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Published: August 2nd 2015
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Distance driven today: 195miles / 314km
Cumulative distance driven: 11,755 miles / 18,918 km
Today’s trip: Arequipa to Puno, Peru
Wild lamas spotted along the road: many
We spent the morning walking around the center of Arequipa. With its colonial buildings surrounding the main square, and the Saturday military and indigenous parades (quite a combination if you ask me), the center of the city had a truly vibrant feeling. Apart from having a proper cup of coffee each, and taking pictures with an indigenous woman and her son (and baby sheep and baby Lama), we walked the city center taking in the atmosphere of this backpacker Mecca. It is always a good sign when a city has lots of small shops competing with each other to offer various sorts of tours to backpackers. That’s when you know that there are interesting activities in the area. One of the more popular tours in the Arequipa region includes a 1-3 day trip to the Colca canyon, about 160 km / 100 miles northwest of Arequipa. Apart from colorful local villages, and grand Andean nature, you can also trek parts of the Colca canyon. Actually, the Colca
canyon is one of the deepest in the world, more than twice as deep as Grand Canyon!
One of the more interesting things to do in Arequipa, is a visit to the Santa María Museum of Andean Sanctuaries, where one can see the Mummu Juanita. Juanita is the name given to a frozen body of an Inca girl, who was sacrificed and offered to the Inca gods about 500 years ago. What makes this story fascinating are two things. First, the body was discovered close to the very top of Mt. Ampato, which is an Andean peak of 6.300m/21,000ft. How the Incas managed to ascend to such an altitude, without any climbing gear, and bring the girl there and sacrifice her, remains a bit of a mystery. Second, the well-preserved frozen body was only discovered in 1995 by accident, by an American archeologist with National Geographic and a Peruvian climber. It turns out that the ice at the top of Mt. Ampato had recently melted by volcanic ash from the nearby erupting volcano, thereby exposing the bundle with the frozen girl. The discovery of a body in such a well-preserved condition caused a sensation in the scientific world in
1995, and led the Time magazine to name it later that years one of the world’s top ten discoveries.
Leaving Arequipa and heading towards Bolivia also meant that we entered the South American Altiplano, which is a giant mountain plateau. This Altiplano is the second largest mountain plateau in the world, after that of Tibet in China. However, unlike its Asian counterpart, the South American Altiplano is dominated by massive active
volcanoes. This Altiplano, which is at an elevation of 4.000m/13,000ft, holds the world's highest navigable lake, Titicaca, and the largest salt flat, Salar de Uyuni, both of which we intend to visit as we are driving through the area. The Altiplano can generally be summarized as a landscape of ice and fire, wind and salt, which stretches from northern Argentina to the harsh flatlands of Peru. Higher than many peaks in the Rockies, the Altiplano was formed when the Pacific Ocean floor and the South American tectonic plates collided many years ago and heaved up two Andean ridges forming a flat basin at a high elevation. Needless to say that the elevation leads to a very cold climate, often with sub-freezing temperatures, while the hypoxic air makes it
hard to breath.
It is also here that many wild Lamas can be spotted, and Zoe and I sure did see quite a few ones. This rather interesting animal is probably best described as a combination of a camel and a sheep! Lamas have pointed ears and long necks, and are an integral part of the south-eastern Peruvian landscape. Some Lama breeds have been domesticated and are used for their flesh, hides and wool. Zoe seems to be especially fond of the Lamas, and we had to stop several times for her to try to get close to them and study them.
The last leg of our drive today was between Juliaca and Puno along Lake Titicaca. It is an easy 40 km / 25 miles of straight and flat road that is paved. Zoe counted over 100 road side memorials, and over 150 crosses. After the first 15 minutes of driving she stopped counting. Either this road has an extremely big danger that somehow remains hidden from us, or the Peruvian drivers drive unusually dangerous and somehow manage to get themselves killed en masse on a straight and flat road. We just can’t figure out which of
the two it is.
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