Arequipa and Colca canyon

"The early bird gets the worm."
~American Proverb

Saturday, September 27th to Sunday, September 28th 2008

We arrived to Arequipa on an early Saturday morning after an exhausting night bus ride from Ica. We had a list of recommended hotels but they were all full so we settled for one who was recommended by our taxi driver which looked good, was near the Plaza and came with a reasonable price tag - we didn't plan to stay long so we settled for the "good enough". After a short rest we went to find some breakfast and see what there is to do around town. Arequipa is not considered a safe place so we didn't plan to wander away from the Plaza de Armes or try any independent activities. We found a good cheap breakfast right next to our hotel but finding something to do proved to be a lot more challenging. It turns out that all the local museums are closed on the weekend and as luck would have it - it was Saturday all day long... The only thing to do in the city itself was to hang around the beautiful central Plaza.

We came to Arequipa for two reasons: it was the sane way to get to Cuzco and to see Colca canyon and the condors that inhibit it. We pondered what will be the best way to see the canyon: a 3 day trek, using the local transportation or an organized one day tour. After seeing some pictures from the Canyon trek and checking the local buses timetable we decided to go for the organized tour. We checked around several agencies and finally closed a deal with the first one we visited. We also bought a bus ticket to Cuzco for the night including transportation to the bus terminal through the same agency. Since Colca canyon is almost 6 hours drive away from Arequipa the pickup from the hotel was planned to around 2am so I went to work on this blog and got to bed early after having a bad pizza for dinner.

We all woke up at 1:30 and half asleep climbed to the small van that picked us up and proceeded through the sleeping city to gather all the other participants: a Danish family, a French couple and an elderly lady from Argentina. We silently drove though the night trying to catch some sleep despite the shaky ride through the mountains until we finally stopped for breakfast at around 6:00am in the town of Chivay which while not much more than a big village, is the capital city of the Colca district. The breakfast was very simple: hot tea with bread, butter and marmalade but at this early hour the bread came straight from the bakery making it a very good breakfast indeed. After the breakfast we left the paved road and drove along the south edge of the canyon, one of the deepest in the world, stopping in small towns and good viewpoints along the way and getting some explanations on the region. We got to the main attraction the Mirador Cruz del Condor at about 8:00. Just a little further down the road from the tiny village of Pinchollo, the mirador is the most popular point for looking into the depths of the canyon – it's around 1200m deep there – and where you can almost guarantee seeing several condors circling up from the depths against breathtaking scenery. We read on the Internet the the condors usually show up around 9:00 and amazingly enough as if performing on a clock the first condor show up at exactly that time. We show 4 condors circling the canyon on the hot air that rose from the ground in the hot morning sun but unfortunately none were close enough to see in full majesty. It was an impressive view and I was lucky to catch a few glimpses through a binocular. At around 10:00 we returned to the van and just as we got in - the driver pointed out to a magnificent condor rising from the canyon just a few meters from where we stood 2 minutes before. We followed the lonely condor as he soared up above us and became a black dot in the clear blue morning sky.

We drove back to Chivay stopping at one or two more viewpoints for another 2 hours. It was noon and time for lunch. Our guide took us to a local restaurant who featured an all you can eat local cuisine including Alpaca meat and we couldn´t resist the temptation to try it. It turned out that the local food is not that good (other than the Alpaca ribs that got to the table too late to change our opinion) next time we´ll take a sandwich... We drove back to Arequipa stopping for a brief time in the freezing Mirador del Volcanoes where we got a good view of the snowy mountains around us and got back to the Plaza and around 17:00 where we had about 2 and a half hours to spent before being picked up to the bus station. We hanged around the Plaza some more (museums still closed...) and read a little until the agency owner came to pick us up. We immediately saw that we have a problem: the tiny cab already had the driver and the agency owner inside and the 3 of us with our big backpacks still outside... Let´s just say that we had to open the windows and keep part of the backpack outside the cab for the short ride to the bus terminal. We were very tired after two nights with very little sleep when we boarded the night bus to Cuzco.