The Colca Canyon

Finalmente! I DO love Peru, after all.

I returned yesterday from a three day trek through the Colca Canyon, and I finally feel like I´ve gotten a genuine taste of Peru. (It´s possible that I just didn´t WANT poverty-striken Puno to be my real taste, but oh well...)

Monday morning, we boarded a 6 AM bus that would take us to Chivay, Peru, about six hours from Arequipa. The bus system is...interesting. We had paid for a ticket from Arequipa to Chivay, but throughout the entire ride, we acted like a local bus, making irritatingly frequent stops to pick up Peruvians and drive them a mile or two down the road. I suppose this is a very nice service for these folks - many of them are women carrying heavy loads of produce or children - but it was slow going. They stuffed the bus to the gills, too, allowing people to stand in the aisles. It felt like a Manhattan bus - I will endure having a stranger´s armpit in my face if it means I can have a seat!

We arrived at the town of Cabana Conde, a town of 3,000, around noon. We had booked the entire trip, everything from bus tickets to meals to guide service included, through the owner of the hostel in Arequipa. The owner seemed so kind and enthused, that we figured it would be better (and cheaper) than going through a big tour company, so we signed on, hoping for the best. The owner had put us on the bus that morning, instructing us to go to Mumia Juanita´s Restaurant when we arrived and to ask for Edwin, our guide-to-be. Easy enough, we thought.

But, when we found the sign for Mumia Juanita´s, the restaurant was boarded up, closed, and seemed to have been that way for quite a while. We stood there in the middle of the dirt road, surounded by hand-made brick homes and Peruvians eyeing is curiously.

Well, let´s just ask someone, I said. Somehow, saying "Edwin" was enough. Someone knew him and went off to find him for us. Thank goodness! We never actually met Edwin, but another guide from his "company" came to find us, and led us to a restaurant where lunch was awaiting us. The restaurant was full of other gringos with their guides, so we breathed a sigh of relief. It was all going to be okay!

It was better than okay, as it turned out. This little excursion will be joining my "best of" list.

At about 1:30 that afternoon, after a filling rice and beans lunch, Juan Carlos, Bjorn, and I, headed off into the canyon. I don´t know how we managed to get a guide to ourselves, but we did, and it was great. Although Juan Carlos didn´t speak hardly any English, I put my comprehension skills to work and managed to get most of what he told us.

He told us about Cabana Conde, about how poor everyone is, about how the governor in Lima doesn´t help the small villages, about how they are forgotten. He told us about every single plant we passed, practically. This guy knew his stuff! I am so envious of people who have this kind of knowledge - who can name trees and plants and birds, who can tell me which plants are edible and which aren´t, who know the medicinal purposes of the plants. He knew everything. Plants for stomach ache, plants for broken bones, plants for impotence, plants for constipation, plants for sore throat. You name it, you can find a cure growing naturally in Peru. He even showed us the original dyes used to color lipsticks that we Americans used to use! There are insects that attache themselves to cacti, creating a white, powdery, fungus type of thing on the cactus. When you scrape one of these little pods of insects off and smash them between your fingers, blood squits out - Ooooh! Just my color! Juan Carlos made us smear the blood on our arms, demonstrating its dyeing capabilites. (Seriously, it was just my color, except that I never wear makeup out here...)

This canyon boasts a 1000 meter drop from top to bottom, and on that first day, we climed all 1000 meters down. It was fairly steep, but the paths make nice zig-zags across the mountain, so it doesn´t get too overwhelming. The way down took us about three hours, and we passed a ton of locals, making their daily (!) trek up the canyon. I cannot imagine getting used to this. These were not young folks, either. Most of them were over the age of 50, I´d say, and I´m not dissing anyone in that age group, but I´m just saying, wow! They were carrying heavy loads in most cases, and in all cases, they were wearing sandals!

We arrived at the pueblo of San Juan, where we were to spend the first night. San Juan consists of about five families. Yep, that´s it. There are several "hospedajes" for trekkers like me, and I´m guessing the money that comes in from these keeps the pueblo alive. Otherwise, these folks are subsisting purely on their own efforts. Farming, farming, and more farming.

I may have said that I felt like I was in a remote location when I was on Easter Island, but the remoteness of Easter Island is NOTHING compared to these little pueblos in the Colca Canyon. These villages only got electricity as of ONE YEAR AGO! Wow. On some levels, I cannot understand what makes these people stay here, and on others, I get it completely. These people don´t have any easy time of it, by any means. Their survival is utterly up to their own efforts. But they are missing out on so many delightful modern-world worries - it must be such a peaceful life out there in the canyon.

We feasted on alpaca meat that first night. I can´t say I liked it, really, but I also didn´t really taste it after the first bite. I covered it up rather well with rice and salt. Poor alpaca. You´re so pretty. I´m so sorry to eat you.

The next morning we had some delicious pancakes (one of my favorite Spanish words, by the way - panqueque, pronounced pan-kay-kay) and were on our way out of San Juan by 7:45 AM. We passed through two other small pueblos, one of which we stopped in to visit the local "museo". The museum consisted of one small room, full of tools and stuffed animals and clothing. A sweet local lady, whose gums clung to her remaining 6 or so teeth, gave us a tour through the museum - basically just explaining what each item was. After the tour, she let us sample some of her own home-grown peaches and cactus fruit, showed us the baby chickens that had just hatched, and her home-made bricks.

I´d kind of like to go to pueblo camp out here. Learn the plants. Learn to cook. Learn to survive! I´d probably go crazy, but it´s a nice idea, I think.

We made our way down to the bottom of the canyon to "the Oasis", which was basically just an area full of nice river-fed pools. We spent several hours here, relaxing, playing with llamas and kitties, and eating lunch.

And then...it was three hours straight back up, out of the canyon. Yowsers. That was not easy. But again, the zig-zagging paths did help. I could do that walk once a week, tops. Maybe twice. But just think - what if that was part of your job, your survival? Gotta go into town today, honey. Taking the donkeys. Be back tomorrow. Is this 2008?

That was the end of hard part of the trip. We spent the second night in Cabana Conde and woke early the next morning to head to Cruz del Condor, a good spot over the canyon for viewing...condors! It was chock-full of tourists, but it was a worthy tourist spot. Those condors just come swooping right over your head. They´re huge! We then made a brief spot at a hot springs for a dip, some lunch, and then it was back to Arequipa.

We are heading to Nazca on the night bus tonight. Hopefully going to see some of those crazy Nazca lines that are so famous. We shall see.

For now, Peru...I sure do like it here. Much love to you all

Oh, and please check out http://picasaweb.google.com/ellen.bucy for pictures from Puno and Arequipa and the Colca Canyon trip. Enjoy!