Arequipa to Lima

  Lima, Peru
Monday, December 18, 2006

I see that I sent the last blog only five days ago!  Sorry.  But we seem to have done a huge amount in only a few days and now we are in Lima and it is only a few days before we meet with our secundo son in Ecuador when it is total relax time - watching him surf rather than primero son; such doting parents.  As I said in the last blog Arequipa and the campsite were great. 
 
Arequipa is one of those cities that really "shouldn't": it has suffered so many earthquakes that someone should have moved them on.  But they seem to have figured out how to keep the damage to a minimum and most of the older houses are only one storey high.  The cathedral lost one of its towers only a few years ago but they got right back in and rebuilt it.  Arequipa is built almost exclusively out of a volcanic rock called sillar a sort of pale grey colour.  It is a big city with many beautiful buildings and much of it is quite humdrum but it pulses with life and the main "blood" are the little yellow Daewoo taxis that buzz around like so many bees; they literally swarm up to intersections where like insects they almost touch and sniff and then miraculously disengage.  I could have watched them for ages; very skillful driving but no patience so horns are blaring continuously (I got roundly hooted for going up a narrow cobbled street at less than the speed of light!).  The high point of our visit were a few hours spent in the Monasterio de Santa Catalina a convent which covers about five acres right in the centre of town.  It was started over 400 years ago and only in 1970 was it opened to the public and now a large part of it is accessible.  Being a nun was not so bad then as they had servants and mostly came from the moneyed classes.  They had a rude awakening when a strict mother superior arrived after a few hundred years of shenanigans.  Their "cells" were extremely commodious with kitchens and drawing room and little court yards.  It is like a small town with narrow streets and lovely squares and pretty gardens; and now they have tasteful classical music piped everywhere.  Although it evidently grew over time and almost without design around every corner the beauty in a door, a window, coloured walls, small courtyards and potted plants was divine.  The peace and tranquility made you whisper.  The convent housed 450 nuns once but now it is down to only 30.  One of the best bits of a Latin American city we have seen. 
 
Like every city Arequipa has its Plaza de Armas and while we were having coffee a street protest went round and round the plaza - protesting the closing of an old school for development!  While they were marching around with brass bands blaring and megaphones screaming a little bent old lady decided to cross the road - it was like something out of a Chaplin movie; she seemed totally unaware of all the people and the absolutely apoplectic cab drivers and crossed very slowly from one side to the other, and quite safely.  Sitting watching Latin America live is one of our favourite pastimes.   Arequipa is overlooked by two large mountains and the famous Volcan El Misti but they can only be dimly seen and cannot be photographed because of the thick smog or dust - a shame.
 
From Arequipa we went up to one of the two Canyons the area is famous for: Canon del Coca - it is not the largest but it is more accessible.  You rapidly rise from Arequipa's 2,400m to well over 4,000m until you reach Chavey and from there you stay at around 4,000m along the rim of the canyon.  The area has been farmed for hundreds of years and the old Inca terraces are still in use and this I think was much more dramatic than the canyon itself which is more like a very steep sided valley.  Tourists flock there to see condors up close (if they are lucky).  We got there well past viewing time - no tourists, which was nice, but also no condors, although we did see one later in the day.  By the time we got to Chavey my head was splitting because of the altitude and I just wanted to go down again but Sheila had a plan and a route.  We did see some quite pretty villages but best were the restored churches done with aid from Spain which were so simple but so beautiful.  Otherwise the area is not really as spectacular as the guide book says.  I said Sheila had a route but she lost the plot fairly soon after the condor viewing site and really the only thing that governed our progress was "descent".  We were starting to panic having been driving for about 4 hours across high plains on a road not on our map, without seeing any recognizable signposts or seeing any habitation or cars until we caught up with a truck who assured us that the Pan Americana was straight ahead! We finally stopped by the side of the road when our GPS said it was about 2,700m.  We pitched our tent about 100m from the road in a patch of what seemed like talcum powder which got into everything, ate quickly and fell into bed. "There won't be any traffic" said Sheila.   Well we had not even gone to sleep when two huge trucks stopped on the road (why here?) followed by a white pick-up; the trucks flashed their lights and hooted long and hard; the driver of the pick-up got out with a flash light and scoured the hills  including the stream bed near our tent.  We meanwhile were feeling somewhat nervous and were trying to work out what was happening and thought that it was a drug drop and that eight months into our trip we were about to meet our end.  They finally all left, apparently unsuccessful.  But it left us very sensitive to noise and to the almost endless (it seemed) stream of vehicles on a road where we had previously driven for several hours without seeing any.  I was up and down like a yo-yo.  When another vehicle stopped and the door opened and slammed I began to have vivid "videos" of being burnt alive in a gas drenched tent (Sheila incidentally had exactly the same video) and kept my clothes and shoes on for rapid flight (I wasn't sure what Sheila was going to do but I would definitely be able to run faster than her).  Like all bad dreams in the daylight it seemed stupid but we did run into a roadblock where the policeman asked if we had seen a white pick-up; I find "no" is always the best response on these occasions.
 
From our brush with drug-runners we got up at first light and ran straight towards the coast meeting the Pan American at El Alto (as I have said we were not sure what road led us to the Pan Americana but we knew it when we saw it).  The road from here along the coast is absolutely spectacular with steep rocky cliffs and the road clinging to the side; the Peruvians when building a road do not seem to worry about whether a road cutting will be possible they just do it.   The trucks as always treat the road as a speedway with some tragic results as you can see above - another set of videos passed through our heads!  The contrast of desert and rocks and the startling blue sea and crashing surf makes it difficult to keep one's eyes on the road and the co-driver had her work cut out.  We finally stopped at a little resort called Puerto Inka on a small bay surrounded by pre-Columbian ruins which were remarkable complete.  The place was lovely (as you can see) and we planned on staying there two nights but were chased out by the news that the disco was going to be fired up for a big party on the second night.  We bumped into a geologist from South Africa who had lots of contacts in common with me and who was there to assess old mine workings in the area for some investors; he noted some right by the resort which he said were rich in copper and gold and thought it would be a great idea to desecrate the area with a mine!
 
From there we had a short trip to Ica (Peru's wine district) where we stayed the night in another pulsating town and then another short drive to the big bad city of Lima which seems very tame on a Sunday. We're in a delightful suburb called Miraflores which has upscale suburbs as well as much of the accommodation. Tomorrow we pick up our passports and scamper north to Finian.  We wish you all a very happy Xmas.