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Published: October 20th 2016
Adult condor
Colca canyonAnother horror bus ride terminated at 5.30am after a few hours sleep we headed into the faccinating colonial heart of world heritage listed Arequipa. This place is just as attractive as Cusco, is much larger and is better value for money. Tourist numbers are also much lower here which is refreshing when visiting the city's major attractions. Arequipa the white city is at least 500 years old and sits in the shadow of the perfect cone shaped 5822 metre El MistI volcano. The old town is centred around the Plaza de Armas and features a huge cathedral built from volcanic sillar and the slightly smaller Iglesia de La Compania an interesting Jesuit church.
Our first stop was an atm followed by one of the second story restaurants that dominate the Western side of Plaza de Armas, after much discussion we decided to try the Peruvian national dish, raw fish and prawns marinated in lemon juice. The raw Spanish onions were almost sweet in comparison and I struggled to keep it down though Ruth finished hers.
ne block back from the Plaza is the fascinating Museo Santuarios Andinos which examines the Inca penchant to sacrifice children to angry mountain gods.
The start of the show is the frozen corpse of Jaunita a frozen Inca maiden discovered on the summit of 6310 metre Ampano in 1995. Jaunita is thought to have walked 500km from Cusco and summited the mountain where she was ultimately bludgeoned to death to appease the gods.
Next we visited the Monasterio de Santa Catalina a citadel within the city which takes up a whole block and was established in 1580. The monastery is a city with in a city and has twisting streets, courtyards gardens and a cemetery. The nuns it seems came from the richest Spanish families and their behaviour was some what hedonistic for the first two or three centuries, at one time there were more than 300 slaves and/or servants within the precinct. Much of the monastery was opened to the public in 1970 but 20 nuns still reside in the northern section of the complex.
Around the corner was the Iglesia San Francisco another impressive church constructed ofrom white sillar stone and features carved statues of various religious figures. On the next corner was the Red Lion pub which we visited for an ale or two before getting briefly lost on
the way back to our accommodation.
At 4am the next morning we headed north of the city to the world's second deepest canyon, to get here we travelled to an altitude of 4800 metres where we saw a number of Vischayas before decending into Colca canyon. Colca canyon was extensively terraced by the pre-Inca Wari people an is an incredible sight, in fact I have never seen its like. Around 830am we arrived at Cruz del Condor where we saw at least six of these huge amazing birds, for us this was one of the highlights of our time on the continent. After sitting spellbound for more than an hour we travelled back to the village of Yanque where we visited a small but interesting museum, apparently there are 23 stucco churches within the canyon. On our return to Arequipa we were lucky enough to see as many as 60 wild Vicuna mostly in small herds of 6 or 7 scattered across the high deserts.
Saturday morning we boarded a bus for Nazca, 9 hours through the very ugly Atacama desert with just a brief stop for lunch at the ugly seaside town of Challa. Nazca is not
a large town but we have enjoyed our brief time here, Peruvians are incredibly friendly people. In the evening we went to a planetarium to see a presentation on the Nazca lines and their hypothetical links to the constellations. The next morning we headed to the airport just out of town where we planned to board a small aircraft to see the mysteries etched into the nearby desert. Unfortunately a cloudy morning meant a two hour delay which forced us to miss our bus to Lima resulting in anowhere night in Nazca.
The lines etched into the desert consist of geometric shapes, lines and depictions of various creatures, it is thought that they were built so that the gods above could see them, the Nazca never saw the results of a millenia of effort. When we finally made it in to the air I was excited to see my first lines, the cessna was diving and banking to best show us the massive figures edged into the desert floor with expected results, many of the passengers were soon ravaged by travel sickness. Over the next half an hour we saw many of the more famous figures including the Astronaut,
hummingbird, condor, monkey and the spider to name just a few. It was difficult to take photographs with the aircraft leaping about like a mad thing, I was breaking out in a sweat by now the Czech woman next to me had her eyes closed, the Colombian guy in the back was hanging on desperately to the seat in front and Ruth was sniffing some airsickness remedy.
Eventually we landed and made our way back to town all the buses were full so we went to a restaurant up the street for a feed, we will chill for the rest of the day before moving on tomorrow after breakfast. No air-conditioning on the bus so the seven hours bus ride to Lima was uncomfortable even though there were only seven others on the bus. We arrived in Peru's capital around 6pm obtained a taxi and eventually found our way to our hotel in Miraflores.
It was an unpleasant night, the walls were paper thin and the people next door were really noisy, twice we called reception but they did nothing, breakfast was also nasty so we packed up and moved hotels. Turned out to be a great move,
excellent rooms and superb service, they even gave ys a mobile phone in case we needed help.
Miraflores is a great place to stay, it is clean and safe and we enjoyed wandering the streets we also sent home a box full of souvenirs which we believe will turn up in a month or so. The next morning we headed into historic Lima where I bought an extra battery for my camera before watching the changing of the guard at the government palace. We then went to the Anthropological Museum and the very good Larco museum before returning to the Larcomar mall for a great veggie burger.
Tomorrow we head to the airport for our flight to Argentina.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Loved seeing the condors
Nice shot