More Grand than the Grand Canyon or That’s a Big Hole in the Ground

Everything we had read said that visiting Arequipa without visiting the Colca Canyon is like visiting San Francisco and not seeing the Golden Gate Bridge. Kate and I wanted to see the Colca Canyon, but weren’t sure how. Everywhere you turned in Arequipa was someone selling tours of the Colca Canyon. I am confident most of them are just reselling other people’s tours. The standard tour is a two day tour which takes you out to Chivay on the first day where you spend the night in a hotel. Chivay is a pretty commercialized town at the entrance to the canyon. On day two you would go into the Colca Canyon, then back to Arequipa. This didn’t sound like our speed.

After hearing one lady’s pitch of her very standard tour, and another 2 day tour that involved waking up at 3am and trekking for 6 hours, we decided to get some lunch and re-evaluate. Over lunch Kate thought to use the iPhone to Google “best Colca Canyon tour”, She eventually found Killawasi Lodge which offered a 3 day tour that started in Arequipa and ended in Puno, which was our next destination anyway. It seemed perfect, only one problem; it was 3pm and we wanted to leave the next day. I practiced what I was going to say in Spanish a couple dozen times, then called the lodge, they didn’t answer. I psyched myself up again and call the manager’s cell phone. Guillermo was very nice and helpful but explained that he was nearly booked an may not be able to accommodate us. He asked us to call back in five minutes. Guillermo had a solution; we would stay in his last remaining room the first night, which happened to be an upgraded room, and we would stay at the neighboring hotel the next night, all for the standard price. We PayPal’d him the deposit while walking across Arequipa. The iPhone has turned out to be one of the most useful things we brought, but that’s a topic for another post.

The next morning a large luxury tour bus picked us up at our hostel. It took an hour or two to pick up the rest of the guests and get out of town. Our tour guide, Cesar, was interesting, to say the least. He was very practiced and at at some times rude, but only about practical things; getting back on the bus in time, drinking enough water, etc. He was also very accommodating and a wealth of knowledge. Once we were out of town, and done being lectured, we stopped to look at some volcanoes.

We are pretty high up in altitude, and climbing. Our American doctors prescribed Diamox to prevent altitude sickness, but we hadn’t started taking it because we only had enough for the Machu Picchu trek. For hundreds of years, the people of the Andes have used the coca leaf to help prevent altitude sickness. In the book I’m reading, Turn Right at Machu Picchu, the author draws an analogy between coca and Sudafed. Coca is to cocaine as Sudafed is to methamphetamine. Our next stop was to use the restroom, and sample some coca tea, if we chose to. Kate and I went for it. It tastes like a combination of mint tea and black tea. I didn’t feel anything, but my altitude sickness never got past a mild headache, so maybe it works.

The next stop was at a natural grassland where local people graze their llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña. These four animals could be described as South American camels, but Cesar insisted on saying "llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña“ every time the topic came up, which was a lot.

The next bus stop was Mirador de los Andes (Lookout of the Andes) also known as Patapampa Pass. The elevation here is 16,109 feet above sea level. For reference, that’s about 1,600 feet above the peak of Mt. Whitney. The air is very thin up here, walking just a 50 feet to the restroom left you short of breath, but the views were amazing. It seemed there was a volcano every direction you looked.

After enjoying the views, we began to descend down toward Chivay and the Colca Canyon. The descent was very welcoming as Kate was beginning to feel a bit woozy from the altitude. The road was a winding mix of old asphalt and graded dirt that meandered past waterfalls, rock slides, grasslands, and awe inspiring views.This was one of the first times in Peru I’ve wished I was on a motorcycle.

We pulled into Chivay and stopped for lunch. The restaurant was down a side road littered with tour busses, served a buffet lunch, and had a traditional band playing. Locals obviously didn’t eat here. Cesar explained that restaurants typically don’t serve lunch around here, and the ones that do are just catering to tourists. My take on it is the people around here are too busy working to go out to lunch. The food was good, but we had no idea what we were eating. My soup kinda tasted like chicken noodle, but contained what I’m assumed are vertebrae of some animal. Maybe it was alpaca, it was delicious. The other two highlights were the deep fried balls of goodness topped with passion fruit sauce on the upper left of my plate and the dark meat ribs of a mistery animal on the lower part of my plate. Perhaps this is alpaca?

    

This was about as much as I wanted to see of Chivay, streets lined with tour busses, buffet meals, bars and discotheques, definitely not our speed. I’m not sure if it was a stroke of luck, or Kate’s amazing planning, (probably mostly the latter) but we were staying in  Yanque, a small village (population 1600-1900 depending who you ask) about 4 miles west of Chivay. We were shown to a small SUV that would take us to our hotel, along with strict instructions to be ready to be picked up between 7 and 7:10 am. We also met Andy and Paula, a very nice couple from London who would be staying at our same hotel. We are told that Yanque doesn’t luck that much different than it did in colonial times, and I believe it. The dirt roads are lined with simple homes and women in bright dresses and blingy hats walk livestock through town. In other places they would be showing their alpacas off to tourists and asking for tips to pose for pictures, here they are moving their livestock to or from it’s pasture.

Our hotel, Killawasi Lodge, is definately the most luxurious place we’ve stayed. Guillermo and Amador greeted us and showed us to our room. Our room has a king bed and sparkling clean bathroom downstairs, and a loft with a sitting area and two double beds.

After setting down our bags and changing, we met Amador, as well as Andy, Paula and 3 Spanish speaking guests for a 3 hour hike around the area. The valley the town is situated in is beautiful from every angle, with a small stream running through it.

Nearly every surface of the valley is terraced agricultural land, and has been since pre-Inca times. Even more impressive is that these plots of land have been handed down from generation to generation. This terraced semi-circular section of the valley is Oqolee’s Amphitheatre. I’m sure it would look even more impressive if it were all green, but it is currently the dry season, so there were just a few sheep and donkeys enjoying the view.

Our next stop was along the steep banks of the valley where Amador explained that the pre-Incan people that settled this area carved holes, colcas, in the cliff face. The cool breeze through the valley act as a refrigeration system for the cocas. These clever refrigerators were used to store and preserve items such as food and bodies of important deceased people, hopefully in different colcas. The bodies of deceased people were preserved for use in religious ceremonies. It was believed that people never died, they just moved on.

We continued around the valley, we walked along the terraces and irrigation canals that are still in use today. At the other end of the valley we climbed up a few levels on steps protruding out of the wall. These steps have been here for over 500 years.

After a fairly strenuous climb, we arrived at the pre-Incan ruins of Uyu Uyu. The building we are standing in front of is a tampa. When the Incan empire conquered a tribe, they were required to build tampas for the Incas. These tampas served as hotels for the Incas traveling through the area. They were also required to keep them stocked with bedding and food. This mandate backfired on the Incas as the Spanish were able to use the tampas as camps as they conquered the Incas.

This village even had running water. This canal brought snow melt from the waterfall above directly through the village. It would still be running today, but the water has been diverted for irrigation.

On the walk down the hill from Uyu Uyu, we passed a terrace with a mamma cow, and her sleeping baby calf. This was about as close as I dared to get.

At the bottom of the hill, we reached some natural hot springs, which sounded amazing after about 4 miles of hiking. In the first picture you can see the water litterally boiling as it comes out of the earth. We’re still very over 11,000ft in elevation, so the boiling water was only around 185 degrees. The boiling water was directed into a series of pools that were built into the hillside. As we changed into our bathing suits, we saw the last tour bus of the day drive off. Did I mention how happy I was that we are staying in Yanque, not Chivay?

After about 20 minutes in the hot springs we got out and changed back into our clothes. The weather around here is very pleasant during the day, quite like Central California. As soon as the sun sets it gets cold, overnight lows in the 40s. The air felt particularly brisk as we climbed out of the hot springs.

It was completely dark by the time everyone had changed, and we still had about a mile to walk, mostly up hill on a graded road. Luckly, Amador had brought flashlights for everyone but himself. The walk back to the lodge began with crossing what is probably the most precarious cable bridge of my life.

Back at the Lodge, Amador took our dinner orders and we went to our room to rinse the mineral water off and change for dinner. I ordered alpaca sautéed vegetables. Now I know what alpaca tastes like, and I’m a fan.

At this point the altitude was getting to Kate and she felt horrible. She left dinner early and went to sleep. As I finished her passion fruit chicken, which was somewhat like Panda Express chicken only better,  I turned to Google to see what we could do about Kate’s altitude sickness. We had already been doing what the Mount Everest Medical Centre recommends, pausing at a lower altitude to acclimate (we spent a couple nights in Arequipa), and drinking plenty of water. While the Centre doesn’t recommend Diamox as a replacement for a slow accent, it does recommend it when a slow accent is not possible or to treat altitude sickness. After dinner Kate took two 125mg Diamox and two ibuprofen (to reduce the swelling that comes with mountain sickness). As I said earlier, we only brought enough for the Machu Picchu trek, but for now she can take mine as I’m acclimating to the altitude faster. We’ll try to get some more when we’re in a real city, and hopefully Kate will acclimate soon.

In the morning Kate felt better but continued to take Diamox. After a breakfast that included all the scrambled eggs I could eat, our tour guide, Cesar, picked us up at 7:11, and joked about only being 1 minute late. While we had come to Yanque in a small SUV, we were picked up in the 40+ foot luxury tour bus. I’m amazed how the driver managed to whip the bus though these narrow colonial streets.

Today we were headed down into the Colca Valley to a point named La Cruz del Condor (Condor Cross). First we stopped in a small village to buy water, use the restroom, and take a photo of this pretty cool church in the shadow of volcanoes.

We stopped to look at more terraced agriculture plots. I’m not sure the photographs really do this justice, and I’m not sure if anyone reading this finds them interesting, but here’s another photo of a different valley.

We arrived at the Condor Cross at about 8:45AM, but only after enduring a seemingly endless lecture from Cesar about the andean condor. Here’s the highlights, they mate for life, they live 75-85 years, wingspan is over 9 feet, and they are carnivores but do not hunt, they eat the carcasses of dead llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña. Unfortunately, Kate and I dropped the ball on charging the camera the night before and it died after about five minutes. Most of the photos of the condors were taken with the iPhone.

After about an hour of condor watching, which is far more impressive than it sounds, we headed back toward Chivay. On the way back Cesar invited us on an optional hike that he described as easy and flat. It wasn’t particularly challenging, but it definitely wasn’t flat. The views were nice though.

We got back to the hotel around noon.If you recall, Guillermo didn’t have room for us at Killawasi the second night, so we were staying at a neighboring bed and breakfast which he described as “more basic”; we didn’t really know what to expect. As we walked next door to the Miskiwasi, Amador explained the situation. Guillermo had built the Miskiwasi Bed and Breakfast a while ago. A few years ago, he built the Killawasi Lodge and sold the half of the Miskiwasi to a business partner  Eventually running both properties was too much, and he sold the rest of the Miskiwasi to his partner. As I said, Killawasi was the nicest place we stayed in Peru, but Miskiwasi was a close second.

There were horseback and mountain bike riding tours we could have partaken in, but we chose to spend the afternoon napping, updating the blog, doing laundry, and generally relaxing. It was really nice after cramming so much adventure into the last 9 days.

Kate still had a little headache, and we only had two ibuprofen left. We asked Amador if there was a pharmacy in town, there wasn’t, but Guillermo was headed to Chivay in an hour and we could go with him. We relaxed and waited for him to come get us. In about an hour Amador knocked on our door (at the hotel next door to the one he works for) with ten 400mg ibuprofens in a blister pack, 5 soles, but they’d just add it to our bill. This is just one example of how truly nice and hospitable Guillermo and Amador were. If you’re ever visiting Colca Canyon, I highly recommend the Killawasi Lodge.

The next day we wouldn’t leave for Puno until 11am, so we had the chance to sleep in, read in the hammocks in the morning sun, and enjoy the last hot shower we might see for who knows how long. At 11 we squared up with Amador and got in a minivan to Chivay.

We dropped off our bags at the bus station and walked about the square looking for lunch. Before we got to the restaurant that Amador suggested we found what claimed to be the worlds highest Irish Pub. We stopped in for lunch, we both had trout and it was delicious. The place looked like our kind of pub and was belting out horrible 80s and 90s music, we heard Spice Girls, the song from Titanic, and Hanson’s MMMbop. It probably would have been a great time last night.

Our bus to Puno was a bigger more luxurious than our bus from the last two days. It was so luxurious, my knees didn’t even hit the seat in front of me. It’s a 6 hour bus ride from Chivay to Puno, and there isn’t a lot to see. I wrote this blog in real time, which means we’re all caught up, and Kate got a little shut eye.

After a couple hours we stopped to use the restroom at a lake that somewhat reminded me of Don Pedro.

A little while later we passed a pond covered in flamingos. The flamingos fly to from Chile to Peru for  the winter. They fly north for the winter, weird.

As we came off the high plains and down into a valley, the road wound along a river, and I again thought this would be a nice time to have a motorcycle.

Pretty soon it got dark and we passed through the city of Juliaca, which seemed a bit seedy and I’m glad our bus just kept driving.

We pulled into Puno and hopped in a cab to our hotel. In the morning we’ll see what this city is all about.