Lost in the desert, Arequipa and Colca Canyon

     Pre Incan remains Pukara de Quitor

Before I took a night bus to the Peru border, i hired a bike and cycled out to the desert to look for some Inkan and pre inkan remains. I found Pukara de Quitor (pre incan, built by the Atacamenians) ok but then ended up getting lost trying to find an Inkan outpost.
Due to the lack of decent signposts i ended up cycling high up into the bright red hills to a huge tunnel in the middle of nowhere and using up most of my water. I eventualy found the ruins and they were terrible!! A few pebbles on top of a hill, although i did manage to sleep ok on the bus because i was exhausted.

San Pedro de Atacama

The border crossing was interesting, i arrived in Arica on the border, and got ripped off a bit by a company that arranged the border crossing and bus on the other side that went to Arequipa. I ended up paying 18GBP for the "service", the driver then took us (3 gullible tourists) to the bus station and bought us the bus ticket for about 4.50GBP!! Well i´ll know for next time.........

Arequipa has a lovely square, insane traffic and a great range of restaurants. Its also way cheaper than San Pedro, 5GBP a night for a room in a really nice hostal. On the first day i met an English girl and an American guy (Leonie and Calvin) at the hostal and we had a look around the town, and went to an interesting museum about the discovery of a sacrificed Incan princess Juanita found in one of the volcanoes near Arequipa. The body was very well preserved, along with all the clothes and relics left with the body. Fascinating if a little macarbe, she was fed maize beer and struck over the head with a club before being left to die at 18000ft from exposure and her injury.

Condors above Colca Canyon

I booked a 3 day trip to Colca Canyon which was very enjoyable, despite losing my phone and wallet somewhere on the trip. Typical, i take loads of precautions in towns and cities and then lose my stuff in the middle of nowhere.
The first day started at 3am (!!!!!) first we visited Condors at the top of the canyon before driving to the village of Cabanaconde and making the decent into the Canyon. The descent was pretty spectacular. Colca is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in places, we descended for 4 hours to a depth of 1.5km. We stayed in a 9 house village that was very basic, the accomodation had dirt floors and there was no hot water.

Day 1 Colca Canyon 

The second day we did a short trek along the bottom edge of the valley, passing through two small traditional villages and passing by Incan paths and terraces before arriving at a really bizarre set of Oasises at the bottom of the valley. These looked great, swimming pools, palm trees and giant boulders it looked like the flintstones! There was no electricity either. It would have been great except it was cloudy and cool so there was very little to do apart from read. We had dinner by candlelight and went to bed at 8.30pm.
For the final day day we set off at 5.30am for the very steep climb out of the canyon. I think doing 3 peaks and 7 Munros recently paid off as i was out in 2 hours!

Bottom of Colca, knackered!

Pre Incan terrace no longer used due to global warming

The rest of the group went to some thermal baths, i got dropped off in Chivay to try and find an internet cafe with Skype so i could try and sort out my lost phone problem. No skype so i sat in the plaza reading waiting for the bus to come back for me. I little girl carrying a tiny lamb sat next to me on the bench, then put the lamb down and walked out of the plaza!! The lamb stood there for 5 minutes bleating at me! Very surreal, not sure if i was babysitting it so i waited for her to come back then scarperred!

Colca Oasis, Flintstones out of site having dinner

I was originaly going to go and get a bus to Cuzco tonight but really wanted another decent nights sleep in the Hostel so instead will get the early morning one.
Today is Laundry, email and blog day!

Oasis pool, too cold to use sadly!

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Day 1 Colca Canyon