Armas. Around 30 Soles a night for a double private.
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Sydney
non-member comment
Henning Family Traditions
Not funny, I miss those Jellies. They were the best shoes ever! The story is pretty funny. I've told it to some of my friends here and all the guys agree that dad is their hero.