From Arequipa to Lima

Map

I finally made it to Peru, and I made a big jump into the country. From La Paz I travelled to Arequipa (1), which is in the South of Peru. After two days Arequipa I decided I had seen enough of the city. After La Paz it is difficult to get used to an ordinary city, and thereafter I travelled to the Cotahuasi Canyon (2,3), the Colca Canyon (4), & Nazca to visit the famous Nazca lines. All in all it meant 5 busjourneys of ca 15 hours in one week! In an oasis near Ica (5) i relaxed a day before going to Pisco (6)to see some more see animal life in an area called Ballestas islands and Paracas, to finally end up in Lima (7), the main capital of Peru.

I left La Paz, where i said goodby to Edgar. Edgar is 18 and works in Hostel Cactus. He is very friendly and works the whole day. Cleaning, washing clothes, doing the administration, doing the finances, answering the phone, comforting the guests, and on top of that every night he is opening the door when guests arrive half drunk from the pub. And this 4 or 5 times a night. He is clearly not overpaid, and the manager of the hostal treats him like shit, while she is sitting more or less the whole day on her ass. But Edgar probably is quit happy with this job. He is meeting a lot of people, who help him to learn english.

Most of the first part of the journey is along Lago Titicaca. This time the crossing of the border is going rather smoothly, and in Puno (which looks like an awful town) i change buses to Arequipa, where i arrive somewhere at 10 in the night. My first busjourney of ca 14 hours. In Arequipa there is a congress of miners, and therefore it is hard to find a hostel. A very correct taxi driver is helping me patiently and so i end up in Misty, a not very comfortable hostel, but the owner is a very gentle guy, who is very helpful all the time. This is one of the differences with Bolivia. The people are a little bit more friendly and open. More used to tourists too. One of the other differences seems to be that the country is better organised. Certainly the busstations look that way.


Titicaca revisited

In Arequipa I start my hunt for culture by going to the Museo Santuarios Andinos. This museum has very good preserved mummies, of which Juanita is famous. She was found in 1995 and she is 500 years dead. She was found like Oetzy in a glacier. Unfortunately i'm not allowed to visit this museum on my own. I had to take a guide (which wasn't included in the price), and this was too much for me. I'm not going to walk with a group of tourists and a guide, who is telling me:

¨And there is the mummy, it is a girl and she is dead. Yes she looks rather good for her age. She only has winterfeet.¨

No thank you not for me. (I day later I encountered a Dutch group in a church looking at the ceiling exclaming intelligent remarks as ¨Oh do you see that they use water paint¨ etc.) From that moment this first interesting mummy transforms in a piece of dead, and dried out meat, and I DON'T THINK SHE IS THAT WELL PRESERVED. I have been in Lapland and a piece of fire dried rendeer meat looks better than that horrible witch with a hole in her head! Go to hell with that ugly dead deep freeze chicken!!

He He that feels better. Next i walk along the plaza which looks quite neat. Beautiful arches and spanish architecture, and a spacious plaza. Unfortunately there is a parade going on. They seem to do this every sunday to increase patriotic feelings, and therefore they let little girls of ca 4 years old parade like commandoos. I get mad again. I can appreciate John Cleese's imiation of Nazi’s parading, but seeing little girls march like grown up war machines looks ridiculous, pathetic, dum, outrageous etc.etc.. And look at the faces of these poor stupid little creatures, they even enjoy it walking with stiff legs, it seems that the Hitler Jugend has invaded Arequipa. I bet they have dreams of erections and power, RIGHT NOW. Yaaagh!! For a moment I'm wishing i had handgranades. That will teach those little monsters a thing or two (for instance you can't walk without two legs!). Hope you keep one hand, silly girls, begging without will be very difficult!


Arequipa plaza and church

He He that feels better. Well my cultural day isn't finished yet. My guide (the paper one) told me that there is a beautiful old cloister in Arequipa. It is the Santa Catalina convent. The convent was founded in 1579 and it is a dominican convent. The girls that became nun promised to go behind bars for the rest of their lives, and not lo leave to cloister ever again. (maby something for these horrible marching little creatures from above, they can certainly do less harm here). Even dead they stay within the borders of the convent.

The Dominicians have a strict religious order and like the Franciscans you can divide the order in first, second and third order. The first order are the priests, the second order are the nuns, and the third order are the seculars. In my previous report i erroneously wrote that Charlie Spencer, one of the Franciscans I met in Serere was second order and therefore a SISTER. Well i didn't mean to offend him, and i could see he was not a woman. It was just my lack of intelligence!


San Fransic0 Church and street

When becoming a nun was very popuar there were 490 nuns living in the convent. In 1970 the nuns which were diminished in number (now there are only 29 nuns left and there number is rapidly deceasing) moved to a little more luxurious penthouse just west(?) of the original buildings. The convent was restored beautifully and opened to the public.


Colourful St Catalina

So i spent the rest of the day in this beautiful cloister, and i was impressed by the architecture, the quiteness, the simple life the sisters lived here, and the spirituality of the place. On top of this it was redecorated very beautifully by using nice painting colours ( i must admit i have a weakness for that), friendly flowering plants and bushes, some fountains, and nice cosy little streets with coble stones. It is easy to imagine how the sisters lived here centuries back, locked away from the world, where hardly any sound could penetrate (and which was probably the only thing that penetrated them).


Santa Catalina convent


Colourful Santa Catalina

Not all sisters were living a very simple life. Some nuns only had a little cellar with a bed and a chair and a table, but others, maby higher in rank, had an extra room and also sometimes music instruments.


Guinea novice nun

It was a day for making pictures here, 1 the colours here invited me to experiment with my camera, and 2 the light and the objects in some places forced me to make stillife pictures of times long forgotten. I think the results are really wonderful.


Stillife


Stillife 2

It is strange to see time frozen (no mummies here though) on this place. The area is about 2 hectares big, and you can also see the new convent and sometimes you can even spot a nun!

Imagining the old situation is easy to do. A cosy little old town with only a few streets around the convent where people are living peacefully ( i now i am a romantiac), the new situation seems a bit archaic. A small cloister surrounded by a 1 million people big city, with the sounds and smells of cars that are penetrating the poor nuns (no not that same joke again!).


Guinea nuns

Now the place is empty. The only living creatures here are some 29 guiney pigs, that are living in a part of the cloister in a little cell. I bet they are all feminine! Very impressive, a lovely place. Maby i will become nun some day!

Next day I leave for the Cotahuasi canyon. According to my guide this is the deepest canyon in the world, and even deeper then the Colca Canyon, which is also in this part of Peru. I decide to do the Cotahuasi canyon, because nobody goes here. All others tourist do Colca which is much closer to Arequipa (only 3-5 hours by bus), while the Cotahuasi canyon is 13 hours. And what a bus journey it was his time.


Cotahuasi Canyon near Alca

I am so lucky to sit on the last row in the bus. The first three hours i practise my spanish by talking to David Paredes, a local who is going to work in Cotahuasi, the next 10 hours i'm sitting next to David who is sleeping rather decently, and a very fat and smelly woman that is always trying to invade my personal space with at least one leg, but sometimes also with her hand (I KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!).

On top of this the bus is going very fast on a very bumpy road so most of the time you fly high up in the air and sometimes land in a wrong place. I get my revenge on the fatso because on one occasion when i'm standing to put my backpack back in place after it had fallen on the floor, the bus makes a salto and i land with my bottom in the stomach of the smelly fatso. A soft landing for me, the lady however was not as amused as i was. He He that feels better.

The next day i am broken and arrive in Alca where i meet Joerg and Connie, two germans from chemnitz, and i travel the next few days with them. Alca is very friendly, the people here live mostly from farming and most people are greeting me as if i live here since long. The prices here are ridicously cheap. A meal is around 3 soles (0.75 euro).


Alca

The weather in Alca (and the next two days in Cotauasi) is lousy. It is cold and it is raining, so therefore a little bit bored i walk through the canyon, that is not very deep here. The landscape here is a mixture of Bolivia and Chili. You can see that it is much dryer than in Bolivia. Although there are much green trees and plants in the valley, higher up there are appearing many different types of cactuses and the higher it gets, the more desertlike it looks.


Coathuasi Canyon near Alca

Later that night i give english lessons to the boy who is working in the hostel. It is a good practice for my spanish and it is fun to do it.


Cotahuasi

Next day the weather is still lousy, and it even has been snowing in the higher part of the mountains. Together with Jorg and Conny we take the bus to Cotahuasi, where the canyon should be deeper, and where we visit the Sipia falls. These falls are 150 meters high and you can look down into the canyon but here it is not very deep (300 - 400 meters probably).

Cotahuasi canyon near Cotahuasi


Cotahuasi Canyon to Sipia falls


Sipia Falls

The landscape around the falls is beautiful but it is difficult to judge if the canyon is impressive. We are only at the beginning of the canyon, and it is not to easy to get further into it. There seems to be a path, but it would take a few days to get to the deepest point. I'm not having a tent so it will have to wait until a next time when i visit Peru.


Cotahuasi canyon colours


Cotahuasi canyon

We leave Cotahuasi the same day, again a busride of 12 hours. It is snowing and on the road we encounter stranded trucks. The road probably again is gorgeous but unfortunately it gets dark and i miss most of it (later during my trip to the Colca Canyon I fortunately see a part of it again). This time I have some sleep. Back in Arequipa i leave Joerg and Conny who go to Puno, and I jump almost immediately on the bus to Cabanaconde in the Colca Canyon. Another 5 hours by bus. And thank god they have video in the bus. In Peru the buscompanies have a strong preference for extremely violent movies, and it is always nice to see bodies flying around, and seeing the most cruel torture techniques while you are eating a sandwich. It really gives a kick, and hell wouldn’t it be nice to spit on your neighbour or even better stab him to death and strangle a few oldies! He He that feels better.



To Cabanaconde

The road is beautiful, and the landscape has changed because of the snow. I finally see a volcano with a nice coat of snow. The clouds give some nice additional pictures.


Mysti Mountain near Arequipa


After the snow

The bus brings me to Cabanaconde which is at the end of the canyon. It gives me the opportunity to see most of the Colca canyon, and i especially like the terraces in the valleys and again you can sse a lot of cactuses.


Colca Canyon

You also can see a new dress code for the women here. It is very colourful, and i think it really is a fiesta seeing these women, with there dresses and the motives of their textiles. They look very sweet in those dresses. I also like the pittoresque villages with the little churches and the traditional lifestyle. This journey is again a feast for the eye.


Colourful dresses

When i arrive in Cabanaconde i walk to a mirador and have a view into the canyon. It is a nice view but also here i’m not that impressed as i was when i saw the grand canyon for the first time. The grand canyon impresses because you can see the enormous erosion caused by the Colorado and all the different colours. Here you don’t see that to that extent.


Cabaconde mirador

In my opinion the definition they use in the South America guides for canyon is false (that tells us that the Colca or the Cotahusi canyon are the deepest canyona in the world). In my view a canyon is formed through the erosion of a river. In the definition of Colca/Cotahuasi they use the top of the mountain and the bottom of the river which is ca 3300-3500 meter. That is false. The canyon here is if you look at the erosion patterns probably not more than 600 meter.

Next morning i’m asking the old man (ca. 75) in my hostel the road into the canyon, and he brings me to the starting point. He tells me it is only 45 minutes down, and up it shouldn’t take much more than an hour. He jumps over a little stream is if he is 20 and runs down!

The decent into the canyon is ca 1200 meters and it takes me two hours to get down, enjoying the landscape. The snow on the mountains adds more colour to the canyon. The path down is steep and difficult to walk, mainly because there are stones on the path all the way. Walking down is easy, and i wonder why also those people that are walking up are looking so devastated. It can’t be that bad!


Walking down

This time it is not too difficult to get down and i spent some time near the river, with my feet in the water. I walk around a littlebit near an small oasis, and if you want you can stay the night here enjoying some sunbathing and relaxing near the pool. It looks inviting but i didn’t bring anything so I decide to walk back, the same way i came.


Oasis in colca canyon


Colca canyon

I’m not the old man. He probably runs up, i only can walk, and it takes me three hours to reach the top. By then i’m almost dead, the heat, the steep trail, and the stones take their toll, and it also lookes that i have been sitting on my ass in Serere too much. My muscles are starting to convulse. I get to my hostel and the rest of the night i stay in bed. I’m not the old man, that´s for sure!


Colca canyon

Next morning i go back to Arequipa, and immeadeately go further to Nasca. Again a long busjourney through desert landscape where hardly anything grows.

Nasca

The reason for going to Nasca are the Nasca lines. They were discovered in 1920 and many different theories are available who made them and why. Fantastic theories of aliens visiting earth were proposed, but the most plausible theories now consider that the lines have shamanistic origin, and also were used to beg the gods for water, in times when the rains were becoming less and less.


Astronaut

You can see the lines the best when you are going in an airplane, so in a little Cessna for 40 dollar together with Vivianne and Jean-Michel, two Swiss people, we were flying over the lines in ca. 35 minutes. The figure i liked the best was the humming bird. The figure is very powerful and especially the way it is carved, and which is a very good representation of the flight of the hummingbird, gives this figure a lot of energy. Another nice figure is the Chaucato bird.


Humming bird


Alcatraz


the figures

The figures are 40-150 meters in size. I spent two days in Nasca, which is a little town and a nice mixture of tourism and normal life.

Huancachina (near Ica)

From Nasca I took the bus to Ica, and again the landscape is barren desert. Hartly anything grows here, it is one big sand playground. In fact from La Serena in Chile to here it is almost only desert.


To Ica

In Ica I took the taxi to a little oasis in the desert. It is called Huacachina. The oasis is beautiful and surrounded by high sanddunes. Unfortunately the oasis is also spoiled by too many hotels, and it is not very clean. If you like you can do sandboarding here, and a popular attraction is riding in a buggy through the desert. I stayed here a day to relax. Then I had seen it and took the bus to Pisco. Another place were the Pisco grape grows!


Huacachina oasis


Sand dune


Huancachina oasis


Desert near Huancachina

Pisco

Pisco is an quite normal town on the coast. I spent there two days, and you can see the tourist season is ending. The place i spent two nights was completely empty, although there still were enough tourists that were wanting to do the tour to Ballestas isles and the Paracas reserve.

Ballestas islands

To begin with the first, they are beautiful. The islands are packed with birds, and on the rocky cliffs before the isle you can see a lot of curious sealions. It is always fun to watch these animals jumping out of the water, and making their characteristic sounds. As above mentioned you can see many birds here, f.i boobies (Sulidae, een soort genten), further you can cormorants, pelicans, the humboldt pinguin, terns, seagulls, etc.


Boobies

I liked the cliffs very much, with all the arches that have been shaped by wind and water. The most spectacular was seeing hundreds (thousands?) of sea lions lying on the beach, it almost was a normal summer day in Holland at Zandvoort. Children playing in front of the parents, while the machos were purving around to see if there were some more women to conquer, and most of the time you could hear them making sounds to impress the neighbour (nothing new in the animal kingdom). The ladies were more a less lying on there bellies, to get a nice brown tan. And i must say, tanned they were. It only was a short trip, and on the way back we saw dolphins only a few inches away from the boat.


Life sucks


Zandvoort al mar


Detail

Unfortunately the skipper wasn’t very interested in stopping the boat here. I notice that more during my trip in South America, the tour agencies offer trips but don’t realise why people are coming. They just have their own program, and when it is finished it is finished. Improvisation is not in their dictionary.


Paracas peninsula


Peilcan

The next part of the trip to Paracas reserve was more a less a waste of time. Although i liked the coast and the formation of the Cathedral that reminded me a lot of the twelve apostels in Australia (sorry it seems there are only eleven apostels now!), the touroperators were determined in letting us wait, first an hour before we started, then we went to a museum where we stayed 1,5 hours and which easily could have been done in 15 minutes, after this we drove to the Cathedral and stayed here for about 30 minutes, and then we went to a little fishing place to eat for 75 minutes, before they took us back to Pisco!

Sedaceae


Paracas coast


The cathedral

Well it was not a very expensive tour, I have to be honest about that, but i gladly would have payed more to see something from the coast, instead of wating until i weighed an ounce.

What amazes me is that all agencies in South America until now almost always do exactly the same thing. In a way it was amusing to see our guide directing us to a restaurant telling us that we were going to eat on our OWN expenses in THIS restaurant. It was even more amusing to see many of the tourist in my group following the man like sheep. The guide irritated me a lot. He was treating us like little children, and even told the group to pee because it was the last opportunity for 1,5 hours. NO THANK YOU I DON’T HAVE TO PEE, and if necessary i will pee in your shoes!! And yes i know that i should whipe my ass with paper, but for this occasion i will just just your handkerchief! He He that feels better.

Next day I went to see some Inca ruins. The side is called Tambo Colorado, and it is one of the best preserved coastal ruins in Peru (this is from the folder and I like the expression ¨best preserved ruins¨) . The site is some 500 years old, and was left by the inca's after their defeat by the spaniards. It is situated in a fertile valley along the river Pisco (yes from the grape) and in many ways it reminded me of the Pisco Elqui valley in Chili (see my story about La Serena), although the people here say that here Pisco Sour is MUCH BETTER!



Pisco valley

The caretaker told me they also had an cemetery, so I walked a few hundred meters to find graves that had been opened by grave robbers, and it was somewhat macabre seeing all the bones of the deceased, with many times some pieces of old clothes, and even sometimes some hair here and there. Furthermore you could find many fragments of pottery. The hill was stuffed with graves.

I wanted to see the site mainly because i was told that the buildings still showed their original colours. Indeed you can see still some of the original paint, which is alternating red, orange yellow and white, but most of the paint has fallen off. Still you can get some sort of idea how the inca's painted there houses and it learned me that i wasn't very original in my own house. Two of the three colours they allready had used!

The main building here is the palace. Furthermore there is a big plaza with a place for ceremonies and you can see here and there some remnants of houses. From some points you have a nice view on the complex, but sometimes it is hard to find it not just a dump yard.


The palace in Tambo Colorado


Original Colours



Interior

After this i had seen it and took the bus to Lima (well first a evening drinking a lot with a few english guys and girls). Next time more about Lima and further. See you!


Lima

Los endos