Advertisement
Published: January 13th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Arequipa, Peru´s second largest city, has been rocked by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes nearly every century since the Spanish invasion arrived in 1540. Locals sometimes say ´When the moon separated from the earth, it forgot to take Arequipa´, waxing lyrical about the city’s grand colonial buildings, built from an off white volcanic rock called sillar, that dazzles in the sun. As a result, Arequipa has been baptised the White City.
Apart from being known as the White City, Arequipa is also famous for having the second deepest Canyon in the World - Canon del Colca - and this is the reason for my stop over. The Canon Del Colca is 100km long and is set among high volcanoes and ranges from 1000m to more than 3000m in depth. For many years there was a lot of controversy over weather or not this was actually the deepest canyon in the world, at 3191m. It turns out that it is actually the second deepest and first place honours goes to it neighbour, the Canon del Cothahuasi, which is just over 150m deeper. Amazingly, the Grand Canyon in America doesn’t come close to either of these Canyons, as both of the Peruvian ones
are twice as deep.
I got to Arequipa late and booked myself on a three day hiking tour of the Canyon the net day. It was an early start (5am) for the extremely bumpy 6 hour bus ride to Cabanaconde. Once we got there, we had time for a quick lunch and then we were off hiking. Day one was pretty much all down hill, which wasn’t the best for the knees. The scenery was absolutely spectacular. I had always imagined the Colca Canyon to have steep sides, much like that of the Grand Canyon, but it didn’t. It was a bit disappointing, as you didn’t really get the feel that you were in a Canyon. It just seemed like really big, steep mountains leading down to a river. The guide informed us that the Canyon was really steep further down, and because of this you couldn’t really access it, hence why the tourism was concentrated around the Cabanaconde area. After about five hours of hiking (four down hill and a very painful one back up the other side) we reached a little community in which we would spend the night. It was very basic accommodation, sleeping in a
mud brink house, but we did manage to have a hot shower and there was plenty of yummy food.
The next day we were up early for another couple of hours hiking to reach our lunch time destination of Sangalle, a lovely Oasis at the bottom of the Canyon. This little Oasis is pretty cool. There are a few different crystal clear pools that you can swim in, and after a hot morning of hiking, it was certainly worth while. The only problem with the oasis was the mozzies - and they loved me (as usual). It spoilt my time there, and I couldn’t really wait to leave. After lunch it was time to head back up the canyon to Cabanaconde. It took us about three and a half hours to get up the hill, and it was a really tough climb. It was just up, up, up the whole way. We were lucky enough to see a couple of Condors on the way up, but they were way off in the distance. We wearily arrived back at Cabanaconde around 6pm, where we checked into our hostel, had a nice hot shower and dinner, and then crashed out for
the night.
The next morning we headed to Cruz del Condor to view the magnificent Condors, and to many in our group, this was to be the highlight of our trip. A large family of Andean condors nest by the rocky outcrop and can often be seen gliding effortlessly on the thermal air currents rising from the canyon and the cheeky things often swoop down over people heads. Unfortunately we were disappointed this time around, as we didn’t see any condors. The guide told us that it was mating season so that is why they weren’t coming out. I guess it’s just luck of the draw to see any during this season. We caught a local bus about an hour later and headed to Chivay (about 2 hours away) for lunch and a soak in the hot springs. Ah, what bliss on the tired legs. After an hour or so of soaking in the hot springs it was back on the bus and off to Arequipa.
I had met three really lovely Dutch girls on my hike, and luckily they were staying at the same hostel. We decided to tour around Arequipa the next day and spend New Years together.
The day of New Years Eve started off at a relaxing pace with breakfast taken looking over the beautiful Plaza de Armas. After we had been feed and watered our first stop for the day was the magnificent Monasterio de Santa Catalina. The monastery is huge and it takes up a whole city block and is surrounded by imposing high walls. It is almost like a city with a city. A wealthy widow that chose her nuns from the richest Spanish families founded it in 1580. At that time, this monastery was not like we would imagine them, as the widow let her new nuns live it up in the style that they had always been accustomed to. Apparently they had quite a few wild parties!! After about three centuries of these crazy goings-on, a strict Dominican nun arrived to straighten things out. She decreed that the nuns could only have one slave (or servant) and from this point the vast majority of the 450 nuns who lived there never ventured outside again. The monastery became something of a mystery as the nuns never come out and no one was allowed behind the imposingly high walls. It was only in 1970 that the monastery was opened to the public.
We wandered around Monasterio de Santa Catalina for a couple of hours. You really could get lost here. The architecture is beautiful and the colours of the walls were absolutely stunning - bright blues, reds, greens and yellows. The wealthy nun’s quarters were surprisingly big. Each had a couple of rooms (sitting, bedroom, dinning), which were immaculately furnished and each had their own kitchen. I don’t think I have ever seen that many kitchens before - it was quite incredible. After an hour or so wandering around it was time to check out ‘Juanita - the Ice Princess’.
Juanita, the frozen Inca maiden, was sacrificed on the summit of Mt Ampato (near Arequipa) over 500 years ago. For the Incas, mountains were gods who could kill by volcanic eruption, avalanche or climatic catastrophes. These violent deities could only be appeased by sacrifices, and over 20 similar child sacrifices have now been discovered atop various Andean mountains since 1954.
The tour we had consisted of a 20 min movie about the discovery of Juanita and the history of Inca sacrifice and then our guide showed us around the small museum which houses relics from the various sacrifice sites. Then we finally got to see Juanita. Wow - she takes your breath away. She is so small, and is perfectly frozen in time. It is just amazing. She is so well preserved that she still has her skin, all her hair, her fingernails and is still dressed in the clothes that she was sacrificed in. We were very luckily to see her, as we visited on her very last day in the museum before she got put back in the freezer (away from the light to better preserve her).
That night was obviously New Years, so me and the Dutch girls went out partying with some other guys we met on the hike. We had a great time, and I finally made a New Years (after the last 2 uneventful years). Of course I had way to much to drink, and when I caught the bus to Lake Titicaca the next morning at 7am, I was feeling a little worse for wear.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.13s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 43; dbt: 0.1055s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb