The exploration of the Colca Canyon.

One of the most exciting activities in the Arequipa area is the trek of the Colca Canyon. This 1000m (3250fts) deep canyon is inhabited by a few thousands countrymen living in small villages linked by small paths that need to be travelled by foot or by mules. But this we didn’t know yet when we chose the 3 days and 2 nights trek in the canyon. According to our travel guide this was supposed to be a nice little walk in mountain but we didn’t think that maybe the guy who wrote the book could be a trained alpinist. Here’s our adventure in 16 pictures.

The canyon in question is not exactly on the other side of the street and this is at 3:00am that the bus arrives at our hotel in Arequipa to pick us up. We are the first ones in the bus and every time it stops to pick up someone we look at the people coming in with our sleepy eyes to realize that almost all of them are less than 30 years old! This should have been a clue clear enough to tell us that this trek may not be as easy as we thought but eh, we are sailing around the world so it is not a tiny canyon that would impress us isn’t it? After a bus ride of about 5 ½ hours on unpaved roads and crooked like the mind of a politician we finally arrive at the village of Cabanaconde. This village is located at the top of the canyon and this is where our trip starts. The mountain people are mainly farmers and live in a very traditional ways. Here not tractors or even cars. We have the impression of going back 150 years back in time. The people living with almost nothing are taking every opportunity to benefit from the many tourists going through the village. Thus, the lady carrying the hay stack on her back asked Danielle 1 sol ($0.35) for the picture. Of course, this after the picture was taken! This is what we call fair tourism.

After breakfast in the village we start the descent in the canyon. Since there are no roads the descent is done on foot and takes about 3 and half hours. The zigzag shaped path is directly on the side of the mountain and in many places gets very narrow. But our biggest concern was not the precipices but the tourista. You see, for almost two days our intestines were working very hard and to venture into a trek with no toilettes within many kilometers is sure to make you sweat! But fortunately we ate light and everything went well with this.

Even though we are going down the trek is physically very demanding but we are generously rewarded by the awesome scenery. The sight of the sides of the canyon is simply breathless and talking about breath, the village of Cabanaconde is at an altitude of about 3400m (11,000fts). At this height the air is thin to a point where every effort makes us out of breath. We thus walk in a geriatric way one step after the other slowly without talking to not show that we are completely out of breath! We may well descend we have the impression that the bottom of the canyon will never come. At one point we almost would like to put ourselves in a ball and roll down to the bottom. Also, look carefully at the little white dots on the side of the mountain at the bottom left of the picture. These dots are in fact the roofs of the village we are going to spend the night.

Finally we arrive at the first village where we will spend our first night in the canyon. The beer is well appreciated even though it is twice the price we pay back in town. However, when you know that it was brought to the village on the back of mule across the mountain you shut up and pay! For the trek we had a guide for a group of six peoples. From left to right you can see Claudio and Rene from Switzerland, I then Phil from England. Nicole from Australia was missing for the picture when Danielle takes the picture.

Some of the villagers have built these little shacks to host the tourist in the canyon. Danielle enters the first and I look for the switch on the wall until our guide shows up with a candle! Danielle says “Oh this is fun; the candle light will be so rustic.” The bed is comfortable enough and the blankets are very warm. However, the floor is made of small round stones embedded in the cement, which makes it impossible to walk bare feet. Also, the mattress is infested by bed bugs; these almost microscopic critters, which generously gave each of us about 30 bites during the night! But this we didn’t know when we arrived and this is only the next morning that we realized how rustic the room was.

The next day, after a delicious pancake breakfast, we leave in direction of the second village at the bottom of the canyon where we will spend our second night. It seems that we caught some sort of a virus or we have a hard time with the height since the night before I went to bed with a fever, which thankfully disappeared during the night. But Nicole, one of the members of our group, had two big blisters on the big toes and Danielle, who thinks of everything, gave her a needle and bandage tape, which allow her to keep going with the trek without problems.

.

.

.

.

Along the path our guide Veronica shows us a very interesting small insect. It is a half round shaped insect living on the many cactuses growing in the area. When we crush the insects we realize that they are almost completely composed of blood, which is very red and stains a lot. The people of the area collect these insects and sell them in town where they are used for cosmetics or for dyeing. Dried they weight almost nothing and are about the size of the tip of a needle. The countrymen will receive $10 per kilograms, which represents a few cents per hour of work. This is what we call unfair trade. But the people of the region have other tricks with the cactuses. They have a cactus from which they extract the juice and drink it to have hallucinations during shamanic sessions. I told Danielle, “I hope they don’t take that juice during a walk on the sides of the mountain because with the precipices they have here you wouldn’t want one of them to start believing he’s a condor!”

The path that day was quite straight and didn’t include much of climbing or descends but still last many hours. Again we are largely rewarded by the beauty of the scenery. Our tourista seems to be gone . . . ouf!

.

.

.

.

.

.

Regularly during our trek we meet these convoys of mules, which are, I remind you, the only mean of transportation for the merchandises in the valley. Under the blankets are probably the new beer stocks for the village we spend the night and empty the beer stock the night before!

.

.

.

This is the village we will spend the night. If you followed the story carefully you should have realized that this picture couldn’t be taken on the second day since I said that we didn’t have any significant climbing or descends! The picture was taken the next day during the ascent of the canyon. But that’s ok if you didn’t see that detail ;-) Sorry for not having any picture of the village and our room but when we arrive at the village we were so tired that the only thing we are thinking about was to take a beer and to go swim in the pool they set and that is filled up every day with the water flowing in the river but first we go up to our room. A guide shows us the path and starts climbing a stone stair made out of the ground. Danielle looks at me “Why do we have to be the only ones who have to climb again to get to our room?” Me I prefer not to answer and focus on the pain in my feet and tights while we painfully climb each step. We arrive up there and open the sort of plank that plays the role of our door and enter the room, with no light needless to say, but this time the floor was not made of stone but directly from the soil and dirt that prevails in the area. Since we cannot put anything on the floor, not even our feet, I put my swimming suit standing on my flip flops trying not to touch the walls or the floor by fear of being stained permanently. Danielle, her, will pass on the swimming pool because she just entered that period of the month when women don’t swim! But she isn’t missing anything since the water is freezing.

The next morning the alarm clock goes off at 5:00am because we need to start climbing the canyon up to the village of Cabanaconde. I look at the mountain and I just want to cry! We have to climb a 1000m (3250fts) steep slope but since the path is in zigzag the distance we need to cross is much longer. This is where we separate the men from the kids and while looking at the cliff I just want to go run back to kitten garden. Danielle gives me a bag of peanuts and a bag of roasted almonds so I don’t run out of energy and then she kiss me good bye. You see, Danielle chose a different way of climbing back up . . .

Instead of paying herself three hours of endless stairways Danielle decided to rent a mule for the small price of s/60.00 ($20.00)! I personally am too proud to let my manly pride on the back of a mule, what do you think? I thus made myself suffer for two and half hours climbing the longest stairway ever made by men. At least this is what it feels like with 1Km high, the path in zigzag that makes the distance to cross closer to 5Km and all this with the thin air found in the mountains at an altitude of 3400m. I swear this is the most difficult physical activity I ever made in my life. The last half hour was just pure pain in my tights. At each step I think of Danielle on her mule and of my Tae-Kwon-Do master, master Ah Huen, who tells me that pain doesn’t exist, that I need to be a fighter and that I must keep going to the end without giving up. I must admit that if it hadn’t been of his teaching and the fact that Claudio was following me closely and reminding me every time I was taking a pause that this was making things worse, I think I would have jump off the cliff just to stop that hell. But we finally reached the top of the canyon and at this point I knew I could die; I did it!

Arriving at the top of the canyon was not the end of the trip and we still had to get to the village of Cabanaconde. But after the climbing this little walk of a few kilometers is like nothing. In front of the restaurant where we had lunch a few kids happen to come by. Phil, who had lollypops in his bags, gives each of them one but they are unable to open them so I open the candies for them.

.

.

After eating well we get on the bus and get to the village of Chivay where pools are filled up with warm water coming from an underground thermal source. The water in the pool reaches 40°C (104°F) and almost burns when we get in it. But after the morning exercise this is wonderful blessing.

.

.

.

.

During our trip back to Arequipa the bus stops at the highest point on the road, which is also the highest point Danielle and I ever went. The temperature at this height of 4910m (15,960 feet) is about 8°C (46°F) and we see snow here and there. Immediately after the picture Danielle ran directly inside the bus to get warm while I took one or two more minutes to look at this scenery coming directly out of NASA’s pictures of the Martian expeditions!

Monestario Santa Catalina

In the middle of the city of Arequipa sits a very old monastery of isolated nuns that stayed cut of the world for over 400 years. No need to say that the visit was really worth. The monastery, open to the public for about 20 years, was founded in 1579 by a rich widow. It is probably unique in the world and there is now less than 30 nuns still living within these walls.

.

.

.

.

It is a real city within the city, with its streets, places, etc. It was the last fashion, for the daughters of the rich Spanish families, to enter the mosnastery as a nun (bringing with them a significant dot of course). They could have up to four servants or slaves, organize soirées and live like in the high society. But in 1870 these privileges were removed. For 300 years the 450 nuns and servants lived sheltered from the sight and influences of the outside world to focus solely on their spiritual progression bringing them, by privation, prayer and meditation, at a unique state of consciousness and love of Jesus Christ. In 1970 the building was open to the public to bring it to the norms of modernity.

Today the 30 or so nuns only live in a small portion of the monastery. Since the visit of Jean Paul II in 1985 they have the right to talk and to go out. You can see here one of the cells they used to live in. The new cells seem to be more modern, at least based on what we can see from the roof since this part of the monastery is obviously not opened to the public.

Paracas, Huacachina and Nazca

We left Lima and hit the road south by bus to visit many places in Peru. This country is simply incredible and offers so much to the visitors that it is impossible to see it all and to show it all to you would mean to write a very thick book, not a blog! So far we took over 300 pictures of Peru so we had to select only a few to show you. Please have a look at our picture page there are many amazing ones even though we had to cut on our selection even there. By the way, we’ve now learn how to choose our hotel rooms and after Lima we had nice rooms with shower, toilet seats, hot water and comfortable beds. All this for less than $20/night of course!

In the small fishing village of Paracas we took a small tour boat to visit the Ballestas Islands where hundreds of thousands of birds and few hundreds of seals live. The smell is horrible when you get close to the islands but it worth seeing the pelicans, penguins, cormorants and other birds nesting on the many little rocky islands.

We kept going to see Huacachina, a small oasis at about five minutes of the larger city of Ica. This oasis is the biggest tourist trap we saw so far in Peru but nevertheless is worth spending at least one night over there. More than that and the wallet gets drained since everything is at least twice more expensive than anywhere else. The oasis is surrounded by large sand dunes that give us the impression of being right in the Sahara desert! This picture was actually taken from the tallest dune that we climbed painfully with many many pauses along the way! Believe me this is much more difficult than it looks like and it’s not on a boat that we get trained to climb a dune.

Then we got in the famous city of Nazca well known for its lines that can be seen only from the sky. But the first thing we visited in Nazca was the old Cimeterio de Chauchilla. This is a many century old cemetery used by the Nazca civilization before it got assimilated to the Inca Empire just a few years before a group of strange men came by boat with their iron armor and long strange sticks! But the interesting part of this cemetery is the fact that we can see old mommies that were actually taken out of their tombs by thefts and placed back by the authorities who now protect them. The Nazca people had a very weird relation with their dead. The mommies were often visited and even sometimes brought back to the village for special ceremonies and I am not even describing the mummification process itself!

Of course going to Nazca means buying a tour by plane to see the famous Nazca lines that can be only seen from the air. When they were first discovered, the lines in the shape of animals many meters long, some weirdoes came with the theory that they were made by or for extraterrestrials, which spun large scale publicity for the region and created a real tourist industry for the small town. Well, when you see them you quickly realized that any moron with a bunch of sticks and ropes could make them as they are not that big and not dung in the ground but only drawn. The Nazca peoples were way smarter than that and built aqueducts that makes these lines a primary school project. You see, this is a desert here with not much wind and surely no water to disrupt the lines. What makes them really special though is that they are between 1100 and 1700 years old! The best theory about them is that they were actually procession paths of shamanic nature used by the very religious Nazcans to somehow invoke the qualities of the drawn animal. In addition to the animals are many geometric lines that the exact meaning still eludes the archeologists. These lines in contrast probably required way more civil engineering skills to draw even though they are straight lines they are way longer. So for many centuries peoples walked these paths hence making them permanently embedded in the soil. Too bad, the alien theory was more exciting and although cynically criticized by the locals it gave the lines way more publicity in the world than the shamanic pathway one!

Visiting Lima

For 4 days we visited the central part of Lima, which is of course the touristiest section of the city. Let’s face it, the other parts of the city are a bit too adventurous for us, at least we would need more time to get to know the city before venturing over there. With a guide we went around the tourist trail such as the large cathedral and the presidential residence around Plaza Major. All important buildings here are many centuries old and had survived the many earthquakes that happen regularly in the area.

One of the buildings we visited is the old court of the inquisition where people not willing to embrace the Catholic Church were sent here to explain themselves, needless to say without a lawyer, and “convinced” in the name of Jesus Christ and Saint Maria that it was the right way to think! If they were in doubt of their faith they were sent to the torture for a period of 10 days then had to plead themselves again until they were convinced or until death took them… The cells where they were held before being tortured were just a few meters from the room where others were being convinced. Their screaming were heard everywhere. It is also interesting to see how imaginative the Church was clever in finding different techniques to convince the lost ones. The Nazis didn’t have to work too hard since the Catholic Church of that period seems to have done all the research and development a few centuries before.
Before we knew it we were put in one of the cells and asked to convert immediately. We vehemently protested that it is our right to embrace any religion we wanted until we remembered that we were already Catholics! We were then immediately released ;-)

Lima is not only an old city with century old buildings visited by tourists. It is also a large modern city with normal people leaving in it. Remember that globalization strikes everywhere and Peruvians are just like anybody else. The main difference is that other than the young people who wear the exact same cloths than everywhere in the world, the older ones are very conservative and dress like we were in Canada about 25 years ago.

You can buy anything in Lima and it is cheap. Restaurants are very cheap and for 12 to 15 soles we can both eat a full meal. This is even better when you know that 1 sol = U$0.33! Yep, for $3 to $4 including the tip we both eat plenty. Sometimes we pay ourselves a treat and go in a more expensive restaurant and would pay s/30.00 or s/40.00 for the meal, which is still less than $15 for both of us. We went to the central market of Lima where food is sold on these little stands. You can buy anything from dead chickens (not emptied!) to coca leafs or guinea pigs. This picture was not taken in a pet shop but at the food market! We went twice but the second time we went to look closer to the chicken alley and we had to leave on a hurry because Danielle was about to vomit. The rest of the market was ok though.

Trip to Peru; let’s start by Lima.

We arrived in Lima, Peru during the night between September 6 and 7, 2009. Our trip starts here. You may think that we are filthy rich to afford such a trip? Not at all! We save money everywhere we can and try to find the best prices for everything. After spending an enormous amount of money on Chocobo we had to reduce our spending while still visiting the world! We did some researches on the cost of such a trip and found some interesting things; Peru isn’t expensive and we could afford it.
To start this trip let’s visit the installation where we will sleep and wash ourselves for the first few days!

We decided to rent rooms in hostels and in Lima we could find a room for $7.00 US per day per person. Here’s a description of the room; Private room for two peoples with private bathroom and hot water. The room is indeed for two peoples after we lay one on top of the other in this very tiny bed. It is quite hard to fit another person in it unless that person is willing to use the wooden floor directly. By the way the bed is made of wood planks about 4 inches apart and cover with a 1 inch mattress probably as old as the building itself so it is the either the fakir bed or the floor….

Let’s see the shower now. We arrived at the hostel around 3am and with a bed like this we were on a hurry to jump in it and so we skipped the shower. Tomorrow, we told ourselves! After finding the proper spot between two planks in the bed and trying not to think at the noise and the party that was going on in the street right in front of our broken windows we feel into a deep sleep that lasted a long 5 hours! Hurry up! Let’s visit Peru but first we need a good shower. Neither Roger nor I saw the sign saying that we needed to toggle the switch up to have hot water and we both had a freezing shower that morning. But wait, it is not 38°C (100°F) anymore here but only 15°C (59°F) in the morning so the shower was not of the most pleasing kind!!!! Have you notice the sort of gismo on the shower head used to heat the water with electricity at 240V directly in the shower????

Oh yes let’s not forget the toilet bowl. On our arrival I decided to go to the bathroom to have a quick pee and while entering I was telling myself that something was missing. Something that I am used to see when I look at a toilet bowl ….

Getting ready for Peru.

We are now all set to go. Peru here we come! Thanks to Stephanie who sent us her backpack and let’s hope that we have everything in these two little bags to survive on the Inca trail for two months!

.

.

.

.

.

In Curacao we didn’t spend much time visiting, although Willemstad is quite a pretty town, but concentrate in getting the boat and ourselves ready to haul out the boat and get everything we need for our trip to Peru. We still took some time to walk around the nice streets of Willemstad with its colorful buildings. And after months of starvation I was quite please to find not only a McDonald but also a Burger King in the neighborhood! My fat level is now back to normal.

After close to a year of loyal services Chocobo is now taking a well deserved rest of two months at the Curacao Marine Services boatyard. Parking a boat, which is our house, for an extended period of time, is not as straight forward as it may sound. For instance, for the past few weeks we’ve been eating everything we had in the freezer without replacing it since we will not leave the refrigerator running while we are away. It may look small but this freezer can take a LOT of food believe me. Also we had to pickle our precious watermaker and we had to clean everything, walls and counters, to ensure no mold grows anywhere while the temperature in the boat reaches over 45°C (115°F) with 85% humidity when sitting in the yard! For the water system we were concerned that leaving the water stale for two months would make our pipes an ideal Petri dish for all sorts of bacteria. To alleviate that problem while in Grenada we bought a few big bottles of Black Jack rum from the Clack’s Court distillery. This rum is not just extremely cheap but is made of 70% alcohol! This thing is simply undrinkable but would do just fine to be poured in our water tank and flushed through all the pipes. With such an alcohol level it will still be efficient when diluted with the water. Trust me, we tasted the thing and nothing will survive in our water system!