Sacred Valley to Colca Canyon

South America » Peru
August 5th 2013

Published: August 14th 2013

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Ezeur

The Puma

In Cusco some of the original walls remain, though they have been incorporated into colonial or modern buildings. Hidden in the Inca construction of this wall is the shape of the sacred puma, which also gives it's form to the city of Cusco.

Peru is a vast and diverse country, so with only two weeks I had to severely cut back on the list of places I wanted to go. Machu Picchu was obviously a high priority, as were the ruins of the Sacred Valley near Cusco. I decided to focus only on a small area of the south, which I was dismayed to find out is actually called the Gringo Trail. Welcome back to the Americas.

Trying not to read about any of the amazing places in the north, I started to narrow down the list. After reading about vicuñas in a travel magazine I had to find a way to see one in the wild. My hometown of Boise, Idaho is home to the World Center for Birds of Prey; so spotting endangered condors was also an important personal goal. Lake Titicaca is geographically incredible and I’ve heard a lot about the floating islands, and the land islands that you can stay on out in the lake. Hopping the border to Bolivia and seeing another American country also sounded like fun. Then, just south of Lima, near the town of Pisco are the Ballestas Islands with penguins and other wildlife similar

San Blas

From the roof of my hostel I could look across the top of the church of San Blas to the city of Cusco below.

to the Galápagos.

How could I cut any of that off the list? By overstaying my travel plans in Cusco. I just fell in love with the place and didn’t want to leave.

I started out my time in Cusco by wandering around until I found an area I wanted to stay in. I ended up in the plaza of San Blas and checked out several hostels before settling on one right next to the church. (I was never woken up by church bells, in case you were wondering.) It’s a quaint little plaza and the streets in the area are relatively quiet. Almost every shop and restaurant is designed for tourists, but that’s what I came here to do, so I shopped for postcards and visited places described in the guidebook.

My first day out of the city was a tour of the Sacred Valley. It was a bigger tour group than I had expected and I had never signed up for a tour that was actually a full size bus packed with strangers. This was not going to be a fun little group where I would get to know everybody. So I was pleasantly surprised

Ollantaytambo

The local villagers were conscripted to build a temple on top of the terraces after the Inca conquered their area. In an act of rebellion they built a small temple to the Pancha Mama on top of the temple to the sun required by the Incas.

when I realized that I was the only native English speaker on the bus. We had a few Colombians, a couple from Argentina, a few tourists from Mexico, a family of French-speakers who also spoke Spanish, a lot of Peruvians from Lima, and me. I was in linguistic heaven.

It was a fairly generic tour of the highlights in the Sacred Valley: silver artisan workshops in the town of Pisac, the Incan ruins of Pisac, the Incan and pre-Incan ruins of Ollantaytambo, a Chinchero weavers’ workshop and the colonial Spanish church of the town of Chinchero. The guide was enthusiastic about the archeology of the Incan sites and about the traditional metal working and weaving techniques. Some of his routine was an obviously memorized script and his jokes were fairly lame, but overall he did a pretty good job. I learned a lot.

I finally tore myself away from Cusco, realizing that I no longer had time for both Lake Titicaca and the Colca Canyon. If I didn’t get started on the rest of my trip along the Gringo Trail I wouldn’t make it back to Lima in time for my flight to the US. I decided to

Freeze Drying

The structure in the shadow on the right side of the cliff facing Ollantaytambo is a giant freeze dryer. It was built for the Incas on a slope with constant wind, at an angle that deflects most sunlight. The narrow passageways built through it funnel the cold wind to instantly freeze dry any food stored there.

go for the Colca Canyon partly because the town of Arequipa sounded much more appealing than Puno, and also because I was more excited about mountains and canyons than a huge expanse of water and traditional little villages. There is plenty of water waiting for me when I go back to Bangladesh. It doesn’t have mountains, and certainly not volcanoes and vicuñas.

I took an overnight bus to Arequipa from Cusco. It was just as comfortable as I had heard. I checked in my luggage, got a seat worthy of first class on an international flight and was served a meal as if I were on a plane. The food was not first class, but I had already eaten and was mostly interested in sleep. Again, this was a lot like a nice airline. I got a wide choice of movies, tv shows and games on my individual screen. I was impressed by the busses in Turkey, but they have nothing on Peru.

Arriving in Arequipa in the morning I took a cab from the bus station to the part of town I wanted to stay in, then checked at a couple different hotels before I found one

Traditional Textiles

Any good tour also teaches about local culture and customs. This often means tours of artisan shops where we are shown how natural dyes are made and how traditional weaving techniques are still used.

with a room available. In Cusco everywhere had rooms and I looked at several different places before I found what I wanted. Arequipa was booked and I had to try a couple hotels before I found one that even had a room for me.

Arequipa has a beautiful city center with lots of colonial architecture. It was not an established city before the Spanish arrived, so they didn’t have to destroy much to built the city they wanted. They also didn’t have as much to build with as they had in Cusco. Colonial Arequipeña buildings are made from giant blocks of sillar, cut volcanic stone that was as white as the ash that had compacted to create it. It was beautiful, blinding to the eyes and obviously why Arequipa is knows as the White City.

I started out my exploration of the town with a visit to the nunnery. Before coming to Peru I read a lot about the nunneries in Lima, which were more like cities within the city than actual convents. Similar to those “conventos grandes” the Monasterio de Santa Catalina de Sena housed hundreds of women who never intended to lead a chaste life of

At the Top

Going up on a bus rather than hiking felt like cheating, but I did get to over 16,000 feet of elevation.

poverty and prayer. They wore fine clothes and jewelry. They wrote secular songs and had concerts. The parties were famous.

In some ways they had far more freedom closed off in the convent than they ever would have out in the real world. They bought and sold their individual homes within the convent walls. They had full control over the servants and slaves they brought with them into the convent. They could vote on matters that affected the community. They were not in the least controlled by husbands or fathers. Of course, many women also entered the convent to lead a life of prayer as a nun, but it was a life very different from smaller, more humble, convents.

I paid for the tour of the monastery, which I highly recommend. It cost only 20 soles, lasted an hour and was a private tour with a very knowledgeable guide. She was a native Arequipeña and answered all my questions very thoroughly. After the tour I was free to spend as much time as I wanted going back through the alleys, homes, plazas, cafés and churches. I probably spent another two or three hours there after the tour. The

¡Vicuñas!

After reading magazine articles about vicuñas, I was so excited to actually see some in the wild. This photo was taken from inside the bus, and as soon as we opened the door to step out for a closer look they bolted.

café has excellent espresso and pastries, baked by the remaining 30 nuns.

After the leaving the peaceful solitude of the convent, the noise and bustle of the city was a bit of a shock. I walked through the busy streets, admiring the colonial architecture and modernity of the city. Some parts of it reminded me of Istanbul, with wide walkable avenues full of modern shops, many of them international brands. The central Plaza de Armas was straight out of Spain and reminded me more of Seville than anything.

The next day I set off early for a two day tour of the Colca Canyon. This was my third tour of the trip and I was already tired of the group atmosphere, but it was so much easier than trying to arrange my own transportation. I just didn’t have the time or energy to go the solo backpacker route. This was not at all like the Sacred Valley tour since few others in the group spoke Spanish. It was an English speaking crowd, although the guide did repeat everything in Spanish, which I appreciated.

The very beginning was what I was most looking forward to: driving up to

Watering Hole

This family of vicuñas was far enough away that when we got out of the bus it was almost a minute before they took fright and sprinted away.

the high plateau above Arequipa to spot vicuñas. The guide explained that they were wild and centuries of attempts at domestication had failed. They are similar to llamas and alpacas, although much more lithe, like an antelope. The only usable wool on them grows in a puff on the chest. It looks like a white pom-pom on a shorthaired animal with the coloring of a deer.

According to the tour guide, the accepted method of shearing that pom-pom is to join hands in a solid line of up to a thousand people, then march off, singing and yelling at the top of your lungs. A crowd with enough noise, moving at a steady pace will frighten a family of vicuñas into standing still long enough for the line to close around it. Still singing and yelling, the circle walks them to a corral and draws closer to push them through the opening and shut them in the corral. This sounds far-fetched, although it is exactly what the journalist described in the travel magazine I read.

Being a protected species, they get a check up from a vet after having the white chest fur shaved. The penalty for killing

Alpacas

The landscape of most of Perú looks unreal and altitude magnifies the effect. These alpaca were fairly tame and didn't mind me walking over for a closer photo.

a vicuña is ten years in prison, and the wool is so expensive that the local villagers have a lot of incentive to keep the populations healthy.

After stopping for a few vicuña sightings, and a marshland with hundreds of llamas and alpacas grazing on thick mats of swamp weeds and slime, we made it to the high point of the drive. The guide warned not to try to jump or run when we got out of the bus. Having hiked up to about 15,000 feet the week before I wasn’t too worried about stepping off a bus at 16,000, but I was still careful not to move too quickly. I got my picture taken by the rock labeled 4910 meters, then climbed back on the bus to breathe as evenly and deeply as possible. A Polish tourist wasn’t as lucky and fainted when she tried to stand up for a photo op. Fortunately there were plenty of people to catch her and carry her back on the bus. The guide had a bottle of some kind of alcohol that he put under her nose to bring her back. It worked and she was fine the rest of the

Colonial Links in Maca

Not only is this an historic Spanish church, but when it collapsed in 1994 volcano activity, the Spanish government funded the complete reconstruction.

afternoon. The altitude was hard on most of the people in the group, who all recovered from their headaches when we went back down to a reasonable 10,000 feet for the next stop.

The afternoon was low-key with a walk to some pre-Incan ruins and a soak in the hotsprings. The next morning we got up early to get out to the Colca Canyon for the other highlight of the trip: condors.

A friend back in the US (gringa) had told me that you can drive right out to the cliff and sit on the edge with the wind rushing past you. The condors glide on the thermals and brush past the tourists, not even acknowledging your presence. They own that canyon.

The guide cautioned that as with all wildlife, he couldn’t guarantee anything. Some days there were a lot of condors, but sometimes the tour ended before any were spotted. He had a lot of interesting information about the life cycle of condors: they return to the canyon they hatched in to nest and a female usually lays two eggs every two years. Full grown juveniles are a dark brown until 8 years old when they

Cruz del Condor

These canyons are home to several families of condors, some of whom flew closer to where I stood than I thought possible.

finally gain the jet black plumage and white neck ruff of an adult. If they can’t find enough carrion to scavenge close to home they will take off on trips for several days at a time. From Colca Canyon they can glide hundreds of kilometers out to the coast, to feast on a dead seal or whatever has washed up on the beach before returning home. There are only about forty left but the population is starting to stabilize after almost becoming extinct a few decades ago.

As predicted, the condors flew close and circled overhead, appearing to play on the currents of wind that swirled up out of the canyon. I saw two adults and five or six full sized juveniles with the dark brown coloring. They wheeled above me, drifted down into the canyon and caught a thermal to ride back up to the rim of the canyon. I took a few pictures but mostly sat back to watch them. That night I had to take another bus back to Lima. I gazed across at the condors gliding close by, trying to catch their eyes, trying to understand how they see their home, making a promise to