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After our night bus trip from Cuzco we made it to Areqipa early on good friday morning. The town was pretty quiet but we had a wander around the pretty main square and found somewhere to eat as kate was busting to try cerviche ( raw fish marinated in lemon and chille) although no where was serving beer for poor old poidda!
Kate visited the culture museum which was just incredible, these frozen child sacrifices from the inca times were found in the nearby mountains in 1995 and the museum had a guided tour of the Inca beliefs and sacrfices to the gods and the sacrificial offerings and bodies were so perfectly preserved, little figurines and cloth bags with coca leaves and one of the girls salina was in a frozen display with such preserved black hair and clothes and features it was a bit goulish but fascinating. These "perfect" children were taken from their parents at birth ( usually from high nobility and raised in cuzco by the priests etc to prepare them for their purpose in life. When and if their time came they made the procession on foot from cuzco to arequipa in high alitudes until they were sacrificed in a special ceromony to please the gods.
The next day we headed out to a little village along the colca canyon ( up to 4800m high) and stayed with a family there. It was interesting to eat some traditional food, particularly the breakfast of cornmeal steamed in leaves with tuna and andean grains mixed as cereals and cactus fruit. It was easter sunday when we stayed and the whole village gets up at 4am for a blessing from the priest and a bit of street parade with marching bands and party which is all over by about 8am when they then visit their friends and family for the day! The women from this area all wear gorgeous bonnet like sunhats that are intricatley embroidered and lots of layered skirts. We caught the public bus to the beginning of our colca canyon trek and it was soo rammed full of people and made lots of stops along the way to little villages which was really interesting.
We started our trek and were so lucky it was just the 2 of us and our local guide and we took a less travelled route down into the canyon ( so steepwith a trai lof loose gravelly rocks and stones) across the river at the bottom to stay with a family on the other side with gorgeous views over teh canyon and hot springs for a soak! There was no electricity and we stayed in a cute little bamboo hut with a gravel floor and were nice and warm un der our alpaca blankets. we ate lots of alpaca on that trip actually which was quite tasty mixed with cooked tomato capsicum and rice! The next day was a tough steep climb u out of the canyon on the other side with amazing views and we passed some remote families living in the canyon and then walked along the top for a bit then another descent back down to the botton " oasis" some refugios with palm trees, swimming pools and still no electricity! it was so peaceful and beautiful to rest there after our tough walk. We got up at 2.30am the next morning to head out of the canyon which was so cool and a bit surreal walking with the moonlight up the windy steep trails with our little headtorches and looking back over the blackness of the canyon like a deep ocean surrounding us. We made it to the top after a few hours for a well deserved breakfast and then a trip to see the view point for condors circling around the canyon. They have such a huge wing span and are so graceful it was mesmorising to watch. We then headed to a town where we were thankful to say goodbye to our odd guide and soak in more hot springs.. this time sooo hot under the heat of the day but great for those tired leg muscles! That afternoon we caught the local bus back to Arequipa ( it was so funny how it would just stop on the side of the road when someone needed a wee!) past some gorgeous scenary which we missed a lot of as we were so tired! We had to stay up that night until 1am for our night bus to la paz, which ended up not leaving until 4am so we were pretty wrecked when we finally got on but were able to sleep most of the wayand arrived in la paz at about midday. The colca canyon was such a highlight for us, it was such a beautiful walk and so special that we were the only people on the trail for the 1st 2 days so we could enjoy the solitude and beauty amongst such an impressive scale of the canyon.
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