Arequipa and Colca Canyon

On October 8th, our bus from Cusco arrived in Arequipa at 5am, which was an hour earlier than we were told. We arranged for a taxi pickup at 6am, so we decided to wait, especially since the taxis in Arequipa can be dangerous. Also, we didn´t know whether the hostel would be open. At 6:20am we took one of the taxis only to find out we could have called and also that there was somebody at the station looking for us! So, we first had a nap and for lunch we met Claudia. She is the wife of the brother of Brian´s brother´s wife, does that make sense? We wandered around town a bit as well.
Next day we left at 4am for a 3-day trip to Colca Canyon, which is the world´s second deepest canyon (twice as deep as the Grand Canyon). A 4 hour bus ride took us into the canyon (160km) and on the way we saw many cactii, rocky cliffs with different colors and textures and again many terraces. Our first stop was a condor viewpoint (Cruz del Condor), where we found a lot of people waiting for condors. We were there for an hour, but didn´t see any condors. We happened to miss 3 condors just 5 minutes before we arrived! We went into town (Cabanaconde) for a wander, lunch and then afterwards started hiking with a group of 6 plus guide. In contrast to the Lares Trek where we had porters and donkeys, we had to carry all of our things. This meant that Brian had to carry almost everything, because the hike was going to be hard enough on Paulien´s knees already without carrying extra things. Fortunately, she didn´t have any knee problems after that one time in Ollantaytambo. Also, in contract to the Lares Trek it was very sunny, hot and dusty. Almost all of the paths had loose rocks and sand and the hike down was pretty steep (one of the girls fell and hurt her knee). We walked down the barren and rocky side for 3 hours and had a short rest. Then we walked up the lush green side with flowing creeks for almost 2 hours. There are no roads on either side, only paths for walking and donkeys. We spent the night in the village of Cosñirhua where we stayed in a hostel and had unexpected luxuries: shower with hot water, tv and dvd-player. We were also watching the cooking and were witness to a guinea pig being killed (by breaking the neck) and then dipped in hot water to remove the fur. Fortunately, we are vegetarians and didn´t have to eat it. Since we were all tired we went to bed early at 9:30pm and slept in till 7:30am; this tour ended up being much more relaxed than we were expecting. After breakfast we walked to another town where we checked out a small local museum that explained local traditional life. Then we walked down to the oasis which is at the bottom of the canyon. Here we could swim, lay in the grass or relax and play cards on the tables and chairs made of palm trees. Lunch and breakfast today were carried (from Cabanaconde) and prepared by our guide. So, he had a lighter bag going up, but we didn´t. The lunch had a lot of carbohydrates to help us get out of the canyon. After another little siesta we started our climb out of the canyon. The oasis is at an altitude of 2100 meters and Cabanaconde at 3300 meters. The two of us went ahead and climbed out in 2.5 hours. Many times it seemed as if we were almost at the top, but that was just not the case as we would find out around the next corner. On the way we saw donkeys, mules (one carrying a bed frame), sheep, locals (some were running down) and, of course, some tourists. We did some internet in town while waiting for the group to arrive, since we didn´t know which hotel we would be staying at. After dinner we went into town for a drink with our group and some of the people we met on the way. We were very happy with our guide that we got through Perú Schweiz Explorer, since he gave us a lot of information about the plants, people and the area. He was able to answer all of our questions and although he basically only spoke spanish with us he was very easy to understand. One of the things that he explained was how Christianity is mixed with the Andean religion - for instance combining a cross with a pacha mama (cubby hole for an offering for mother earth). Our third and last day we walked to a lookout and spent some time there, because the only road out was blocked by a rock slide. We had to wait for that to be cleared, so that our bus could pick us up. We were actually supposed to go early in the morning to the condor view point for our second chance to see the condors, but couldn´t because of the rock slide. We found out when we did arrive that a few late condors had just disappeared. We drove back to Chivay, which is on the edge of the canyon for a yummy buffet lunch (not included in tour!). Then we went back to Arequipa and made some stops to look at various volcanoes and herds of vicuñas, alpacas and llamas.
On our last day in Arequipa we went to the Santa Catalina Convent, which is an over 2 hectare complete miniature walled colonial town in the middle of Arequipa and is Unesco protected. About 450 nuns lived here in total seclusion (few nuns remain now). It´s constructed, like many buildings in Arequipa, from sillar (local white volcanic stone). It was pretty big and worth the visit.
We also went to the Museo Santuarios Andinos that contains frozen bodies found on Ampato Volcano (>6000 meters), including the famous Juanita found in 1995. These children were sacrificed by the Incas to please the gods. These children walked all the way from Cusco up that high mountain to give their lives to help their people.
At 2pm we took a bus to Juliaca, a transport hub for the area. We arrived shortly before 7pm and found out that there were no more buses to the Capachica peninsula. In fact, when we asked some locals they didn´t even know the place and a tourist who has family there and had been there multiple times asked us why we were going there... well, our book says it´s nice there. So, we stayed overnight in Juliaca and caught a morning "collectivo" (minivan) to the town Llachón, which is on the tip of the Capachica peninsula. This story will continue in the next post...