Surprise package

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With the Inca Trail done and dusted, I was focused on hiking-type challenges and I had heard a lot about Arequipa´s Colca Canyon trek. This is a three day jobbie with two of those days comprising a very steep descent and ascent of the canyon walls. It was a gamble to travel there as this strenuous activity was the only thing calling me and my knee was giving me a hard time, even on small staircases. With a shrug and a touch of my lucky charm I jumped on an overnight bus from Cusco.

After a freezing night on the road, we rolled into Peru´s Second City and I checked into a hotel recommended over beers in Cusco. It was a bit dark and dingy there and they were all set to fumigate, asking me to be ready to get out and about for the day… not what I wanted at that point. So I trudged around the town in the very, very early morning - a great way to see a different side of things - and woke up a few hostel operators. Within a few hours I had moved to a beautiful sunny hostel with rooftop terrace views over the city to the El Misti volcano.

With that sorted it was down to the business of researching the canyon trek. By the time I arrived at the operator that I had been recommended, he had already been visited by two couples who had gone there after chatting to me on the bus, he knew me by name and greeted me like a long lost son. Weird.
After the windfall that I had delivered him in a quiet market he was only too happy to chat about the trek and how it related to my injury. He ended up being quite upfront and discouraging me from doing it, seeing himself out of some money in the process. Either he was a nice guy or I had already made him enough US dollars for one day.

I came close to booking a motorbike tour but, after thinking about the first eight-hour stretch and considering Peruvian driving… I decided against that too. A little despondent, I headed out around town to try, again, to find a place that could backup my hundreds of photos onto DVD (as opposed to CD). It was this that introduced me to a cool little bunch of Arequipeñas operating one of a mass of little photo stores in the centre. It was a mother-and-two-daughters operation and after a lengthy interrogation and a lot of joke-flirting from the mother, they enthusiastically embarked on a project to help me. Again, the magic iPod worked here as they were fascinated about how I could have used it to (sortof) learn Spanish.
Through many phone calls and expeditions to other shops, we found that it was virtually unheard of to have a DVD burner in Arequipa. That being said, after two days - they tracked one down for me and organised for the owner to set it up in the back of his office and let me use it for as long as I needed, for free. Considering that you pay for every second of internet time here, they had obviously pulled a lot of strings for me. After a long time in their company I felt a lot of affection and more than a little indebted to them.

So, the mother got her wish - previously a joke - and I took them all out to dinner at a local restaurant. The group of us sat there having a severely stilted and amusing conversation in Spanish after which I was bundled off to a pharmacy owned by a family friend to get his opinion and (free) medication for my knee inflammation. They even walked with me back to my hostel as if buying time to think of other gifts that they could lavish upon me. Cool people.

With Colca out of the picture, I set off to find other attractions in The White City and was not disappointed. The Santa Catalina monastery was an incredible afternoon of quiet spaces and rich colours. Construction of the little “city within a city” began way back in 1579 and it once housed 450 nuns. Every time I rounded a corner, I saw another amazing photo opportunity and my camera spent almost the whole time pointed at something. It was a true visual treat.

Feeling happier in the knowledge that there was something here other than the Canyon Trek, I limped off to the Santury Museum to see Juanita, the Ampato Maiden.
This exhibition was an amazing afternoon learning about this mummified Inca teenager, sacrificed to the Ampato Volcano 500 years ago. The altitude and frozen climate preserved the body and a vast amount of information about the life of her people.

This was my first museum visit in South America and I chose well. I was also very lucky (there´s that word again). The body of Juanita, inside her complex and expensive cooling chamber, had been returned to display that day, one day earlier than usual. If the annual museum schedule had been adhered to, I would have seen a similar but less scientifically important body. No one could tell me why it had happened early this year, I guess I am not supposed to find out who is looking after me…
(See Juanita here) http://www.wordtravels.com/dbpics/countries/Peru/juanita.jpg

Coming to a bit of a loose end with the elimination of the trek, I approached a young tout at a restaurant on the Plaza de Armas to see if I could snap some shots from his balcony. He enthusiastically dragged me inside to show me an extra set of staircases which took us all the way up to the actual roof of the plaza buildings. Minding the drop onto the street below and walking along the top of all of the other restaurants, I saw that his was the only place with this kind of access - I had stumbled upon the right one. After a funny chat, way up there amongst the antennas, I gave him a generous tip to pay for my cool photos and he took me on a tour of the restaurant. He explained that this was one of the only remaining traditional-cooking establishments and they baked all of their meat using volcanic rocks (in a converted Castrol Oil barrel BBQ!!). I was then introduced to all of the chefs and invited back for dinner that night.

As it turned out, I had agreed to go out in search of Guinea Pig (Cuy) with a funny Swedish telescope engineer from the hostel and we were back there a few hours later. My long-postponed date with the rodent.

This cooking process seemed to require many hours so we had plenty of time to chat about astral telescope physics over semi-popped corn kernels and earthen mugs of Arequipeña beer. At one point, the enormous father/chef/owner came out to chat to us about the preparation of the llama and cuy meat and we agreed to let him make all the decisions about the preparation. This guy was like a 3D version of Bluto, the bad guy from Popeye, right down to the lean-back laugh. I was fascinated, he was warm and gentle but almost shattered my hand when he shook it.

He was full of fascinating information about the history of the area and almost certainly full of 100 proof alcohol. It was like talking to a twitchy silverback gorilla, he was smiling but I couldn´t stop my visions of him picking me up over his head and smashing me through a table.

When he went away to flay the pig, a couple of very young brothers came in to the restaurant in a now-familiar process of captive-busking. However, this was to prove very different from all of the other pan-pipe folk-music shows I have suffered through so far. Firstly, they asked each table meekly if they would like a show and were on the way out, dejected, when they reached us. Secondly… ohmygodtheyweretalented.

We had taken pity on them as they were headed for the door, without having played a note. As they got set up I took a moment to size them up. The older brother was about twelve, he carefully balanced a tiny guitar and pan pipes while the younger boy, about seven, had a wooden flute. We were the only diners inside the high-vaulted room, having fled the cold of the tourist balcony and the resulting acoustics were incredible. It was obvious from the first note that they were brilliant and I was totally taken aback, having been less than impressed throughout Bolivia and Peru.

They played their awesome little set and an encore, weaving harmonised singing with instrumentals and we had a previously-disinterested group from the balcony leaning through the windows to watch. After our contributions, they were whisked back out to the balcony to play for the rest of the tables.

With the mood lifted a notch and some cool music floating in from outside, Bluto was back with a MASSIVE bowl of meat laid out across black stones. He did the honours tearing the guinea pig up the middle and we jumped in hungrily. Nice, tender - a pleasant surprise.

At the end of the meal he returned to explain that the consistency of the meat was due to their unique cooking process and he then broke out the alcohol for some complimentary shots of something evil-looking. Over a few of these he gushed about his passion for language and illustrated, with some amazing examples, the way in which he believed that all languages still pointed back to one. The language of his people. As he sat there, squeezed next to me on the bench (picture a see-saw) we were spellbound by his enthusiasm and the night grew late around his stories.

Eventually we made our excuses and slipped drunkenly away, but not before he gave us his eMail address, in case we wanted to know more. I can still see him squeezed into the space at the top of his narrow staircase like the drunkest member of the party who refuses to accept that everyone is leaving.


Awaking fuzzy-headed, I intended to do some eMailing and head out for Lima but I had an eMail waiting from Ed, a particularly persuasive friend from La Paz. In this particular message I was urged to “pull my finger out” and get out to the canyon to see the Giant Condors.

With that kick in the butt and an offer of a two day group-tour rather than a trek… I was turned around and off on a bumpy road to the Colca Canyon.

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Photos

Settling in for the night
My mate de cocoa and a snack

El Misti
View from the high-chair on the hostel rooftop

"Mmm...Mmmm...
...I like what you´ve done heeeere..."

Santa Catalina
"God is watching us..." an ancient stone kitchen.

I´m on the roof!
I was standing on the equivalent of the top of the other side, beyond the palm trees.

Our chef
Proceed with caution

The kitchen
I had to get a photo of that Castrol branding.

Comments

[anonymous]

Brilliant
Mate, Sounds like your having an awesome time, been following your adventure and am so jeolous.....your blogs are so well written and made me feel a little part of the beauty of Machu Pichu....inspiration for me to go and see it myself!!! - Liz's Brother