Protests and Road Blocks - Arequipa to Cuzco

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Hey all,

Arequipa is a beautiful city, it is known as the"white city" as most of it's buildings are made of sillar, a pearly white volcanic material. But the thing that impressed us the most was how clean the city is. The air is fresh (at 2380m it should be!!), the streets are free of rubbish, and the traffic is silent, they even stop to let us cross the road. Had a very relaxed time in Arequipa - exploring the markets, eating well, soaking up the sunshine. We went to a turkish restaurant for dinner and I ended up trying alpaca meat - very strong and apparantly tastes like goat!

We had quite an adventure leaving Arequipa!!

We had to get up painfully early at 03:30 to leave at 4am for the Colca Canyon, which is famous for it's condors. These birds are up to 1m long and wingspan of 3m, so we were quite interested in seeing them. Unfortunately for us it is mating season and they would mostly be nesting, hence the early start to have any chance of spotting one!!

I couldn´t sleep on the bus it all, it was baltic!! We stopped after two hours at 4800m, and there was frost on the windows and -5deg outside. I was wrapped up in my sleeping bag but the only comfortable sleeping position was the ones where I ended up sliding to the floor when the truck braked. We were all a bit grumpy when we finally got to the canyon, 5hours later, and had an hour to wait to see if we could spot a condor. Needless to say none of us did!!

We emade our way to Chivay for the night, stopping along the way to admire pre-Incan (flat and square) and Incan (semi-circular) terraces. We finally caught up on some sleep!! For dinner we went out to a really class local restaurant. It had it´s own band to play traditional music, and two dancers to entertain us with traditional Quechua dances. They even got a few of us up to dance with them, one of which saw Mary and Matt pretend to have convulsions on the floor and then get whipped with a piece of rope to make them better!! The videos are hilarious!!

It was another early start at 05:30 the next morning, as the journey to Cuzco would take 11-12hours. Pedro had warned us about the possibility of a roadblock along the way, but we were hoping to get through. After stopping to change a tyre and for lunch, we reached the roadblock at 15:15 after avoiding about a mile of rocks and broken glass strewn about the road. All we could see was a line of large rocks placed in lines across both sides of the road and a large group of people gathered in the middle. Basically a group of villagers were protesting to the government about agricultural taxes, and the only way they could make them listen was to block the tourist trade!! They had made quite an effort- huge stones littered the road with broken glass for a couple of km. They had been blocking the road for three days but must have been opening them up at some stage, as the forst truck in the queue had been there since half8 that morning!! Pedro headed up to see what the craic was, and if there was any way past. The locals said they would accept no bribe and would not open the roadblock. They were quite feisty and threw stones at any car or truck trying to force their way past!! At one stage they were arguing amongst themselves and started throwing stones at each other and at us. After a hasty retreat to Jack, we stayed in the truck most of the time!! Some idiots wanted us to drive over the rocks throwing stones as we passed, as we were the biggest truck, Wes told him where to go!!

We were finally told at about 5pm that they might lift the roadblock at 11pm, but would make a decision at 7pm. At 7pm there was still no news, but at 8pm Pedro came back and said that they had decided to lift the block. By this time we had heard a rumour that the police were trying to get through from the other side too. We all cheered and Jack led the way past the stones which had been moved to the side. We had to get out a couple of times to move more out of the way, including huge pieces of tree trunk across the road. Finally we began to pick up speed....until we hit the next road block the next town down at Sicuani! Here they were much more organised and had a leader to talk to. The police and the military were there too, but they agreed with the protesters, and only agreed to lift the roadblock by midnight!! Midnight!!! We were so annoyed especially after getting through the first one, but we had to wait. Dinner consisted of leftovers from lunch which thankfully we hadn´t dumped, as we dreamed about the indian meal we were supposed to have in Cuzco. Finally we got through at 11pm, and slept all the way to Cuzco.

We arrived at the truck park at 2 in the morning, and had to get taxis to the hotel. My taxi driver tried to bring us to the wrong place and had to be given my map, and the car nearly broke down too, but we got to the hotel, checked in and crashed in bed!!

Today was explore Cuzco day, which is a really cool city with a lot happening in it. We had lunch in the Real McCoy´s, which is a British themed bar/restaurant- had a proper baked potatoe with cheese. Mmmm. Later we are going to organise our tour t-shirts and meet the guide for the Inca Trail, we are going to the Sacred Valley tomorrow, staying there and starting the Inca Trail saturday!!!

Exciting!!
Orla

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Photos

road block!!
Mangarani