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Published: January 18th 2010
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Colca Canyon
Picture taken by Steve. We had another lazy day in Cusco sleeping in and eating nice food (well I wasn’t really eating as I was on a very strict diet), getting our laundry done etc…
The next day we took a flight to the second biggest city in Peru- Arequipa. We had one night in Arequipa and then the next day we took the bus to the Colca Canyon which is apparently the deepest canyon in the world.
On that first day of our tour we didn’t see of go close to the canyon, we just drove through a national reserve where we saw some vicunas and stopped at a few touristy places. Vicunas are relatives of the llama they live in the high alpine areas of the Andes between the altitudes of 4000 to 5,500 metres; they are believed to be the ancestors of the Alpacas. Vicuna fiber (wool) is considered to be the most fine and soft fiber in the world! It is very expensive as a vicuna doesn’t offer a lot of this fiber and they can only be shorn every 3 years! A jumper made of vicuna can be worth up to 1000 dollars. The Incas raised the Vicunas
for their fiber and only royalty were allowed to wear garments made out of it. They are now protected. We then had a buffet lunch before finally going to our hotel; we stayed close to the little town of Chivay. There we just spent the afternoon relaxing and playing card games. For diner the hotel had decorated the tables and prepared a nice meal for New Years. We ate then drank (well didn’t drink any alcohol because of antibiotics) before playing with some fireworks and sparklers. (Steve and I didn’t play with them we just watched drunk people being very dangerous with them!!!!)
The next day was very boring, normally we were supposed to go see the flight of the condors but it got postponed because of New Years. We didn’t do anything other than go for a very short walk, and then later that night we were taken to a restaurant in town with terrible food! To make it worse after the meal we were supposed to stay to watch some tacky “local dancing”, a group of us already angry we had been made to eat at such a bad restaurant ran away! We didn’t wait for the bus and just took a taxi back to our hotel.
The next morning we woke up at 5am to go see the flight of the condors. Unfortunately condors are very hard to see during this season because they are nesting, we got to see the canyon but no condors. We then got back onto the beloved bus and made our way back to Arequipa.
All in all the trip was a bit of a waste of time, we spent two days kind of doing nothing, we drove all the way there to see condors which are practically impossible to see in this season…hmmmm. We had one more night and a full day in Arequipa which we spent discovering some more of the city. At night it was onto a night bus heading to Nasca!
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Sam
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I Can't wait!
I can't wait till you give me my Vicuna jumper! Weeee, You really shouldn't have