Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru and its historical centre with buildings of white sillar stone belongs to the UNESCO world heritage. The city's wealth stems from its trade with Alpaca wool with the UK. Its townscape is extraordinarily beautiful thanks to the monuments built by the Conquistadores: wealthy business men's palacios, the cathedral, numerous churches and the monastery of Santa Catalina, all beautifully illuminated by night, make for the impression to be set back into colonial times. Arequipa is encircled by three volcanos and situated in the middle of a stony desert. This leads to an arid climate nearly year round and we enjoyed sunshine and hot temperatures for our entire stay.
Culturally and gastronomically, Arequipa also had to offer a wide range. We didn't visit the monastery of Santa Catalina (we felt already spoilt by having visited similar clerical institutions in Sicily, Andalucia and Morocco previously), but went to the museum of the Catholic University, where the Inka mummy of "Juanita de los hielos" and its excavation was exhibited. The mummy was only found in 1995 at the peak of the volcano Ampato and greatly contributed to the further understanding of the Inka culture as it was astonishingly well preserved. For the first time, we found vegetarian restaurants offering creative and very tasty daily menus and we sipped a Pisco sour on a terrace overlooking the Plaza de Armas.
Halfway in between Arequipa and Cusco lays the region of the Colca Cañon. The canyon is more than 1000 m deep and thus twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US. To us, however, it appears less like a typical canyon because of the ancient Inka terrace fields along its flanks. Two indigenous people, the Collahuas and Cabanas (they can be distinguished by the women's traditional hats) have inhabited this region for centuries. Hot temperatures during the day, merciless exposure to sun and windy and cold nights seem to make agriculture extremely difficult. The land however appears abundantly fertile, though, where water is available from drainage systems. Tourism allows for an extra income in this area, attracting tourists because of its unique landscape ideal for trekking and the natural habitat of the Andean condor, Peru's proud emblem aside the llama and alpaca.
And those were also the reasons why we had decided to visit Colca Cañon. Since no major bus company (yet) serves this region, we took a local bus from Arequipa, via Chivay to the ramshackle village of Cabanaconde.
In Cabanaconde we stayed at a backpackers hostel, together with the handful of other tourists that arrived on the same bus with us. This is only logical as Cabanaconde has literally three hostels and only this one has a website :-). We met another Swiss couple, Sophie and Jonny, who also travel South America on a similar itinerary and at exactly the same time as we do. It was great to share our travel experience and to receive valuable accommodation tips for our next destinations.
Early next morning, we descended towards Sangalle, the oasis of the canyon with palm trees and swimming pools. It represents a striking contrast to the otherwise dry, dusty and rocky landscape and as such looks beautiful. From Sangalle we climbed the other side of the canyon to the village of Malata and continued deep into a branch of the canyon to a hamlet called Fure. The ascent in the heat of the afternoon was extremely strenuous. We were though rewarded by seeing a couple of Andean condors circling in a thermal high above our heads. For the first night we then descended near the village of Llatica, where we set up our tent on a terrace next to the drainage system (how convenient to have your own water supply just aside!). The night was clear and the sky full of stars. Since darkness fell so early, we slept for full 12 hours until sunrise. We thus felt energetic the next morning and arrived in Llahuar – a resort directly at the Colca river where we had planned to eat lunch and bathe in the natural hot springs – already at 10 am. The resort keeper looked at us slightly strange when we asked whether she could serve or sell us some food: the "menu almuerzo" would obviously not be ready before 1 pm. It is for such moments, that we always carry extra food with us, even if this consisted of biscuits and dried fruit and was less of a gastronomical highlight :-). We rested in the shade by the river and then set out for the big ascent to the top of the canyon. Luckily, there were clouds drifting in just around midday, and we could climb without the torturing hot sun. We felt extremely thankful for this! Just around sunset we had reached the crest and the viewpoint "Mirador Achachina". From here it was only half an hour walk back to Cabanaconde, perfect for us to undertake the next morning and to reach the first bus back to Arequipa. So guess what we did? Right, we set up our tent on the viewpoint’s wooden platform and enjoyed breathtaking vistas. A guided group of British tourists were quite bemused by this the next morning, but having watched the sunrise over the canyon out of our sleeping bags let us take in any comment very coolly.
After a hot shower back at the hostel, we felt ready to tackle the bus journey back to Arequipa. We got a bit shaky, though, when we saw the driver kneeling and repairing the rear tire and break when we approached the bus for departure... But except of some delay we once more arrived safe and sound at our destination. In Arequipa we even caught some of the last tickets for the night bus to Cusco the very same day. All worked out perfectly well!
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