I arrived in Lima not sure what to do in Peru, and within 2 days I was standing, freezing, outside a broken down bus somewhere in the Andes about four times higher than I had ever stood before in my life. Within five days I had experienced a close encounter with a group of giant Andean birds and was in another broken down bus on the same pass. Bring on South America!
The first unfortunate incident was meerly a flat tyre at the snow spattered top of the pass from Arequipa to the Colca Canyon, and was nothing compared with the fate that was to befall the bus on our return journey (read on!). I was travelling with my new friend Darren who I had met along with Pat (who stayed in Aqiquipa with his first boughts of two weeks of dystentry) to spend three days trekking in what is arguably the deepest canyon in the world. This is argued because it is arguably better named a valley, rather than a canyon which sells better, but widly beautiful and interesting what ever you choose to call it.
The day arrived for the trip to Colca Canyon (USD45 for 3 days 2 nights). A six o'clock call from the travel agent took us to the bus station to catch the local bus to the start of the trek. The bus chugged its way to the top of the pass (about 4200m on the altimeter) before blowing a tire and dumping us onto the plateau for half an hour to gasp in the thin cold alpine air. The trip duly began again and we made it to meet our guide in Cabinaconde at the lip of the canyon.
We were lucky and the guide was from the villiage of Tapay in the Canyon. He spoke good English and knew every plant, village and I think person in the Canyon. The trek started by walking 1000m down one of the two winding paths into the canyon. These are the only communication with the outside, and everything comes in by donkey, mule or human porters, including the sattelite dish that gives Tapay its internet connection!
The canyon is an amazing microcosm both environmentally and culturally. The surrounding lands are either mountains, the bleak plateau of the altiplano, or cactus deserts in the rainshadow of the Andes, but the canyon is a fertile basin of agriculture grown on irrigated terrace farms built by the Inca's some six or seven hundred years ago.
The first night we stayed in a small hostel at the bottom of the canyon where we were fed a delicious but meagre meal of soup and a pancake like friter. Unfortunately this turned out to be a pattern. The second day led us up to the guides home villiage of Tapay with a magnificent snow capped mountain backdrop and its recently rebuilt and quite beautiful church and square, notably right outside the Colca Canyon mayors house, and then down into the Oasis. The Oasis is a sort of resort now. It is a naturally occuring highly fertile area in the canyon due to an unlikely spring spurting out of the cliffs of the canyon. It was originally an orchard but a few tourists saying ´Oh what a beautiful Oasis´ was enough for the canny locals to rename it and build the swimming pools and bamboo huts that form the ´resort´. The guide then proceded to the river where he put on a display worthy of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings jumping about the river with a throw net catching some very small trout for our dinner.
The following morning, after two days of meagre food, we climbed out of bed at 3am to tackle the thousand meter climb out of the canyon, without breakfast. It was hard going but the reward was at the top when the sun started to rise. The mountains turned a hazy grey, then blue, until the valley slowly filled with the new days sun. It was magic.
Later and tired we headed to a condor viewing platform over the Canyon. Between about 9am and 9:30am the valley heats up and the condors fly on the thermals that rise up from its depths. A lot of wildlife viewing experiences involve a guide pointing to some distant black shape that may or may not be animate, but this was not the condors. Flying over and around the platform the massive birds seemed to be as interested in the tourists as we were in them. A great photo op!
At 9:30am the local bus again picked us up and exhausted we headed for home. Unfortunately it was to be another bad bus day. We got over the top of the pass this time, then hit the flatest, straightest piece of road on the trip and the bus clunked once and stopped. The driver began to pull out a variety of old tools which he used to pull a variety of pieces out of the engine which terminated in the mysterious act of dunping the radiator fluid onto the road. The bus was dead. For the next two hours we had the choice of watching the tourist buses drive past and ignore us in the freezing winds of the altiplano, or watching disneys lion king in spanish with crying children on the bus. Most of us chose the plateau. Finally another public bus came and rescued us from the plateau and into three hours crammed into their overloaded bus. Only the fact that you couldn´t move for the people held us on our feet. It was late when we reached Ariquipa, and probably my most relieving travel moment!
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