River Deep, Mountain High

  Arequipe, Peru
Saturday, August 18, 2007

The slow, easy, relaxed pace of Cusco was almost too much for Marge and I, and so we three (with Ms Duffin being the third) took off to Arequipe for some more hardcore trekking and even more hardcore chilling out. After a wonderfully painful 12 hour overnight bus ride (the driver must have had terrible leg cramps judging by how hard he was braking), we waltzed into our hostel and started planning for our first raid on a ceviche restaurant. Before any raw fish could be wolfed however, we had to make a quick pitstop in the garden of the hostel for Sinead to introduce herself to their resident 49 year old giant tortoise (Paco). This creature-from-the-time-of-the-dinosaurs was Marges new best buddy up until when she decided to try feeding it.

002 - minutes later, the tortoise leaped on Marge

Now, I've never fed a tortoise either (even though I'm familiar with the odd turtlehead popping out from time to time) but I'm pretty sure Marge hadn't expected it to be quite as repulsive up close. Nor as fast. I mean, tortoises are supposed to be slow - didn't the hare whip it's ass at the last race meet? - but this rocket-powered mini-dinosaur took off after Sinead and the bits of tomatoes she was feeding it. And when Gillian pointed out just how alike a snake the turtles head was, well...that was that. Paco never got a look in for the rest of the week.

Marge can be so cruel sometimes. And I should know.

Arequipe as a city was a nice change from Cusco. It's a 'real' live city, with fewer concessions to gringos and tourists, and more 'real' people going about their whackaday business. And as has now become almost customary for us, there was a rip roaring festival just about to kick off when we arrived. We're been extraordinarily lucky with our timing to date, and a more conceited man then me (no comments please Ms Henry) might think that these festivals are all in our honour. So far on our travels, around half of the towns we've arrived in have been just about to kick off a big independence day/founding day/turtlehead day celebration, complete with parades and crazy South American dancing. So why should Arequipe be any different?

But before the festivities could commence, we had some serious work to do. Well OK, 'work' might be stretching it a bit, but we had come to Arequipe to do some serious trekking. It's situated right in the middle of canyon country, and is perched right at the foot of El Misti, a 5800m high active volcano, one of a chain of volcanos that bubbles up from the Andes close to that fault line that was to so colour the rest of Peru in the week to come. I can understand city founders overlooking a fault line by mistake, but deciding to start a city right underneath a huge hulking volcano seems like lunacy to me. And it's not as though El Misti hides it's volcano-ness very well. If a four year old was asked to draw a volcano, it would be Misti. I mean, it's not something you're likely to miss, and why the feck you'd build a house, a hut or a city underneath it is beyond me.

003 - Guess what? A FECKING VOLCANO

Braving imminent engulfment in magma, the first trek we planned was a jaunt down to Colca Canyon, among the worlds deepest canyons at around 3300m deep and amazingly, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US. We were met by our guide for the trip at our hostel at 1.30am (no comment) and brought to the bus station, and after 6 hours of being farted on by locals and their children, we arrived in a little town to enjoy a bit of breakfast before we headed off into the canyon. After having our food thrown at us by the worlds grumpiest waitress, we sat around outside waiting for the guide. Sinead and Gillian thought this would be the perfect opportunity to apply a little moisturiser (I thought we were going to be trekking, not beautifying, so I had left mine at home). Well, that set the cat among the local pigeons...within minutes, old dears in traditional garb were clamouring around asking the gals for a scoop of their Astral. The two Avon ladies happily obliged, and pretty soon half the village was enjoying the benefits of the family sized bucket the travelling cosmetologists had brought with them.

004 - Avon Calling

Safe in the knowledge that we had staved off wrinkles in the village for many years to come, we started down the canyon side. Gillian took off like she was on rollerskates while Marge and I gingerly picked our way down the mountain trail. We arrived at the bottom 4 hours later, and after a bit of a lesson on cactus eating, we headed up hill for a time on the other side to find a hut to call our own and cook some lunch. Then, off down the mountain again to our camp for the night, where a bamboo hut waited at the bottom of the canyon - sitting in a little verdant oasis with its own spring fed swimming pool to soak away our cares.

The following morning we were up at 3.30am, slapped on our head torches and took off up the other side of the canyon. After 6 1/2 hours of running gaily up the rock face (not) we arrived at the top, lathered in sweat and enjoying the early morning mist across the fields around us. After breakfast, we took another fart-filled bus to a point along the canyon where we were hoping to spot a couple of condors that lived in the area. These gravity defying monsters have a wingspan of up to 3m across, and you'd think they'd be easy to spot...

There we stood, feeling the chill, looking up river deep and mountain high for a few minutes until Foghorn Leghorn Duffin shouted out CONDOR in a voice that I'm sure most of you heard back home. They were exceptional, three of them, cruising ever upward in the thermals, looking for prey. Gillian had picked up a tip in a book she'd read about attracting condors, so insisted that Sinead act like a defenseless baby animal in pain in order to pique this humungous bird's interest and draw it closer. I'm not sure if it was Marge's yelps of pain, or her helpless pawing in the air that did it, but eventually they all three swooped past us and we had our Condor moment....Ahh.