Arequipa & the Colca Canyon (Southern Peru Part 1)

Here is a reason why there hasn't been any activity on our blog lately: We finally managed to take some time off to explore our South American "backyard" that starts just beyond the borders of Chile. With so many interesting places to choose from, but only limited time resources, we decided to start with Peru. Southern Peru, to be more precise.

We set off on March 11th and crossed the northern border of Chile via Arica - which we feel somewhat acquainted to having spent a little time there on previous occasions - to Tacna in Peru. Tacna is not exactly the most interesting place and for us, just like most fellow travellers, was not more than an overnight stop. However, it was a nice prelude to what the rest of Peru has to offer, and it didn't take us very long to notice a few obvious differences to Chile:

1. The food is better (yes, even if you are a vegan!) and one can buy delicious fruit everywhere, some very exotic ones and generally very cheap.
2. It seemed like there were more taxis than regular cars in the streets and traffic generally is significantly more chaotic, i.e. dangerous.
3. The cities are a lot more polluted as a result of the large majority of vehicles in the streets being really, really old and sh!tty. Black thick diesel exhaust fumes kind of thing.
4. The people have a lot more indigenous (i.e. less caucasian) heritage.
5. Peruvian Spanish is easier to understand than Chileno and many people speak at least one other (native) language.

From Tacna it was easy to arrange a bus the following morning and about 7 hours, and 18 soles (ca. 7 US$) per person later we made it to our first real "destination": Arequipa. Although neither of us really is a city person we did enjoy strolling through the historic centre, which is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site, with the majestic Misti Volcano in sight most of the time.

Trying to be good tourists we also visited the Santa Catalina Monastery, a very "luxurious" (when put into time and social context) "city within the city" where girls were sent to become nuns and spend the rest of their lives there. They could hardly ever go out and they got to speak (not see as they were behind a lattice window that prevented seeing each other) to their family once per month. Seems harsh but I guess the alternative in too many cases would have been the prospect of becoming an abused wife at the age of 12 or 14 years or so, and giving birth about once a year.

Apart from the historic city centre and nearby volcanos, the Arequipa region attracts visitors for the Colca Canyon, one of - if not - the deepest canoyns in the world. We signed up to a 3 day tour with Colca Trek (highly recommended, they were very good) and learnt a lot from our guide (Carlos).

Below is a rough summary:

FAUNA

Llamas, Vicunas, Guanacos and Alpacas - They are easy to differentiate. Llamas and Alpacas are domestic animals, very woolly and lots of different colours. Guanacos and Vicunas are wild animals, not so woolly, they are brown and cream, no other colours. Llamas are domesticated guanacos, they are both bigger than Vicunas and Alpacas (domesticated Vicunas). A picture can be worth a thousand words sometimes! ;o)

Condors - Males are bigger, have a crest and brown eyes. Females a little smaller, no crest, red eyes. They eat carryon and can last 2 months or so without food, at this point, they may well consider helping a cow fall off the canyon to get some food. They usually do this by partnering up with andean foxes. In winter they poo on their feet to coat them and keep them warm. They do not drink from the river as they are massive animals and it is a big effort to fly 3km up, they drink from water that gets stuck in rock holes. They usually dip their feet (coated in poo) in the water first, this is because their poo is a great antibacterial and this is how they disinfect water!

FLORA

We found out about Huacatay or black mint. A delicious smelling plant that one can use as a condiment.

Carlos also showed us Yareta, which actually looks like a rock (though it isn't) covered in some green lichen and which locals traditionally used as a fuel for cooking due to its high resin content and because it grows high up in the Andes where firewood is hard to come by. It is now protected because it grows very, very slowly (some plants are 3000 years old!), so the harvesting is very unsustainable.

GEOLOGY

The Colca area is divided into the Colca valley and the Colca canyon. A place is called a valley when the distance between the walls/cliffs is larger than the depth. If the depth is larger than the separation between the cliffs, we have a canyon or a gorge. The canyon always has a river at the bottom, in this case we have the colca river. A gorge may or may not have a river. The deepest part of Colca Canyon is more than 4000m. Our treck took us from a place where the rim was at around 3200m above sea level to the bottom at 2000m. Still very impressive. On the way up and down we saw some impressive basalt and volcanic rock formations.

LOCALS AND CUSTOMS

People have lived in the area for a long time even before the Incas arrived and to this date the famous "Inca Terraces" are well stocked with corn, broad beans, quinoa (photo below) and other edible plants.

Christian amongst a bunch of beautiful quinoa plants

The Inca "incorporated" them into their empire but let them more or less get on with their lives, as long as they paid taxes. Many locals still wear their traditional dresses even for working in the fields.

 A local woman herding sheep

We left with beautiful memories and a few photos don't really do them justice (click here for high res):

After the Colca Canyon our next destinations were Lake Titicaca and Cusco, but we'll cover all this in separate blog posts over the next few weeks (...watch this space).