El Balcon Arequipa

... such immense care and detail to make up for the total lack of vegetation. And out of nowhere, we are landing into this desert moonscape and nestled against the mountains is the city of Arequipa.

IM NOW READY TO leave english speaking Lima behind and be taken seriously as a spanish speaking tourist!

My host family thought I was coming next week. Thakfully, Sofie was home to greet me and when her parents ...

... lunch, we climb again and cross fields terraced into the hillside. The local farmers have been working fields like this for thousands of years, using the springs that jump out of the rock for irrigation.

In some of the trees there are snake traps. Using old plastic two litre water bottles, a window is cut and on the inside animal blood laced with a drug is smeared. The snake is attracted to the blood and, when it takes a taste, falls in a stupor. If the snake is dead it is ...

... the dusty town of Chivay at the entrance to the Colca Canyon. We went to a local Peņa (folkloric show) for an evening of dinner and local music and dance which was interesting, especially when the male dancer writhes on the floor and the female whips him! Ang was loving this until the roles were reversed and the female got herself whipped and then dragged to her feet with a rope and thrown over the man's shoulders and marched out ...

... both very excited about this and said it was like a dream come true. We also had to speak with their mother, to see how she would respond. The padrino wants to put the new house in only the kids’ names, to ensure that the mother cannot appropriate it for herself and sell it.

The kids said it was their dream to have their own rooms. The excitement was written all over their faces as Gloria told them what their padrino wanted to do.

... being spoiled.
From the cloisters, there is a bathing area, a clothes washing area, several chapels, and a gallery of religious paintings. I have never liked religious paintings. I don't care if they're the Quito school, the Cuzco school, or the Calvin and Hobbes school. The infant Christ always looks like a miniature human instead of a baby, with an expression on his face that just freaks me out. So I skip the art gallery and sit by a sunny fountain in one of the ...

... a city within a city, which was forced to open to the public in 1970. The convent is surrounded by a 15m wall keeping the surrounding city out and had been under a very strict Dominican way of life up to the day its doors were opened after more than 400 years closed. It has many narrow streets and small plazas coloured by the fruit trees and flowers growing there. The nuns lived isolated lives, living in separate street houses to one another containing a cooking room, a ...

... next accomodation. On the way we visited a small museum, a one room collection of local things. The hike was easy with brilliant views once more. On arriving at Paradise we could see how it had got its name. Whilst the accomodation was once more shoddy to say the least, the pool was awesome! It had a rock side that you could dive in from and surrounding us were the golden walls of the canyon. When sunbathing after a good dip in the pool, I felt a small bug crawling up my arm which, on ...

... for any transport they could get or for one of only half a dozen taxis that seemed to be around. We were lucky to snag one, but after only a few seconds of chatting to the driver, found out that he´d been at the contest all afternoon, and had partaken in more than a few local bevvies!!!! Hmmmm, as he swerved all over the road whenever he turned around to talk to us and wanted us to go for a drink with him to some local bars, we ...

... Grand Canyon even though tourist agents compare them. Rather than looking like a deep canyon, it was more like mountains and a valley. And the valley was being worked. There were terraces everywhere and you could actually see tiny people down there working in the fields. It has been said it is twice the depth of Grand Canyon. Maybe from the top of the other rim where the snow is. A major attraction of the canyon is the condors. They are huge ...

... bus.

The 'Cruz' itself was very elegant, particularly in such a spectacular setting...



...and the views down the canyon were incredible.



Jose warned us that we would be very unlikely to see any condors today but I was lucky to spot about 4 of them hundreds of metres below us, to our left.

I guess all those days of birdwatching with my parents as ...