Into Canyon Country

It was a fairly early start this morning for a 2-day trip into the Cañon del Colca near Arequipa. Our bus was supposed to pick us up between 8:00 and 8:30, but finally showed up at 9:00. We weren´t off to a great start at this point, especially because our dickhead of a guide, Gonzalo, had a fit that we didn´t want to put our bag up on the roof of the van and he thought it would be in everyone´s way sitting at Nigel´s feet. And since we were the last people to be picked up, we had to sit apart, with Nige just behind the passenger´s seat next to a nice Scottish couple on their honeymoon and Kel in the very back with a Belgian couple (I preferred the back only because I could keep my window slightly open without bothering anyone, the cold fresh air a must given my current state). We then drove about 10 minutes out of town where it was necessary to stop for snacks and drinks after such a long start to the day´s drive. We bought a few packets of Coca Candy to suck on for the trip. Peru cultivates nearly 47,000 hectares of coca per year, enough to make 150,000 kilos of cocaine, but the majority of it is used for chewing, tea-making, and I guess candy. It is supposed to help with the effects of altitude sickness (nausea, headaches, vomiting, fatigue) which I was seriously starting to experience and Nige as well (Nazca, our last place, is about 600m above sea level, and Arequipa is at 2325m, a huge leap for one day).

We passed the Chachani volcano and drove through the Reserva Nacional Salinas y Aguada Blanca which covers 367,000 hectares at an average of 3850m. It is a reserve for the very shy, cute, and endangered Vicuñas, a wild cousin to Alpacas and Llamas. We stopped in a few places to see these guys roaming around the plains. From here the road continued through dry (since it´s winter, but it´s green in the summer) altiplano and up over the highest peak at 4880m where we stopped for gorgeous views of the snow-capped Ampato (6388m, where Juanita the Ice Princess was discovered) and surrounding mountains. The road was dusty and bouncy. Here there were several Peruvian women selling their alpaca wool hats, gloves, scarves and sweaters, as well as other knitted things and cheesy souveniers. There are also hundreds of small rock piles, which were created by Incas as a prayer to the gods. They would first put a coca leaf down, then balance 3-5 or 6 rocks on top of it and say a prayer. The landscape here is nearly all rock and very plain, so these little rock towers make it a bit more interesting.

By 1:00 or so we reached the small town of Chivay (3700m--getting sicker and head threatening to explode), population a whopping 4000, the main town in the Cañon del Colca. We were taken to the guide´s choice for lunch, but of course it was way more than we wanted to spend, so we walked a few blocks (really probably 30m) to the town plaza and found something cheaper. We were then picked up and taken to our hotel for the night (just off the plaza) where we dropped our gear and headed back to the plaza to walk around. We enjoyed seeing all of the school kids coming home for the afternoon (all in uniforms with hats), the ladies selling fruits and veggies at a small market, and locals just milling around. We had some mate de coca (tea made with coca leaves) in the hopes of alleviating part of our headaches then went back to our hotel to tell our crap guide that we wouldn´t be joining everyone for a trip out to the hot springs. We knew they would be full of the hundreds of other tourists, and that we´d pay the 10 soles entrance fee, sit in the hot springs for about 10 minutes, then want to get out and have to wait at least an hour for everyone else.

Instead, we got a few beers and parked ourselves on a bench in the plaza to just watch the town go by. A boy we had seen earlier came up to chat to us. He´s a cute kid of about 12 who drags his baby brown llama around town and charges tourists to take a photo of him with his pet. Eventually we had ourselves a small group of about 5 kids to chat with. My Spanish was coming in good and strong speaking to such youngsters, and Nigel was doing pretty well himself. At one stage we decided to buy them each a bag of popcorn (about 20 cents each for us) and we gave one boy, Loco Jimmy, a 5 sole coin to go get it. He came back and explained that the popcorn lady felt our coin was a fake. We only had large bills besides this coin, and we were not going to give Jimmy one, as trustworthy as he seemed, nor were we going to get up from our cozy spot to buy the popcorn ourselves. So Loco Jimmy an the llama boy (we couldn´t really understand his name) took an inventory of the things we bought in the shop where we obtained the said fake coin and went ran off to the shop to explain the situation to the lady and to get a different coin. But the lady said it was a real coin and wouldn´t change it. So, being bright kids, Jimmy came back to us and asked us if we wanted ´un agua pequeño or un agua grande´ since his idea was to go to a different shop, buy something with the ´fake´ coin, then have change to buy the popcorn. And he knew that water would be one thing we´d definitely buy. So off he went, got us a small bottle of water, and 5 bags of freshly popped corn for all of them. They were all so happy and cute. And llama boy even shared his with his pet.

Frozen by this time, as it was just about dark, we walked back to our hotel (accompanied by Jimmy part of the way), put on our thermals and every other bit of warm clothing we have, then found a pizza place for dinner, chosen because of the roaring fire inside. We drank some mate de coca and played some cards for a while, then had a dinner of soup and alpaca steak for Nige, a tiny pizza for Kel. The alpaca meat was pretty good, and very lean.

We headed back to our hotel hoping for a hot shower (we were promised caliente, caliente agua) but only managed to get ice water, so we just went to bed, I was feeling very ill and sorry for myself.