Colca Canyon

October 12-13 2012

The trip to the Colca canyon started at 3am on Friday morning. We had arranged with our hotel to hold the bags until our return on Saturday. The tour operator arrived promptly to pick us up from the hotel. We made a couple of stops at other hostels to pick up more people and were on our way to the canyon.

Our first stop was at Chivay. We had to pay an entrance fee for the canyon here and we also stopped for breakfast. It was too early in the morning, but I did catch a few glimpses of an arid Andean landscape here. From Chivay, we drove onto a view point where we stopped for seeing the condors. These are immensely huge birds that fly up to very high altitudes ( we were around 3000m at the view point). Marciel, our tour guide told us that they are scavengers and go after dead meat. In the hills, they will topple an alpaca or llama, wait for it to die, and then scavenge....

Anyway, we were very lucky that day. We saw close to 6-8 birds. The adults have a beautiful silver and black coating on their back and the young ones are brown. The flight of the condor is truly amazing. It totally made sense as to why, whoever made the Nazca lines, chose to represent these birds there.
While viewing the condors, we had a pleasant surprise. Nicole and I were commenting on the beauty of the birds, when we heard a male voice agreeing with us from behind. It was Stephen and Claire!!! They were hiking the colca canyon on their own and  arrived coincidentally at the condor viewpoint at the same time as us. We exchanged pleasantries and after about 10 minutes moved on as our bus was waiting for us.
The next stop was the ride to the beginning of the trek.  All along we saw Inca and pre-Incan steps that were built into the hills for irrigation. Marciel told us that the word Colca was the Quechua term for the grain storage unit.  These were cylindrical shaped buildings built in the Colca river valley to hold cereal and dried potatoes.
Once we arrived at the beginning of the trek, we split up into two groups. Our group consisted of six members and Marciel, our tour guide. The climb down into the canyon was arduous.  Both Nicole and I did not have sticks and our knees took quite a bit of beating. The trekking surface was made up of loose gravel and stones. We also trekked during high noon and the sun did not make things any easier. The first stop point was at the river in the valley.  To reach this we had to climb down from 3400m to 2160m.
All along the route, we had amazing views of an arid Andean landscape with a few snow-capped peaks. We passed along many trekkers and many who had started after us, passed us as well.
This was something that annoyed us a bit. Nicole and I usually take our time and have a relaxed pace with trekking.  Here we felt like we had to keep up with the group. During our climb down, Marciel gave us some coca leaves to chew on.  This is used commonly by the locals to reduce heart-rate and build the red blood cell count (increase oxygen carrying capacity).

I was totally de-hydrated and exhausted by the time I got down.  Not realizing how much energy was required beforehand, I had not loaded up at breakfast.  The cool winds in the canyon had masked my thirst. and once I reached the bottom and paused for a while, it hit me. We crossed the river via a small swing bridge, and had to go up 500m to get to our first rest point. This was when the canyon completely knocked me out. I had to come to a complete stop, eat a few biscuits and drink lots of water before I could move along.  Nicole on the other hand was smart with taking lots of water breaks and was holding up pretty well.

We arrived at Marciel's sisters house;guest lodge for lunch.  What a relief! I had one of the best lunches ever. After an arduos trek, a warm quinoa and vegetable soup was the thing we really needed. Quinoa is a grain that grows only above 3000m altitude and the grain has a very high protein and mineral content. For those of you in Bangalore, you can get the grain at the Nilgiri´s store in 4th block Jayanagar ( maybe in other places now). You can make excellent upittu with this.

After lunch, we headed back on the trail to go to our campsite for the evening. This was the most fun part of the trek.  All along Marciel showed us his village and talked about this culture. He would point out to a herb, tell us about its benifits, let us smell and taste it. It was wonderful. The wild mint leaves that grows in this part of the world doesn´t look like mint from back home.  There was another herb that is used for altitude sickness, a red berry that is peppery, and so on and so forth (too many to remember). Marciel took us to his grandmothers house where he grew up.  It was in a dilapitated farm with some really tall and old avocado trees.  I always thought that avocado trees were much smaller (not 30 ft tall).  Apparently, these grew from the seeds that Marciel planted when he was a kid.

After another 5 hours of hiking, we came to the campsite of the first day. This site is known as the Oasis.  It is not hard to imagine why.  Situated right next to the Colca river in the valley, it is one of the greenest parts in the area. We were given a bed in a room with thatched roof, This was great.  There was also a pool on the grounds.  Nicole and I took a quick dip to refresh ourselves. We had pasta with tomato sauce for dinner. I commneted that we were having ¨Pasta Bolognese sin Carne¨, and my European friends in the group got a good laugh out of it.

We had a perfect starry night.  We could see the Milky way from our site.  It was awesome.  I on the other hand had not figured out how to take those cool starry night photos, so I blew my chance (I also did not have a tripod). Polli, our Spanish friend from the group, pointed out the international space station in the sky, and it was pretty cool. We were all quite tired and went to bed early.

The next day morning, Marciel woke us up at 4.45am in the morning. We had to leave the grounds by 5.30am for our climb back up. The climb uphill is short and direct (and also very steep). Marciel told us that the record for the climb back up is about an hour (held by the locals).  Apparently, they hold races every year for $1000 and the current record for the entire trail is 3.5 hours!! We had roughly 3.5 hours to complete the climb back up.

I broke away from the group after the first 30 minutes and started climbing alone. I passed by others along the way, but Nicole was 15 to 20 minutes behind me along the trail.  I would periodically look down to make sure she was making progress and continued on.  There was something in the fresh air that morning, that just kept me going, and I did not want to hold back. I made it to the top in 2.5 hours.  Nicole followed 30 minutes later.

We had a big breakfast at the top.  I asked a village lady to pose for me so that I could take a picture of her beautiful hat.  She was thrilled ofcourse, and her friends found my interest in their hats very amusing.
After this we started our way back to Arequipa on the bus.  We stopped in the village of Maca to take a break and purchase trinkets from the locals.  I bought the Peruvian panpipes from a lady for 12soles.  I also had a chance to use a couple of Quechua words with another lady from whom I bought a few snacks. Quechua is the local language of the Andean people before the Spanish conquest.  It is still widely spoken in the highlands.  There are many varieties of Quechua depending on the region you come from.  Marciel had taught me a few words and it was fun using it.

We stopped back in Chivay to go to the hot-springs. It was great to get rid of the weariness from the 2 day hike. After the hot-springs, we came back to Chivay town center for lunch.  Here we witnessed a local wedding, which included lots of ¨rice-throwing¨ at the bride and the groom!!

We arrived in Arequipa at 5 in the evening.  We were able to gt back to the hotel where we had stored our bags.  We had a quick shower and headed off the the Bus depot, to catch our overnight bus to Cuzco.  We had an interesting experience at the Cruz del Sur bus terminal in Arequipa.  It was set-up like an airline terminal.  We had to check-in our bags, wait in a lounge area, and wait for our seat numbers to be called out, to board the bus! fun.  It was a 10hr bus ride to Cuzco...

Catching up on pics!

You can click on pictures to enlarge!

Atacama desert, on the way to Nazca (taken from bus):

It's time to get on the plane...aaahhh!

Stephen, Claire, Rakesh and I all strapped up, earphoned and ready to go!

How? When? and Why? (taken with my, first ever, super-duper zoom lens):

 "Astronaut"

 "Hummingbird"

 "Tree" (left) "Hands" (right) Tower in center from where people can view some of the geoglyphs

Views from plane (incl. more lines)

Another big city: Arequipa

After our Nazca flight, we had a great need to relax at our hostel prior to getting back on the road again. I certainly did, as it took a while for my stomach to calm down, after feeling a little queezy from the small aircraft flight. Luckily, I had heard about the risk of motion-sickness and so armed myself with a pill about an hour before the flight. It worked, I did not need to use the small plastic bag sticking out of the back pouch of the seat in front of me! I digress....

We (along with Claire and Stephen) took a Cruz Del Sur bus with very comfortable reclining seats and a foot rest (comparable to first class seats in an airplane) for only $55! Ok, so we did splurge a little and got the "executive" vs the "regular" seats. The ride to Arequipa was 8 hours long and included lunch and a snack. There was one negative, however: to Rakesh's and my horror, they played back to back movies from departure to arrival very loudly, through the main speakers of the bus. I thought I was going to go crazy! I asked the bus attendant, kindly AND in Spanish, if she could reduce the volume. She said "si, si", but did not do anything about it. Luckily, I remembered that I had a pair of earplugs in my bag! Ah, relief! 

We arrived in Arequipa, around 10pm, we said our goodbyes to Claire and Stephen with the hopes if possibly seeing them again, and then went directly to our hostal which was very close to the old square or "plaza". At that point,  Rakesh and I were feeling a little hungry. We ventured out to the square and found little to be open, except for a couple pizzerias! We chose one and sat next to a couple of professors, who were interested in where we were from. We got chatting and the one professor, gave us a recommendation for restaurant "Sol de Mayo" for typical Peruvian food. He also gave us his phone number and told us where he lived in case we needed any help!

The next day, we walked around the city of Arequipa. The 2nd largest city in Peru. It is surrounded by several mountains and volcanoes. One of them, El Misti (5822m), is a nice backdrop for cathedral in the main square "Plaza de Armas". Many of the buildings are, ofcourse, colonial. What makes these colonial buildings unique, however, is that they are built from volcanic rock "sillar". 

We visited the Monasterio Santa Catalina, a convent dated back to 1580. It's like a citadel in itself and maze-like with simple architecture and interchanging blue and orange walls. Many of the rooms that one could visit, looked very much the same after a while, but it was fun to walk around in and take pictures. There was also a chance to climb up some steep stairs to a chapel (closed) where we could see views of El Misti and part of the city from above (more kodak moments). 

We also visited our first local market, since arriving in Peru. Rakesh likened it a market in Bangalore, which I have also been to "K.R. Market". The market is somewhat indoors, and has all you could ever want, from produce, to meats, to cooked foods, to clothing and crafts. We bought some fruits (chicita bananas and figs) and sat down at a stall to share a freshly made mixed fruit juice (lucuma, mango, banana). Hhhmmm, so scrumdidliumptious! 

One our second and last day in Arequipa, we reserved a tour of the Colca Canyon. We, had hoped to be able to visit the Canyon without joining a tour, though we would have needed more days to do so. 

We decided to visit one more museum that was top on our list. The Museo Sancturios Andinos. This included a 30 minute  National Geographic documentary about the findings of various mummified bodies of children that were sacrificed. It was then that I realised that one of the bodies, was of a girl, "Juanita", that was found in 1995, and that I remember hearing or reading about at that time. She was named after the scientist who discovered her body on Ampato (6288m). These mummies are not like those in Egypt, but one's that were sacrificed on top of mountain summits, neighboring volcanoes that had erupted. The Inka's believed that an eruption of a volcano was equivalent  to a "mountain god" being dissatisfied. Therefore, the Inka's chose children with certain attributes to be sacrificed in order to appease the gods. The bodies were then "mummified" due to being exposed to the ice at such great heights. 

After watching the documentary, we were lead by a college student throughout the museum and was shown sacrificial artifacts and clothing of the children that were found. Last, but not, least we were lead into a darkened room where "Juanita's" body was preserved at an ice-cold temperature in an incubator!! The body of a girl who was sacrificed over 500 yrs ago!! Very eerie! A very interesting museum! 

Overall, Arequipa was fun to visit. I felt like 2 days was plenty, as again due to it being another big city, it was full of people and traffic!! 

Nazca Part 2

The highlight and the main reason for our stay in Nazca, was to see the Nazca Lines. Tuesday morning, we set out early, for our second attempt to see these incredible and mind-boggling geoglyphs! Although, excited about the prospect, I was a little apprehensive, too. I definitely felt a sense of butterflies in my stomach when we were called to board the plane - a 6 seater, including 2 for the pilots. The others, for Rakesh, Claire, Stephen and myself. The smallest plane that Rakesh and I have ever been in!

The doors were locked and the plane attendant outside, pointed his thumb up, giving the pilots the "all clear" signal. There was no backing out, at this point! The little plane was on the run way in no time, and up between at around 3000 ft within seconds!

From there, the pilot pointed out each of many geoglyphs, as we flew above them, one by one. We each had headphones on, to listen to the pilot's instructions as to how to locate each of the geoglyphs. Some were more evident than others. Unfortunately, my headphones were not working properly, so I resorted to Rakesh's abrupt pointing motions. Somehow, they helped! Some of the geoglyphs we saw included a monkey, a dog, a humming-bird, and a duck.

We all had a fabulous experience, and the weather was perfect!

Other than the Nazca Lines, we also saw the world's largest sand dune. It was searing over the city of Nazca, in the distance. It measures, 2078ft in height!! A sand boarder's heaven, no doubt!!

The town of Nazca, is overall pretty small, yet crowded. Lots, of people and vehicles. It was my first time in a desert town. While there, I forgot, that we were in the middle of the desert, and it only struck me when I saw several women sweeping SAND off their front store window sills and away from the sidewalk!! The owner of our hostel, too. He was sweeping the whole ground floor, as we were just lounging around in the living area. I was thinking about the fact that I complain about the dust that collects in my house in CA. This is so little, in comparison to what these people have to deal with!! Argh! These poor people. I know I would go insane!

Huacachina

 [I just tried to edit this older blog dated after blogs about Lima. Unfortunately, google blogger is not so user friendly and am not able to get it back to it's original place in the hierarchy of blogs. We could, if we took the time to figure out the java script.]

A very surreal place, a man-made Oasis which attracts local and foreign tourists. Lined with backpacker type hostels along with bars/restaurants attached to them. Surrounded by huge dunes filled with people trekking, sand boarding, simply hanging out or on sand buggies for a thrilling ride.

We climbed almost to the top of one of the sand dune hillsides to take in the views and the sunset. It was definitely a first time and amazing experience. The dessert/dunes went on forever (or so it seemed!).

We had to change hostel for that last night, and the ear plugs came in handy again (also needed during previous night)!

Random observations.

I wanted to post a few pics of random things I have been noticing here.

First is this mod-bike/ fruit cart. We bought bananas from this guy and he posed for us.

 

 

I have seen many printers in Peru, which are modded with these exterior ink tanks and feed tubes to run the printers. Need to find out where I can get access to this.

 

 

Doing business from across the iron grill.  Most shops have these for security.  I bought what we call kadle puri in kannada from this shop.  It is like rice crispies.

 

This poster from Huacachina describes the various tourist activities.  They have a choice name for the Winery tours. See the heading below Winery tours in the poster.

First dose of pictures!

Don´t remember ever seeing an aisle for pregnant women, the elderly or disabled in a supermarket before!

Us in front of Museo Larco, a pre-columbian artifacts museum.

Lunch at Coco´s mother´s house. Drink with purple corn and pineapple (Chica Morada) and a cheese and milk dish (Trigo con queso) with chicken and fish. Also in pic, Coco´s son and nephew.

Candelabra or cactus etching in sand dune (Paracas).

Top 2 pics: Islas Ballestas. The black shaded region in the second pic is all birds!!
 

After climbing up the sand dunes: Huancachina Atacama desert

Huancachina lagoon.

¿Que pasa? After taxi breakdown due to no more fuel!! (With Claire and Stephen).

On to Nazca

We teamed up with a lovely Irish/Scottish couple (Claire & Stephen) that we met in Huaca China for the next part of the trip, as they had the same plans as us; to visit the Nazca lines and then move onto Arequipa.

We booked our Nazca lines flight with an agency in Huaca China. All went smoothly in the morning, the taxi man picked us up on time from our respective hostels, took us to the bus station and the bus left on time.

The views from bus were incredible. Once out of the city (Ica) we were back in vast planes and hilly desert land. Closer to the city we saw tons of shacks made from wreaths. A few seemed to be lived in, though most were destroyed (by wind, I assume) and dilapidated. Then further into the desert, all that we could see was the road we drove on and other vehicles coming and going, for quite a few miles.

As we began approaching Nazca, the first of a few encounters took place. All of a sudden we came to a complete standstill on the road. After about 15 mins people started to get off the bus and walk to their destinations. I began to feel a little worried as we had a reservation or our Nazca flight at 12pm and it was already around 11:15 or so. I got off the bus to see what was going on. "An accident" the bus agent said. Well, how long would this take to clear, I thought. Luckily, as I began to explain our situation to the bus agent, the traffic began to move and we were at our destination in no time!

Encounter #2: our taxi driver, who was supposed to pick us up was not there! After calling a few numbers, we finally got through to the hostel that was organizing the ride, and the sent for a driver to pick us up. More time wasted, as it was already past 12pm!

Encounter #3: we get to the hostel and the guy we talk to about the flight reservation doesn't have a clue about what we r talking about. "wait wait, my friend is coming". More time goes by!

The right person eventually comes along and luckily, knows about our reservations. Phew! We were to leave almost immediately for the Nazca Lines airport.

Encounter #4: we each check in, get weighed and pay the airport taxes. Then we r told to wait in the lounge until we r called to board the plane.
During this time, Stephen over heard other tourists asking for their airport taxes back as the weather looked like it was spoiling. I went out to look and sure enough, the visibility was terrible and the winds had picked up. I called the man in charge at the hostel and asked if we could defer the flight until tomorrow. Luckily, we could! The man sent for another taxi to pick us up.

Encounter #5: As we're driving away from the airport, the taxi comes to a halt. I ask "que pasa?" the man at first doesn't answer me as he is on his cell phone. A couple minutes later he turns around and tells us he's "out of gas"! Of all places we are stranded right before a curve on the road with cars flying around the corner! Yikes! All four of us get out of the car and wait on the dusty road bank. A motorcycle comes along, takes an empty gas bottle away and then another driver comes to save us! We finally get back to the hostel, safe and sound.

Islas Ballestas

The morning after arriving in Huaca China, we joined a tour group to see the Ballestas Islands. We boarded a speed boat that first stopped off at the hillside of a large sand dune so that we could view the "Candelabra". This is an actual etching of what looks like a Candelabra or cactus in the sand dune, of unknown origin. It is 177m tall and 50m wide. There are 3 myths about the origin: 1) that it dates back to the indigenous ppl of Paracas (region from where we boarded the boat) and from 2000A.D. 2) done by pirates to indicate the directions for north/south 3) created for one of the Generals as a Masonic symbol.
So one wonders how is this figure still there? Our guide explained that its because the slope faces north and so protects it from the winds.
We continued on to some pretty big waves (yikes) to get a close look at sea lions, birds including Guanay Black Comorats, Humboldt penguins, Peruvian boobies. The highlight was catching a glimpse of a baby sea lion suckling from its mother.
Stay tuned for pics!

Travel to Ica

We took the local "Peru-bus" from Lima to Ica yesterday. We were told it would take only 3 hours. Apparently that is only of you take the VIP bus. The local state run buses are run for the people and rightly so. In this desolate region, the bus stops for people along the route. This is similar to the local busses in India.

Another thing that I did not realize was that this part of Peru is a desert(don't know if this leads all the way to the Atacama in Chile). We are right now in Huancachina 5 km off of Ica. I have seen dunes in Rajhasthan before, but they did not seem to be so tall( maybe in the interior they are).

Anyway, the ride here last night had a very surreal feeling. The setting sun on this desolate landscape gave a feeling of us being on the Mars rover looking upon an alien landscape. Very very cool, but for the fact that, the bus was showing a poor, loud, Spanish dubbed version of the Avengers movie. On top of that, the driver was playing folk music loudly on his stereo. I was so much hoping that they would turn off everything and that we would have a second of peace and quiet, but no. I did have a chance to enjoy the desert in peace, during our morning ride to Isles Ballestas. It was awesome. Nicole will have more on our trip to the bird infested islands : ).

Bajaj auto

I was very surprised to learn about the existence of the 3 wheeled auto rickshaws / tuk-tuks in Peru. You will not find them in Lima Centro or the posh Miraflores area. However , if you venture out to one of the lesser affluent areas like San-Miguel or Magdalena, you can find them. Our driver Juan was telling me that they are made by Bajaj, the Indian manufacturer who makes these in India and assembles them in Peru. Unlike the Indian version, though, these have doors. They were are marked CNG, indicating that they run on natural gas. They all these things "mu-autto".

Street side junk food

Mostly seen a lot of sweets similar to the Greek lokumades/ Indian jamoon… deep fried dough balls in a sweet syrup. There are a lot of carts which sell all the fried goodies that I am familiar with. ( fried plantains, banana chips, fried rice crispies( Indian equivalent of sandige), roasted peanuts and roasted corn… whose shapes are very different from the usual corn in the States). There are lots of meat sandwich stands as well, we have not ventured into any.

Deja vu Lima 2

Great! I wrote a lovely long post the other day about our arrival in Lima, decided to save it on this blogger app I'm using on the iPhone, in order to edit it later and then Rakesh points out that it's gone! Hence, the 2.5 rating on the blogger app.

So here it goes again, but an abridged version.

After, the major hiccup at the SF airport, all went smoothly. Comfortable plane ride, pretty good food (for what one gets on a plane) and easy move through the Lima airport (from immigrations to baggage claim). We were then greeted by a taxi driver named Juan, holding up a sign with our names on it. He is a friend of a wonderful Afro-Peruvian guitarist/musician, "Coco" who we hosted in CA for 3 weeks.

First impressions: Big city, TONS of people. More buses and taxis, than any other vehicle. Lots of honking. Vehicles have no respect for pedestrians...and drive very fast. People are very nice and helpful, when we ask them questions. They are very patient with my Spanish and luckily understand me!! I've even had a couple ppl tell me I speak Castellano, which is no surprise as I learned Spanish from teachers from mainland Spain! I guess, that was a compliment (for me)! Food is pretty good so far, though heavy emphasis on the meat/fish, ofcourse (though after being used to having a plethora of vegetarian options). Some beautiful buildings in Lima center, with European influence, ofcourse. Visited two Cathedrals, with moorish influence for ex. Lots of non-discript bldgs for the most part, but quite a bit of colour!

We will be going to Coco's mother's house for lunch this afternoon.

We've taken some pics and hope to share them soon. We need an Internet cafe/computer or that.

Deja vu Lima

"the visa is not valid"! What!!! This can't be. The Peru visa was the first one that I had obtained and the LAN airline official was telling me that it was not valid??? Our adventure had started even before we begin the journey…or was this going to be a misadventure??? We found a very helpful consulate official on the phone who explained to the LAN airline official that the Peru visa is marked for the date of issue, but the visa is valid from the day of entry to Preu. The date of issue was Aug 7th with a stay period of 45 days. Of course by oct 2 nd our start date, it was more than 45 days and this had confused the Lan airline official. Nevertheless, I have been booted of a plane once before( I need a transit visa to change planes in Canada!!! And they would not let me board my flight to Greece since I did not have that visa.), and did not want that experience agin. Especially for this trip.

What gave me a horrible feeling though was the following incident. I got the Peru consulate official to confirm the validity of the visa with me and passed on the phone to the LAN officer. The airline guy spoke to the consulate guy, hung up the phone and told me that the visa was invalid!!!!!WTF????

This happened again . I actually got the Peru consulate to send an official letter with a stamp and seal to the LAN airline guy confirming the validity of the visa. They first denied the fact that they received the e- mail. I then had the consulate send the letter to me. At that point they said they received the letter , but it said that the visa was expired!!!!WTFx2???!!! at this point I am completely lost. Thankfully one of them decided to actually read the letter and probably figured there would be a lawsuit of some sort. They let me board the plane. I had no freaking issue getting in at the Lima immigration. Apparently, the consulate officer knew what he was talking about. All this happened in 1hr before our boarding began. Nicole was the best and we would not have fought through if not for her support and composure. I have never worked the phone like this before in my life . All the texting BS ppl are into these days does not work. Got to work the phone. But I am thankful for technology that lets you take a call and view a email document simultaneously.

We are now in Lima experiencing a developing city( feels like Bangalore… ). We head off south tomorrow.

Reality?

Our idea was great! And it still is, don't get me wrong. But little did we know what traveling for a long period of time was going to entail, at the time of this wonderful idea!

The list is too big to mention, but to name a few: Practically moving out (almost everything, except our furniture). Rakesh and I swore that we wouldn't move again until we plan to buy a house...haha (that thought lasted for only 2 years)! Then there was the purchasing of all the necessary clothes, 

gear etc. - the fun part! Obtaining all necessary documents (see other posts for details). Booking some hostals, tours and flights (others we'll book along the way). 

We've been "homeless" since yesterday. That's when we turned our apartment over to our our subtenants. Ofcourse, we have a roof over our heads as we are staying with Rakesh's cousin and family. 

The big day is tomorrow, October 2nd 2012!! We will be flying out with LAN airlines at 12:45pm. It will be a direct flight to our first destination, Lima, Peru...