Cold Beer and Colca Canyon

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We left Puno on a six hour bus to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru. Once again the bus was hot, the roads were windy and I was feeling sick. I slept on Jeff’s lap almost the entire bus ride to avoid puking on a local woman in front of me. I don’t know what it is, but I am getting more bus sick lately than I have the entire trip. The fresh air when we arrived in Arequipa immediately made me feel better so we were back in business.

We took a cab to Bothy hostel and checked in. We were excited to be in Arequipa. The city is surrounded by amazing mountains and volcanoes and the altitude was lower (7,800 feet) than some of our previous cities, which meant it was warmer! About time! Arequipa lies in the Andes mountains the snow-capped volcano El Misti overlooks the city. We were pretty tired from our all day journey, so we decided to find the movie theater and see a movie. We had been excited about Angels and Demons coming out because all of us had read the book. Of course, we were disappointed in the movie because they changed some major things and books are always better. We met a 60 year old American couple at the hostel who were traveling through Peru for one month. It was nice to meet older Americans who were traveling for longer than two weeks. I guess it gave me hope for the future, especially since as our travel time comes to and end we have been thinking about this a lot more lately.

Ok, back to Arequipa... The city has many colonial-era Spanish buildings built of sillar, a pearly white volcanic rock, from which it gets the nickname La Ciudad Blanca ("The White City"). The historic center of Arequipa was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 2000, in recognition of its architecture and historic integrity. It really was a gorgeous city. The white buildings were amazing and the main plaza had a giant church. I mean GIANT! Arequipa is Peru's largest producer of milk- a random fact! We spent our first two days in Arequipa seeing the sights of the city and walking around. Our first stop was to see ¨Juanita: The Ice Princess.¨ Juanita is an Inca mummy of a girl, or more precisely, a frozen body, between 12-14 years old, who died sometime between 1440 and 1450. She was discovered in southern Peru in 1995 by anthropologist Johan Reinhard and his Peruvian climbing partner Miguel Zarate. The mummy was is so well preserved after 500 years, making her one of the most important mummy discoveries. She is similar to the other mummy girl we saw in Salta, Argentina. This discovery was chosen by Time magazine as one of the world's top ten discoveries.

Juanita was kept in this freezer compartment and was not lit very well, making her really hard to see. What you could see was pretty freaky. Her hands and nails and skin were perfect. It looked like she was found yesterday. Our guide said she was a sacrifice for the Incas to the mountain gods. She was found with many pots and things buried with her. She was killed by a strong blow to the head and then buried. She was probably almost dead after hiking for many days up the mountain and drinking the local beer they gave her. Not only was Juanita discovered, but many other mummies have been discovered on the mountains around the area as well. Apparently the Incas really enjoyed sacrificing children. Only the smartest and most beautiful children were chosen to appease the Gods. The volcanoes were quiet while we were here, so hopefully the sacrifices worked!

The next major attraction in the city is the Santa Catalina Monastery. It was founded on the October 2, 1580. It is a convent, where there are still nuns living in cloisters, and is famous as small walled city with narrow streets, passages, staircases, and small squares. The nuns who used to live there were from wealthy families and therefore the convent is quite amazing. The rooms are huge and each nun had their own kitchen. Seriously, these rooms were bigger than my room at my last apartment. The Convent remained closed to the public until 1970. Inside there are many beautiful flowers and colors. The whole complex is huge and it really is a city inside a city.

We met five Irish guys at our hostel who are traveling for a year. They are doing pretty much our trip, but in reverse and are only two weeks in. I remember those days! We immediately hit it off with them and made friends. Our hostel had this giant Jenga drinking game and Raul, one of the guys who worked at the hostel, offered to play with us and then take us out to some bars in the city. Needless to say, drinking with Irish guys is never a good thing, but I kept my cool. We ended up at some local bars in the city and had a great night. We even ended up finding a bar that had a Beatles cover band, with a big Peruvian girl in a skirt that was too short singing the classics! You don’t get much better than that. Arequipa was a pretty fun town.

A few days later we said goodbye to Chris. He decided to head to Nazca to see the Nazca lines and Jeff and I are planning on doing that after our Inca trail, so we decided to hike Colca Canyon. All of the five Irish guys were coming on the trek as well. So Jeff and I plus five Irish and one Aussie girl made a group of eight. And oh what a group it was! Our guide’s name was Carlitos and he was amazing. He was recommended to us by the older American couple in our hostel. He spoke perfect English and knew how to put up with our group! The first day we were up at 3:30am for pickup. It was an ungodly hour, but we made it. Then it was five hours till our first stop. The first stop was where condors soar gracefully on the rising thermals occurring as the air warms. We got out of the bus and immediately were greeted by about six condors flying around. I know they have a seven foot wingspan, but they just didn’t look as big as I expected. Maybe it was because they were high above us. Some did manage to drop down near us and you could then tell how huge they actually are, but it was pretty hard to catch on film! We admired the condors for about an hour before driving to our next stop, the point where we began our trek.

We had an early lunch and started off. Our first day was going to be mostly downhill into the canyon. Colca Canyon is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, however, the canyon's walls are not as vertical as those of the Grand Canyon. It is the second deepest canyon in the world. The Colca Valley full of small towns founded in Spanish Colonial times and formerly inhabited by the Collaguas and the Cabanas. The local people still maintain ancestral traditions and continue to cultivate the pre-Inca stepped terraces. We were heading into the canyon to see some of these villages. As we entered the canyon, Carlitos told us stories about the people who live in the canyon and the Inca traditions that went on here a long time ago. The people here still worship the local mountain Walka Walka and try to keep their mountain gods happy. Then... it was all down. For the rest of the day we hiked further down into the canyon until we finally reached the bottom. Looking it up it was pretty impressive to see where we had come from. We crossed a small bridge across Colca River to the opposite side of the canyon and began our ten minute hike up to the village we would spend the night in. We arrived at the cute little house of ¨Mamacha Rufina.¨ She was a cute old Peruvian lady who spoke no English. We all settled in and grabbed an Arequipena beer to celebrate our first day of hiking. Rufina is one of only two people to have a refrigerator in the canyon and we appreciated those cold beers. Tomorrow would be much harder! Carlitos made us a yummy dinner and we slept well to prepare.

The next morning Rufina invited me to try on some of her traditional Peruvian dresses. You have probably seen other photos of these dresses on my previous blogs. They are large colorful skirts, hand embroidered vest and colorful hats. The total cost of the outfit is 2,000 soles (about $700). It was quite an honor to be asked to wear the dress and I was so worried I would rip it or do something stupid like that. Everyone had a great time taking photos of me in my new outfit. The thing was heavy so I was quite happy to take it off and put my hiking clothes back on!

Our second day of hiking started off pretty easy. Mostly back down into the canyon so we could visit the Oasis. Ohhhh what an Oasis it was! It was hot in the canyon and we still had to hike up, but we spent the afternoon in the middle of the canyon hanging out at a small swimming pool. It was just what the doctor ordered. We spent the afternoon soaking up the sun and swimming in the pool. It was the calm before the storm because after lunch we had to start heading back up. Three hours of solid hiking up to top of the canyon. So we all changed back into our hiking clothes and started the torture. All eight of us, and even Carlitos, had our Ipods in and just started walking. One step at a time. It is amazing how much an Ipod helps. You forget how much you hate hiking up hill and you just go. I pushed myself pretty hard and was a sweaty mess when I finally reached the top, but I think I did pretty well. I made it up before some of the boys! It was a great test for the Inca Trail in another week. We all made it up after dark and we were exhausted, but happy to have finished. Stephen, one of the Irish guys, just collapsed on the ground when he finally made it to the top. We spent that night in Cabanaconde, one of the biggest villages in the canyon. We had a nice two star hotel that night and had a nice warm shower. We all planned to celebrate our finish in town that night, but after one beer we all hung up our hats and slept like babies!

Our final day in the canyon was spent driving to Chivay, the biggest town in the canyon, where we had some lunch and went to the hot springs. The hot springs were amazing after two full days of hiking. Jeff and I and the Irish guys were going to catch the night bus to Cusco so we could meet back up with Chris, but on our bus back to Arequipa we were informed there was a strike and our bus was not going. This happens all the time in Peru. Farmer, bus drivers, manual laborers: they all strike for better wages or something else. When they do all traffic is held up and most of the time these protests happen around Cusco. It had already happened once since we had been here so we weren’t too surprised when it happened again. This just meant we had an extra night in Arequipa and we decided we would all hang out with Carlitos! He came to the bar at the hostel and our little group of eight had a great time drinking and getting to know each other better. We all went out for some food and realized two of the guys were missing. Somehow (we found out the next day) they had convinced a taxi driver to take them to a strip club where it cost 5 soles (less than $2) to get in. They came home when the sun came up and the rest of us were well rested when we awoke the next day. We had planned to all watch the Champions League football final. I know, I know... I am officially watching football aka soccer. I actually knew the two teams playing and could actually name players on both teams. You know I have been traveling too much when I am following European soccer. Well, Jeff wanted Manchester United and Chris wanted FC Barcelona and they both have jerseys from the respective teams so we were looking forward to watching it together, but because of the strike that didn’t happen. Chris had to watch alone in Cusco while we watched with the Irish guys and the rest of our hostel. Barcelona ended up winning 2-0, but like any good Irish man, the group was quite drunk by the time we boarded our bus that night for Cusco. It was quite a scene watching five drunk Irish guys get on a bus speaking Spanish, when none of them spoke Spanish. They really were great guys though. I make them sound so.... Irish, but they were super nice and very respectful of everyone. It just made for an interesting bus ride. They all passed out pretty quickly and we were on the umpteenth overnight bus of the trip. We would finally make it to Cusco and meet up with Chris.

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Photos

Early in the am
With Colca Canyon

At our little village the first night
Brushing my teeth!

Me and Rufina
The ¨mamacha¨of the house