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Arequipa, Peru
16° 23' S 71° 32' W
Aug 25, 2004 22:33
Distance 324km

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Arequipa and the Culca Canyon

Text written in: English

We set off from Arequipa at a reasonable time to go to the Culca Canyon. It was a short drive in our 4 wheel drive modern coach until the surfaced road finished and we were then subjected to 2 days of bouncing on the rough tracks.
Our first location was a small town in the centre of the canyon where we had lunch accompanied by the local band!!! After lunch we travelled through the early part of the canyon. We were told that it was deeper than the Grand Canyon. Even if that was the case I wasn´t particularly impressed with the scenery. It was not a patch on the Fish River Canyon in Namibia, Africa. Our guide Daniel was very enthusiastic about all the research which had been undertaken in the canyon and we enjoyed his style which for me was very much like the comedian Victoria Borge. You know - "Our valley has 171 scenes of special interest. 170 are of geological interest where we can see many archaeologists crawling all over and the the other is my Auntie Flo - who also has archaeologists........" you get my drift!
Our Hotel was wonderful. Obviously somebody had invested a great deal of money to build a 3 star hotel in the middle of all the run down shacks and delapidated sheds which constitued the village! We checked in - spent a delightful 90 minutes in the hot springs drinking Pina Colladas (I had water!) and then returned to our hotel for a Log fire, "Special Drink" and Buffet experience! I wonder what the locals were eating that night!

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The next day we were up at 5 am to set off to find CONDORS! Unfortunately Pa was not so well, so she slept on the back seat of the bus! On the way, the first village had turned out in force in their traditional costumes and were presenting a dance display for us. It was great. Unfortunately our schedule only allowed 5 minutes for this. What a disappointment. They were trying raise money to rebuild their school. After 10 minutes I was dragged back into the coach. So much for GAP´s supporting local initiatives. We were then off to the CONDOR cross to spend an hour watching Condors. I was left wondering how the village felt about our apparent lack of concern for their enterprise..... I left some money, but would have happily spent another hour watching their enterprise. We made the CONDOR cross with about 200 other tourists. It was a quiet group of people and, sure enough, we saw 8 Condors soaring and flying through the Canyon - it was a great sight! Our journey back to Arequipa was quite uneventful.

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Patience writes.....On Friday, we began a two day trip to the Colca Canyon, driving on very bumpy roads back into the high, barren mountains, passing volcanoes, alpacas, llamas and vicuñas. We "lozoked" in a wonderful hot spring swimming pool in the afternoon, drinking water and banana milkshakes! Our hotel was a very cosy place and before dinner, we sat in front of the open fire, drinking their ´special drink´, a warm concoction of coca tea, orange juice, cinnamon, cloves, honey and rum. Boy was it good! Then, we had another early start yesterday morning, leaving the hotel at 6am to drive (via a village where young folk were dancing in fabulous, colourful traditional costume) to see condors flying in the canyon - which, apparently, they do every morning at around 8.00! We were not disappointed. The mighty condors glided and twirled as the sun rose and warmed the air. We counted eight in all. A couple of them flew incredibly close to us, within a few feet of our heads, and Dave managed to get some excellent photos. Unfortunately, I was out for the count for most of the rest of the day. I could feel a cold coming on and was decidedly out of sorts, so spent the whole day asleep or dozing on the back seat of the bus. It was a bumpy ten hours before we arrived back in Arequipa and I was hugely grateful to retire into a quiet room and snuggle down on a soft, stable bed. We even ordered a take-away pizza, so didn´t even have to move to eat last night. Natalie came to my rescue this morning and came up trumps with some Beechams flu capsules. With the aid of these, a relatively decent night´s sleep and a good shower this morning, I actually feel relatively human again (if a little limp). Probably just as well, given that we take a night bus to Nazca this evening, arriving at our next hotel around 7am tomorrow!

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