March 2nd 2015
The bus from Lima to Arequipa was a long and sticky affair, supposed to take about 16 hours ours took 18.5 without any noticeable delay or slow down. Shortly after leaving Lima we entered a desert and didn’t really leave it again the entire time, the coastal road winding through rocky sand dunes making the portions of the bus ride done in daylight quite beautiful if you appreciate desserts.
Even with the beautiful scenery, the bus was again without proper regularly functioning AC and we were definitely all very glad to climb off at the bus station in Arequipa in the mid afternoon the next day. South America is big, and I’ve spent the last couple of week figuring out just how blessed I am to have so much time travelling, it means that I can avoid long haul night buses more often than not. 4 in the last two weeks has taken a toll and I know I’ve got more to go to get down to Santiago to meet my wonderful father by the 6th of march.
At any rate, from the bus station, we find a friendly taxi driver very proud to be from Arequipa who takes us to our hostel Arequipay Backpackers for 10 soles. (You can often negotiate down to 7 or 8 but we were way too tired.) The hostel, a short jaunt from the center and from a huge supermarket is clean and quite nice, though annoyingly there’s only top bunks left for us. Oh well.
We spend what brief hours we have left in the day relaxing around the hostel, playing ping pong, foosball and pool, the last being quite a spectacle as none of us are what you might call good at it. Still it’s an enjoyable evening and the girls cook up some food while I feel too sick to eat again, which in the long term is a good thing. This all started on my last night in Lima when I accidentally walked by an exterminator spraying a couch for bed bugs at the Point hostel and got a good gasp of poison into me. Though if it had to kill one thing I’m glad it was my appetite and not me.
Later that night I try to convince Olivia and Elin to forget budgets and come to the Colca Canyon with me, a place I’ve heard is a sue highlight of Peru. The canyon itself is twice as deep as the grand canyon and also a great place to try to glimpse the Andean Condor, a huge bird with wingspans up to 12 feet. The condors sell them and we book the last three spots on a one day bus tour of Colca at the front desk of Arequipay backpackers for 30 soles. Like a lot of tours in Peru this solely covers transports and a guide, the entrance to Colca (40 soles) the hot springs (15 soles) and lunch (6 soles because were frugal and clever) is not included, making the following day a definite investment.
The canyon itself is almost 5 hours from Arequipa, and it’s this fact that sees us falling into bed all too late around 11 pm, and crawling out trying to silence our respective alarms just after 2 am. It’s a long day tour starting at 2:30 and finishing between 5 and 6 p.m.
The bus to pick us up arrives a little late and while it’s not in bad shape the average bus is just not built for a person of my tremendous size and I know that while many others will spend the next few hours sleeping, I’ll be lucky to catch a few minutes of repose, oh well, more time to be alone with my thoughts, planning future voyages and novels alike. And music to keep me entertained.
The sun eventually rises and people start waking up, some with headaches as we’ve passed through regions up to 5000 meters above sea level, though I luckily have yet to be severely effected by altitude. About an hour later we make our first stop at a mirador from the road just as the canyon begins and look at out the ridged green hills and rocky depths of Colca, pretty amazed by the jaw dropping view.
We’re beckoned over by a local woman with two alpaca’s on leads, one only 12 days old who I swear has the softest fur I’ve ever imagined possible.
Then we pile back into the bus and hurry onwards to Cruz del condor, hoping to get there in time to catch the condors waking up and leaving their Cliffside homes catching thermals up through the canyon, hopefully close by the view point. It’s another 90 minutes or so away and we make one more bathroom stop which provides not just bathrooms but an enticing view of snowcapped mountains through the clouds and a place to buy some crazy socks.
Then it’s back in the bus again, which has been the only flaw of all the organized tours of done in Peru, like Kuelap, the Caraija sarcophagi, and now this, too much time in the bus, versus time at the sight. Still when around 830 am we pull into Cruz del Condor I’m feeling excited, despite the crowd that has built up at this viewpoint.
We pile out of the bus and work our way through the crowd towards the edge and find a variety of perches Ideal for looking out at the massive canyon below us, a river running through it’s centre and a decent size waterfall in the misty distance, just out of photo range. Here we chat and wait and hope.
Luck’s on our side, We’re told that they’ve only appeared two of the last 7 days by our guide, but perhaps 15 minutes after arriving two condors circle up out of the abyss below directly above us. The birds are massive, photos and words cannot fully describe the size of these birds. The two of them circle back and forth just above us, giving us stunning views but my camera’s zoom starts acting up at exactly the wrong time so I only grab a few half decent shots and then I’m left waiting for more.
As we wait and hope a small lizard friend appears on quite a perch and poses for us a while. Then it’s my turn and despite the crowd I pull my shirt off and splay myself out in the “paint me jack” pose. Elin manages a picture almost against her will before I’m told to put my shirt back on lest the Condors mistake me for one of the animal carcasses they lay out a short distance off. Pretty embarrassing but worth it for the photo.
We get to chatting and take a few more photos of the canyon, hoping for more. Finally one more appears though not as close as the first two. Still we watch spellbound as it climbs the thermals until its high above us and the canyon. We’re about to head back to the bus when the crowd ooh and has again and our final condor circles up around us, flying just above our heads barely out of reach, this time I’m ready and got some photos of this ugly but huge bird that I’m proud of.
That condor gone up into the clouds we have to hurry back to our bus and start heading back to Arequipa though there are a few stops on the way, the first being in a small town where the ground is eroding and shaking beneath them, and before long they may have to evacuate, in fact as it turns out, the day we visited there was a fairly major earthquake in the canyon which left at least one hiker injured.
Either way, we pile out of the bus and into the town where we get a good view of the local hats for the first time. They are intricate and beautiful, detailed embroidery spiralling across the big hats in bursts of colour. Probably my favourite style of hat I’ve ever seen.
Olivia and I cant help but be tourists when a woman walks by with a huge eagle and a llama and offers photos with them for a donation, (we each give 5 soles) and the feeling of an eagle on your arm and head makes me feel like a child again. Plus I even get to wear one of the hats for a brief moment.
That done we head into the church which was destroyed by an earthquake in the 80’s but rebuilt in large sections, it’s beautiful and some of the elderly locals are incredibly beautiful people in intricately embroidered clothes, but I can’t bring myself to ask for a picture so near the church so we get on the bus and head to lunch.
Smart shoppers that we are we, we walk away from the 28 Sole buffet restaurant our tour brings us too and finds a almuerzo for 6 soles with soup chicken rice and juice just a few blocks up the street. I’m still feeling too sick to eat so my lunch is 2 soles (a bottle of powerade).
From lunch we head off towards the Hot springs, eventually piling out of the van and heading down some switchbacks towards a rushing river in the valley, we cross a hanging bridge, suspended high over the river which seems to put most people on edge, worse still when it turns out the springs are closed due to recent heavy rain so we cross back un-relaxed and climb back to road before descending down the other side to another set of springs where we pay 15 soles to enter and hurry down into changing rooms slipping into the warm water. It’s not all Ive hoped for as it’s made to look like a swimming pool without a hint of natural appearance, but the water is a perfect temperature to loosen knotted muscles from too many night buses and we enjoy our 45 minutes here quite thoroughly.
Eventually we climb back into our bus just as the rain is beginning and settle in for a long bus ride back to Arequipa, it’s only about 2:30 in the afternoon but everyone is exhausted and quickly drifts off to sleep, I probably would have too If I wasn’t an oversized human being who does not fit well in minibuses, so I’m left to listen to music, appreciate the views, and think.
We do make a few brief stops on the way, sadly a viewpoint of three volcanoes is too cloudy and rainy to see much of anything so we just keep driving, but once we get to the llamas there’s no cold or rain enough to keep me from getting out and taking some pictures of one of the countless vast herds we speed by in the bus. Somehow these animals seem to have become synonymous with Peruvian wildlife and while their pretty cool they certainly don’t look very smart or act it. Still there’s a certain off beauty to them.
A short while after the initial llamas we reach a few much smaller browner llama cousins who we are told are very rare. They can run incredibly fast and their fur is the most valuable natural fibre in the world if my guide is to be believed. Sadly we’re not given the time to get out of the bus but I manage a few pictures through the window including the cute baby.
The last stop on the way in to Arequipa is not meant as a tourist location more a bathroom and gas stop, but the cliffs opposite of us are fantastic and I climb out of the bus and run to get as close as I can. I’m instantly reminded of Cappadocia, one of my favourite places I’ve ever been, in central turkey, though this is smaller scale, still it’s a dramatic and staggering landscape and a perfect cap on the perfect day, my last major event in Peru this time around, but I’ll be back in this wondrous country after chile, hopefully by the end of may. Look forward to Machu Picchu and more then.
