Left Arequipa at a very reasonable hour, with our local guide Jesús (a very common hispanic name, pronounced Hay-zoos), for the long ride up towards the Colca Canyon, the deepest Canyon in the world, more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and home to the giant Condor, which has a wing span of up to 3 metres wide, weighs up to 12 kilos and can fly at heights of up to 7000 metres (23,000 feet). Wow, that’s a huge bird. Imagine the size of its droppings.
Along the way we passed the highest part of the Altiplano at just under 5000 metres (16,400 feet) where there is a lookout called Mirador de los Volcanos, where you can see a panorama of snow covered volcanoes, one of which is called Chucura and has been spewing forth a plume of smoke for the past 3 years. We introduced our fellow frosty tops to the game of geocaching at the top of the Altiplano, when we found a geocache, last found in 2013, that is reputed to be the highest in South America. Unlike me, they all seemed to have an attention span of more than 5 minutes and they really got enthusiastic about it so it was a good little break from the bus journey.
We stayed in a tiny village called Coporaque, near Chivay, which has one hotel and that’s about it. Well that IS it in fact. Everything the hotel serves is grown in the village organically, including the Alpaca meat, and one of their biggest crops in the area is Quinoa, of which there are apparently 27 different types grown, all different colours, throughout Peru. To combat altitude sickness, I drank lots of Coca tea, which smells like grass clippings and tastes about as good, as we are at an altitude of about 3600 metres (nearly 12,000 feet) and still struggling a bit.
I think Perú is our favourite country so far, because it’s so amazingly different, colourful, dramatic and full of history and interesting looking people. The average life expectancy for a woman is 66 years and I can see why – it seems to be the custom that the women do all the hard labour and we saw quite a lot of elderly women, bent over and carrying huge loads of hay or other vegetation on their backs, or pushing a tuk-tuk taxi (called Moto-taxis) up a steep hill while a much younger man sat in the driving seat in comfort. Oh and it’s also Granny rather than Mummy who is very often carrying the baby on her back, tied on with a cloth. It’s a hard existence for them and they do live a pretty primitive life, but they are very friendly and I love their amazingly expressive faces. The children are just beautiful.
Our first morning we had to get up at 4.45am in order to get on the road early to spend time at the lookout points in the Colca Canyon watching the Condors. Being mid winter here, it was freezing cold until about midday, so lots of layers of merinos. Several million blurred photos of the sky and bits of wing tip later (not to mention quite a few rude words), I think I got one reasonable photo of a Condor in flight. Amazing birds. We also did a hike around the canyon rim and had a lesson on all the various plants and cacti that are used in local medicines and saw an animal called a ‘viscacha’ (see photo), which looks like a rabbit with a long tail, but is actually part of the chinchilla factory.
I had a really nice cactus ice cream at a roadside stall, although I couldn’t begin to describe the flavour to you now. Several stops later for photos and refreshments/loo visits, we had lunch back in Chivay, then were taken to the Hot Pools for a welcome soak – even though it was sunny and about 23 degrees at the time and the pools were about 38 degrees, there were shady parts to it and we all felt quite invigorated by it.
That night Jesús took us a few of us to a restaurant in Chivay with a 4 piece Peruvian band and some local dancers – obviously quite touristy but very well done. Excellent musicians and we were the only ones in the restaurant, so they were very pleased to see us. Audience participation was unavoidable, and my part was to whip the male dancer while he lay on the floor. Hmmm, yes, well….you’ll notice there aren’t any photos of that.
Back to the hotel at 9pm to pack and fall into bed for another very early start tomorrow to Puno, near Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world.
2 Frosty Tops Do South America 