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Published: July 13th 2006
View from the summit of El Misti
The view that made the climb worthwhile, looking over to the crater of El Misti with another volcano smoking in the background.The colonial city of Arequipa stands in pleasant valley about 1,000 km south-east of Lima. It is undisputedly the commercial centre of southern Peru, and its people are known to have a general resentment towards the capital, attempting at every opportunity to refute the belief that everything in Peru is run from Lima. Thus stories abound about how dirty, dangerous, uncultured e.t.c. the capital is, and the locals seemed delighted when I told them that I was planning only to view Lima’s bus station!!
Chris, Matt and I spent our first day exploring Arequipa, and visited the “Museo Santuarios Andinos”, home to the so-called “Juanita” or “the ice maiden”. Juanita was discovered on the top of Mount Ampato near Arequipa in 1995 by Johan Reinhard. She is believed to have been aged between 12 and 14 when she was taken to the summit of Ampato and sacrificed in a ritual designed to appease Inca Gods. This occurred about 500 years ago, and Juanita is the first frozen body from pre-Colombian times to have been found in the Andes.
Very much against the grain of most South American museums, this was incredibly well presented with a bi-lingual guide being included in
the entrance charge. The timing of our tour was perfect as well, about 40 minutes long and full of interesting information that culminated in our viewing of the ice mummy. The body was incredibly well preserved with all the features still clearly distinguishable. Combined with the informative build up to the viewing, our experience at the museum was top-notch and I’d really recommend a visit if you are planning to travel to Arequipa.
The “ain’t no valley low enough” part of my stay in Arequipa involved visiting the Colca Canyon, famed for the Andean Condors that can be viewed gliding through the canyon, as well as for apparently being one of the deepest in the world, (although no-one seems to be at all specific about the depth of the canyon - its just “one of the deepest”!!) Rather than do a trekking tour, Chris, Matt and I plumped for a two day bus-based tour that would take in the “Cruz Del Condor” viewpoint, the optimum spot for watching these birds. Chivay, the first village on the edge of the canyon, was a bumpy 4 or 5 hours drive across the Altiplano and up over the 4,825 metre Pata Pampa
Colca Canyon
Condor's battle for a prime spot on a sitting rock (right hand side of the photo). pass. Reaching it around lunchtime, we grabbed our food and accommodation before heading to the nearby “hot springs” in order to while away the afternoon. These hot springs genuinely were hot, and thus it was an absolute pleasure spending so much time in them, even if I did emerge decidedly prune-like!!
An early night followed, as the next morning would be a pre-dawn start to enable us to arrive at the Cruz Del Condor viewpoint by about 8a.m. and give ourselves the best chance of seeing the birds. The early morning drive took us along the edge of the canyon and it was, to be honest, underwhelming. We were following the canyon downstream from its head, and the parts we saw looked more akin to a pleasant valley rather than the rugged splendour of one of the world’s deepest canyons. I assume that the deepest point of the canyon is much further down stream, and so the tour companies can proudly boast to be taking you to view one of the world’s deepest canyons’s - but they just neglect to tell you that you aren’t going to be visiting it at its deepest point!!!
We arrived at the
Condors above the Canyon
2 condors take flight above the Colca Canyon Cruz Del Condor viewpoint early, but already the crowds of tourists were large. Chris, Matt and I went for a wander and I think we all felt slightly non-plussed staring at the “slightly oversized valley”. “Perhaps its because we’re used to trekking for several days to get to the highlight of a trip, and on this tour all we’ve done is sit on a bus. Feels like we’ve cheated a little!” suggested Chris. While I think Chris was definitely right and taking the “easy” bus option, rather than trekking in the canyon, may have diminished our initial levels of satisfaction, the lethargy was certainly broken in my case when we started to view the condors. Standing tall and proud at 80cm, and with a wingspan of 3.2 metres, seeing these magnificent birds gliding and soaring through the air was a fantastic experience. I think we were very lucky with the number of birds that were around that day too. Around fifteen of them were wheeling though the skies, and jostling for prime position on the most sought after landing spots.
After a couple of fascinating hours at the viewpoint watching the condors, we were back on the bus
Summit of El Misti
Exhausted I attempt (unsucessfully!!) to raise a grin for the summit photo!!! and retracing our steps to Arequipa. Overall, I think the tour involved an awful long time sitting on a bus in order to view a canyon that wasn’t all that spectacular, but I found viewing the Condors at such close quarters to be an incredible experience and definitely made the trip worthwhile.
From the “lowest” of canyons I decided to change direction completely and attempt to summit another high peak. The El Misti volcano, a perfect snow-capped cone, stands “guardian” over the city at a lofty 5,825 metres. After my successful summit of Huayana Potosi, I had hoped that this peak (250metres shorter and not requiring any ice-climbing), would prove relatively straightforward. Unfortunately I was proved wrong!!
It was another 2-day summit attempt, with me and fellow “summitee” Beverly, along with our guide and Beverly’s porter, spending day 1 climbing up from the trailhead at around 3,400 metres, to the 4,500 metre base camp. Standing at the trailhead the volcano’s summit looked an awfully long way away, but not all that daunting. Then it began to dawn that every inch of the distance would be covered on foot and suddenly it didn’t seem like such a walk in
Post-summit looking back.
Just a few short hours later I was looking much happier, (and much less Cartmanesque!!), basking in the sunshine back at the trailhead. the park!!! However, base camp was made with no problems and after some hot noodles for dinner it was an early bedtime as we would be trekking up to the summit through the night.
The trekking proved no problem for me, just relentlessly up and up following an old lava flow straight up one of the volcano’s flanks. After all the walking I’ve done in South America it didn’t prove too difficult, but Beverly began to be affected badly by the altitude and definitely made the correct decision to turn back. This left me and the guide Orlando to stomp onto the summit together.
After making great time up the early part of the mountain, the altitude suddenly kicked in and things went from incredibly easy to incredibly hard, incredibly quickly!! After having merrily yomped up the early stages of the route not even getting out of breath, I was suddenly having to stop every few minutes, hunched over and gasping for breath desperately trying to force air into my lungs. Progress became slower and slower, and Orlando’s time estimations had to be adjusted accordingly. At one point it was half an hour to the crater then another
El Misti
Another post summit shot, this time if you look closely you can see the black streak, (centre of the volcano), which marks the path we took on our scree run. twenty minutes to the summit. 45 minutes later it was still 15 minutes to the crater and now 40 minutes more to the summit from there!!! The final stages of the climb were incredibly tough work, but I made it to the summit where I promptly collapsed, gasping for air, and allowed the warming rays of the early morning Sun to help restore me to some sort of normality!!
I attempted to muster a smile for the obligatory summit snaps, and enjoyed the fantastic views of the crater, as well as the gorge scarred surrounding landscape and a distant smoking volcano. Usually these moments of bliss in between a tough ascent and a brutal descent are what makes the trek to a high viewpoint so worthwhile. But the summit of El Misti was slightly different in that the descent (usually a knee jarring grind that I don’t really enjoy), was going to be one of the highlights as our route back to base camp was simply going to be a scree run straight down the volcano’s side.
The scree run was an absolute blast. The scree was very fine, and there were very few large stones or rocks
Looking down from El Misti
The canyon scarred landscape that surrounded the volcano. to upset your rhythm, and so I found myself able to leggit down the volcano at a great pace without ever worrying about falling or hurting an ankle. We lost over a vertical kilometre down to base camp in about 15 minutes It was brilliant fun and just what I was hoping for to round off a tough, but incredibly exhilarating day.
After a well-earned rest, the descent from base camp continued at a good pace. When we reached the trailhead, and I looked back at El Misti, it was amazing to think that literally an hour or two before I had been shivering at the summit, and now, such was the speed of our descent, I was basking in the Sun some two and a half kilometres lower!!
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