Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
having a bit of a farce keeping this up to date really. im actually in colombia now, but will try and remember what happened in peru about 2 months ago....
so i was travelling somewhat unintentionally with that irish bloke denis, was getting a little bored of him to be honest, even so we had quite a good afternoon wandering round town when we arrived. arequipa is a beautiful city, lots of grand white colonial buildings, a bit like sucre in bolivia, so we almost did some cultural stuff like going to museums. luckily the only exhibit we wanted to see at the museum (some horrid mummies) wasn't there at the time, and theres this nunnery/"city within a city" place that is supposed to be good but was quite expensive and we couldnt really be bothered, so had a nice sit down and drank some beer instead. definately made the right choice. also i bumped into nathan (the australian guy i met in uyuni) at the hostel, and we ended up having quite a good night trying to impress swedish girls by being really good at pool, table football and table tennis. was actually surprisingly good at the first two, beat denis 10-2 twice in a row at table football, then 10-3 with one hand behind my back. stormer. wasnt very good at table tennis though, possibly because i was quite drunk. dont think we managed to impress swedish girls in hindsight, also i lost my moustache in the process. bit of a nightmare. anyway.... got up really early the next day because i was going to the colca canyon, which allegedly is the deepest canyon in the world (twice as deep as the grand canyon). i had decided to be hardcore and try and do it independently, whereas luckily denis had decided to take a tour from arequipa and thus i eventually managed to get rid. good. managed to stagger to the bus station with the massive bag and hangover and got myself on a bus to chivay, which is a tiny little town on the edge of the canyon.
as is fairly commonplace in bolivia and peru, the bus stopped frequently along the way in an attempt to squeeze as many people into every available space on the bus as possible, regardless of trivial considerations such as health and safety, breathing space, etc. on one such stop a gang of stripy shawl/bowler hat clad ladies stormed onto the bus with their assorted animals, including chickens, sheep, alpacas, etc, and all had to stand in the aisle. since the bus was tearing round corners at high speed on quite a bumpy road one of the ladies near me was having a bit of trouble standing up whilst juggling her baby alpaca and big bag of something, probably cabbages. so i kindly offered to hold her alpaca, which she was more than pleased about, so i ended up with a baby alpaca on my lap for most of the journey! this amused most of the previously surly passengers around me, who suddenly seemed very interested in this big gringo with a funny beard and bewildered looking animal on his lap. was especially funny as the alpaca had a really long neck for the size of its body, so its head was really unstable and every time we went round a corner at high speed it's head would swing to one side, then swing back and forth like a pendulum whilst making a noise like a disgruntled/confused alpaca. hilarious. anyway, i digress....
turned up in chivay and was met by a very polite, courteous and professional hostel representative, who was also a 10 year old girl. was most impressed by her manner so went to her hostel which was really good and gave me a nice comfortable bed and some food to help get rid of the hangover. everyone in chivay was really nice - all the labourers wave and say hola when you walk past, and i was sitting in an internet cafe and little kids kept coming and talking to me then running away and hiding. also a helpful man in the market helped me select some tape to fix my decidedly knackered walking boots, which turned out to be rubbish but it was a nice gesture, i think. most people working in chivay seemed to be either knocking down walls, or rebuilding walls that had previously been knocked down in exactly the same place, leaving the net number of walls roughly constant. came to the conclusion that there was a shortage of work in town, so someone had come up with a fairly cynical scheme to create jobs and keep people busy. although later i saw people using holes in walls to go through instead of their door, which was like 10m away, so maybe the people rebuilding the walls were competing against the lazy people whos doors were too far away. anyway, i managed to find a local guide to take me to the canyon, which was good because it was loads cheaper than getting a tour from arequipa, and also the money was going straight to the guide and not some tour company who would pay the guide hardly anything and so make me feel obliged to tip. hate it when that happens. also found a german called jonas who wanted to go as well, which halved the cost of the guide. yaaay.
set of for the 2 day hike the next morning, and discovered that, as expected, the canyon was really deep. unfortunately it was also really steep, so had a really good but quite tiring day walking down the canyon, up the canyon, along the canyon a bit, then down the canyon again. really good views the whole way, and saw some cool little villages where the locals have to lug all their supplies/trade up and down the canyon every day on the backs of justifiably grumpy mules. unfortunately the effort involved in getting beer to these villages made it really expensive, which was a shame. spent the night in this little oasis place at the bottom of the canyon, which had some other trekkers staying there, a really cold swimming pool and the crankiest, wooliest alpaca ive ever seen. this one was a fully grown adult, and every time anyone sat in a particular deckchair it would stare at them, chewing menacingly, whilst moving towards them slowly until whoever was in the chair would run away in terror. luckily a peruvian woman chased it away with a broom before anyone got mauled. we had dinner provided which was quite good, although one guy on another tour wasnt quite so lucky. the standard meal in peru usually has 2 portions of carbs, typically rice and chips, which in itself is a bit unnecessary. but when this guys food finally arrived he was proudly presented with a huge plate of rice, chips and pasta. that is all. bet he shot up the mountain the next day.
we unfortunately, didnt. had to get up at 4am and start climbing in the dark which was bad enough, but having not had any breakfast was the killer. plus the fact climbing out of the deepest canyon in the world is quite tough in itself meant that i was pretty close to collapsing by the time we got to the top, was staggering all over the place. luckily we got to the nearest town as the shops were opening and had a banana, best banana ever. then had a proper breakfast as well and felt normal again. the reason we got up so stupidly early was to get to the cruz del condor mirador before the condors got up and start flying around. was absolutely incredible and definately worth the effort, these huge birds suddenly appear and start soaring around majestically and spiral up out of the canyon on the morning thermals, really really beautiful, the pictures dont quite do it justice. saw two of them having a fight right up close as well which was cool. also we cunningly managed to avoid paying, which most people dont realise you dont have to do as its not a national park or anything, basically when they feel like it these officials hang around the cruz del condor and bully tourists into paying 35 soles, which is stupidly expensive seeing as theyre not actually doing anything in terms of conservation or maintenance and most of probably goes in their pockets. but anyway we gave them the slip in a cunning scheme involving pretending to go to the toilets then doubling back, and also a bit of shameless lying. good. so that was that, had a great time, bumped into denis on the way back who had also had a great time on his tour, but i felt quite smug that i'd done it without a tour company for much cheaper, and basically from here on i tried to do everything independently where possible. much better.
- comments