I had never even heard of Colca Canyon before I arrived in Peru. On the way in from the airport my cab driver asked if I was going there. He said it was better than the Grand Canyon. Yeah! Right! I knew it couldn’t be better, but maybe it was worth seeing. When I put together my travel package I Had it included.
The trip began with a seventy minute, evening flight to Arequipa in Southern Peru. After an announcement that my limited Spanish prevented me from understanding, we were served champagne rather than Pepsi. Then we got a Subway-type sandwich ... incredible on a seventy minute flight. Then, when we touched down, the passengers broke out in applause. I thought the previous flight must have crashed and they happy to land alive. Then I saw TV cameras outside. I loudly ask what was going on after finding out my seat-mate didn’t speak English. It turns out that it was Peruvian Airlines first flight into Arequipa. All those suits on the plane were worn by company executives.
I was met at the gate, as I would be at every stop of the tour, by a guide ... this one with limited English. I did find out that Arequipa is Peru’s second largest city with over a million inhabitants. This is a city I had never heard of before. It turned out to be a very nice at least at its core where I stayed. Later Cuzco would prove more interesting, but Arequipa seemed more livable.
Even at ten at night the Central Plaza, called Plaza de Armas in most Peruvian cities, was swarming with people ... even families with kids ... even a high school student needing to interview an English speaker for her language class. It was the same questions you get ask all over Latin America ... “How do you like our country? When did you arrive? How long will you stay? Oh yeah, where are you from.”
There was no time to explore Arequipa. In the morning before I was picked up, I just had time to run over to the Plaza and take pictures of the Cathedral. It was the first church to which I had ever been whose nave ran perpendicular to the front or plaza face. It wasn’t too old ... the whole town having been flatten by earthquakes rather regularly.
As we neared the edge of town we seemed to be entering into another world. There was no longer any trees or even grass. The bare red soil swirled up in clouds of dust. A hillside showed signs of a new barrio’s beginnings The guide said that a plot of slanting land in this government approved barrio was about 100 square meters ... that’s about 32 feet by 32 feet for a house, yard, and anything else it might take to survive.
The further we got from town the more desolate it got. It apparently never rains there. As we climbed out of the city there were quick views back down into the fertile valley in which Arequipa sat ... but no one lived up there in mountain desert. In a whole day there weren’t a dozen farm houses Standing alone. After an hour or so we came onto a dead flat high plateau or alti-plano where the road seemed to run straight to the horizon.
Along the way we stopped twice to look a vicuna grazing in the sand and scrub. Vicuna are the the smaller, wild version of the animals that we think of collectively as llamas. No one owns vicuna; they roam in the wild, but are rounded up to harvest their wool.
Llamas are the largest of these types of animals. They have long faces and multicolored wool. Alpacas are slightly small and either white or brown in color. When young, their shorter faces make them look almost like sheep. While both are domesticated, they are often seen grazing unattended on the alti-plano.
By the time we stopped, a toilet break was needed by all. It would be the first time I would be confronted by a market-like setting of vendors selling wool products, silver jewelry, and carved stone llamas. If a dozen similar stalls didn’t provide enough buying choice, there were a dozen or more individuals milling around with a single product to sell ... and they all had the mornful-eye-look down pat. Also available were little kids hoping you would take a picture of them and their llama.
What I didn’t know then was how often I would see this same scene in the coming days. What I also didn’t know was that the pavement had ended in that parking lot. The road ahead might often have better described as a trail. Motion sickness pills were probably in order as we whipped from one side of road to the other in order to bang through smaller potholes. The pavement would occasionally reappear only to crumple away again. Happily when we got to the final switch back climbs and decents the road was paved ... but didn’t have railings along the edge so you could look straight down a few hundred feet.
As we had driven higher and higher in altitude our guide had extolled us on the virtues of coca leaves, even handing out samples. At the stop she urged us to drink coca tea. Coca would keep us from getting altitude sickness. Even though I wasn’t worried about that, having never suffered any more than shortness of breath at latitudes up to 14,000 feet, I chewed the leaves. It’s much like chewing dirty, foul tasting weeds or grass ... the kind in your yard not the kind in a plastic baggy.
Our guide, Maribelle, constantly told us of native cures that she had learned from her grandmother. Nature had a plant to cure everything ... and coca was a miracle full of vitamins and minerals. She also reminded those who might have sought a coca high that it takes a great deal of processing to change coca leaves into cocaine.
Just after our stop at the highest point of our trip, 15,750 feet, it hit me ... altitude sickness. I had a head ache, was slightly dizzy, and very light headed. Her cure was using rubbing alcohol as a smelling salt ... and it worked ... to a point.
When we dropped down 4000 feet into the Colca Valley and it capital city/village, Chivay, I was forced to take a nap rather than explore the village. When it was time for our group supper in a hall with a hundred or more other tourists, I seemed to be nearly recovered ... that is until the ‘native Peruvian’ band started playing. The ‘native’ music has more like cover music ampped up to the volume of a rock band. The sound was loud enough to be heard miles up the valley. I am surprised that the local people didn’t complain about their peace being disturbed. Maybe they suffered in quiet thinking the crazy tourists who provide our livelihoods must like that noise.
I didn’t sleep well that night. I had a headache. Maybe it was from the band; probably from the altitude ... and I kept looking at my watch worrying about a five o’clock wake up call. Nothing later that day would indicate that we had needed to get up that early ... although I do suspect that the residents of Colca Valley may have wanted a little of the day to themselves without having a tourist snap their pictures or peer into their front door.
After spending the day before in what was essentially a desert, the Colca Canyon was beautiful green paradise. Actually, because of the high altitude, there wasn’t much natural foliage. The green was on the thousands of terraces which lined the mountain sides. The terraces, joined by winding foot paths, reached a thousand feet up above the valley floor. The work that had gone into building them unestimatible ... and this work had been done by the Incas six hundred years ago.
Colca Canyon is not another Grand Canyon. It is a whole different place ... a unique place of it’s own. The mountains rise as much as 4000 feet above the valley floor ... maybe the deepest canyon in the world, or maybe not. Their terraces are incredible. Nature is still at work there. A 1995 earthquake had dropped sections of the road a hundred feet or so reminding us all that the Andes Mountains are an evolving force of nature.
The bus tour of Colca Canyon ends at the Cruz del Condor where watching condor soar on wind currents is the advertised feature. It was a short feature as four different condors took up less than five minutes in over an hour’s time.Oh ... Now I remember why we had to get up so early. We not only drove back to Chivay where we ate a late lunch, but also on all the way back to Arequipa ... over six hours in a twelve passenger van. Only two of us survived the trip awake. Whether one likes the dirt roads, mountain switch backs, or desert atmosphere, it was a glimpse of another world ... one I hardly knew existed.
I squeezed in a couple miles of running before dark. Arequipa’s 7740 altitude ( the lowest point on my ten day trip ) made the up hill portions very uncomfortable ... two recovery walks were required to make it a half mile up a gentle slope. Maybe here the ”Are you Crazy?“ looks were justified.
Back in Arequipa it was Halloween and the whole town was out to celebrate. Parents tugged their little goblins and princesses thru the streets. Teenagers made themselves onto their favorite movie characters ... many of whom seemed to be teenage hookers. Thousands of orderly, happy people who were occasionally assaulted by irate drivers who apparently had no idea that driving through a throng of revelers would be so time consuming. When left at eleven he crowds had hardly diminished. That day’s five o’clock wake up was to be followed by one at six.
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