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Published: November 29th 2007
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On friday morning we arrived to Arequipa, Peru's second biggest city (more than a million inhabitants), and a very nice one too. The inhabitants are very proud of their city, and wish to compete with Lima's importance. You can see that for example in the beer types - all around Peru you can buy Cusqueña beer (beer from cusco), but in Arequipa and the surroundings - only Arequipeña.
We stayed in a very nice hostel at the edge of the city center, that was recommended to us by the owner of the hostel we stayed in when we were in Lima. In fact she gave us a list of recommended hostels for every city we were planning to visit in Peru, some of them were indeed good and some much less.
The center of the city with the main plaza, cathedral etc. is very beautiful. The plaza is surrounded by buildings with restaurants on the second floor terrace, and you can enjoy a great meal there while watching the fountain in the plaza. So this is what we did for the first two days in Arequipa - sleeping late and eating on the terrace. They had very good avocado,
and also papaya and strawberry juices.
On the third day we took a four days tour to the area of the Colca Canyon which is one of the deepest canyons in the world, only 5 hours away from Arequipa. The less deep part is called the colca valley, and on the edge between the valley and the canyon there is a point in which you can see condors flying quite close to you almost every morning. Most tours are either two days to the colca valley to visit some villages and see the condors, or a three days trek in the colca canyon. We took a combination of the two - 1+ days of the two days tour, and then we continued straight to the three days trek. We probably paid for this more than any other tourist in the history of Arequipa, but it was worth it because we really enjoyed it.
On the first day we were picked from the hostel by the tour van, and with it we drove (with some stops for pictures) all the way to the main village in the colca valley, called Chivay. The participants of the tour except for us
were an australian couple, a dutch couple and one french guy, all of them the age of our parents and up. They all had three things in common - rugby, dislike of other tourists and touristic places, and being always on time. We, of course, were always late.
It started when they came to pick us up, but it actually wasn't our fault - the agency told us they will pick us at 8:30, so when they came at 8:15 we weren't ready. Later it turned out that the picking time they supposedly told us was between 8:00 and 8:30. From that moment on, whenever the guide said we should be somewhere at a certain time we were always a few minutes late, and they were always right on time. We tried to make a special effort and avoid the constant FADIHOT, but it was impossible - when we finally made it on time, they all came earlier... Anyway, except for that they were all very nice people, with a lot of travelling experience. Between the five of them they probably covered the entire globe.
We arrived to Chivay at noon, had lunch and some rest time, and
then went to bath in some nice hot springs. Later on we had dinner in a touristic restaurant in the village that included some folk music and dancing (there were two dancers that invited people from the audience from time to time). This part of the tour was really good - the guide was excellent, always taking care of everything, and the hostel was also very good with an amazing bathroom (and views).
On the second day we gathered very early and after breakfast left toward the condor view point called "Cruz del Condor" (again with some picture stops on the way). At the Cruz del Condor we waited with many other tourists for about an hour, and eventually they came - we saw condors! Unfortunately they flew close but quite fast, so the pictures didn't come out so good. At that point we were supposed to leave our nice group and join another guide for the colca canyon trek. It took our guide some time to find the trek guide and for a while we thought we'll have to go back with the group, but eventually he was found. With him we took a bus to a village
A lost vicuña on the way to Chivay
Vicuñas are animals from the llama and alpaca family, only they are not domesticated. on the edge of the canyon called Cabanaconde, and started the trek. On that day we just went down from the village into the canyon, and slept in a basic hostel in a village inside the canyon called Tapay. The place was actually not as basic as we expected, except electricity it had everything, even toilet inside the room. On that evening I encounetered the only accident of the trek - I was pouring hot water for tea into a cup, but unfortunately it was dark and I didn't see when the water filled the cup, and so I poured the water on my hand. Never mind, I didn't feel it at all the next morning.
The next day we walked for a few hours inside the canyon and by noon we reached the hostel where we spent that night, called Oasis. The walk started with climbing a few hundred meters on the side of the canyon, some horizontal walk through some villages, and then going down again until the river and the hostel at the bottom. The villages we walked through were very very simple - for example, they don't have a vehicle road leading there. The only
In the tourists market on the way to Chivay
This is what the indigenous women look like way to get there is by foot or horse from Cabanaconde. They have one infirmary for the whole canyon but without a doctor - the doctor has to come from Arequipa. Instead each village has a Shaman, a traditional mistycal healer. We saw a school in one of the villages and the guide said that this school is only primary school, with 11 children in all ages and one teacher. When they finish this school, the children either stop studying, or they're sent to live with relatives in neighbouring villages and cities and study there. The houses are built of mud bricks and wood (we saw them building one), and only some of the villages have electricity. In one of the villages we visited a small museum in which we saw some traditional tools and clothes, and we could also dress up in these clothes and take a picture.
Oasis, where we slept that night, was a VERY basic hostel. It didn't have electricity, and in fact it hardly had walls - the people sleep inside bungalows made of canes with wide gaps between them, so you only get an illusion of privacy. It is situated next to a
very beautiful waterfall, and there is a pool in he center of the place (which we didn't try because it was a bit cold).
On the fourth and last day (third day of the trek) we woke up very early and started walking an hour or two before the sunrise. This is because the mission for the day was to climb all the way from the bottom of the canyon back to Cabanaconde, an ascent of around 1000m. At the beginning it was quite difficult, but as we got higher and closer to the village the moral went higher and the climb became easier, and eventually we reached the top, very early in the morning. We got back to Cabanaconde where we started the trek, and from there we took a bus back to Arequipa.
The next day was our last day in Arequipa, and we went to visit some places of interest in the city - the Santa Catalina monastery, which is sort of a small city inside the city (it's huge and the nuns' houses are arranged in streets), the main cathedral, and a museum in which you can see Juanita, a frozen mummy of a
girl that was sacrified to the gods by the inca on one of the mountains close to Arequipa. The mummy itself is held in a glass freezer and it's hard to see much of her, but before that you watch a movie about her discovery, with the funny name "ice maiden 2".
After a very nice week in the area of Arequipa, we took again a Cruz del Sur night bus to Cuzco, once the capital of the Inca empire and today Peru's capital of tourism.
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