All watched over by volcanoes

Arequipa :: Peru

Also, Juanita the Ice maiden.

Places: Arequipa, Chivay, Cabanaconde, Cruz del Condor & the Colca Canyon.

Coolest thing I did: Hiked up the Colca  Canyon starting in the dark, with the sun revealing snowcaps and sheer cliffs all around as the climb progressed.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The sap of an actual aloe vera cactus smells like beef. Why has no-one marketed beef scented skin products to men?

It wasn't until the last day in Arequipa I had a day clear enough to realise that these people live cheek to jowl with three fairly mean looking active volcanoes. Getting up this morning I was greeted by a perfect autumn morning that allowed me for the first time to make out the perfect cone of El Misti right behind the twin spires of the main cathedral and the mangled peak of Chachani off to it's right. There have been people growing stuff in the fertile volcanic earth around the city since at least the time of the Incas, but like most places in the world where the town is juxtaposed directly with a mountain or two that likes to spew hot ash every now and then (apparently the last time it happened here the ash blew over the town for a mere 8 years or so) you wonder if this is a really good long-term survival strategy.

I'm in Arequipa today when I should be camped out at El Misti's base camp at 4800 metres because it seems that it's again really hard to organise stuff as a solo traveller in Peru. Every travel agency in town offers treks to the Colca Canyon but pooling enough people together to want to climb a volcano together seems to be beyond their powers. I had been told I'd be able to go up with a trio of American lads who ended up being on my tour to the Colca Canyon, but it turns out one of them wasn't fit enough for the mild 2 hour climb out of the canyon so they decided the 5 hour climb from the base camp of El Misti to the summit at 5825m starting at 1am was a bit much. So despite my best efforts to find another group going on the only free two days I have left before I have to be in Cusco to prepare for the Inca Trail, it looks like I won't be doing it on this trip. Which got me down, before I remembered I'd never even heard of El Misti a week ago and vaguely had even heard of Arequipa.

The reason most people come to Arequipa, besides to take pictures of old, white building is to go on a trek into the Colca Canyon, by a whisker the second deepest canyon anywhere in the world. I elected to do it over three days instead of two, which most people are into.

The first stop is always the Cruz del Condor, one of the best places in the canyon to see the giant Andean Condors at work. After a 3am wake-up and 5 hours in a minibus we were very lucky to see a condor perched right below the road the second the bus pulled up next to the 25 or so other minibuses that were already there, and managed to see not only condors gliding effortlessly up in the high air currents of the canyon, but also many acts of high dickheadery by tourists looking for a better photo. Seriously, if there are fences next to a several hundred metre drop you probably don't want to climb over them.

The first day had drop all the way down into the canyon to the river below, then climb not too far to the village the two dayers have lunch at, which gave us ample time for our guide, from the nearby village to show us every plant in the area had some use to the locals, be it to eat (man, did I eat a lot of figs that afternoon), use as medicine, glue & quite awesomely, parasites that live in cactus that people in Lima will pay by the kilo for to be turned into organic lipstick. I'm always a bit sceptical of some of the magical claims ascribed to some of the plants, but in this part of the world tradition a folk lore will trump a double blind clinical trial any day of the week.

It was also quite lucky for our guide that she was so close to her parents home, as she tore her pants and was able to climb through her Mum's window (she wasn't home) and get another pair.

The second day takes you back down the gorge to Sangalle, which used to be some pools to swim in that has been turned into a full resort town. Each of the groups of bungalows has a concrete pool, usually with a single wall made of a massive natural rock that was too hard to move that are fed from the waterfall up the valley so the water circulates through and is constantly clean. On the way we only stopped to try some chicha, a beer made of fermented corn that is common all along the Andes. I'd tried it's unsweetened version in Colombia, but gave up trying to get drunk on it after three cups (that one was 2% ABV), however we were promised the Peruvian version was much better, as it was fermented longer for more punch. However, being chock full of sugar it was hard to tell, and I was pretty happy to only go through one cup, it being so sickly sweet I could have had a little vomit.

So Sangalle was good to us, giving us a lazy, sunny afternoon to go swimming, drink room temperature beer (the real stuff, not chicha) and talk nonsense amongst ourselves. As the two day trek sleeps in the same place we got a whole influx of people arriving just as the sun was setting and the rain started. While doing the whole thing over three days goes at a pretty lazy pace, you do get a bit more time to yourself, which is good for someone as allergic to organised tours as I am.

The best part for me was starting at 5am in the dark back up the mountain to arrive back in the hamlet of Cabanaconde as it was probably the only part of the trek that really made you work, with several hundred metres to climb before breakfast. As the light slowly starts to hit the valley you can make out the multicoloured cliffs on all sides starting to poke through the clouds and mist that will clear throughout the morning. In the distance you get the sunrise striking the snowcaps of nearby volcanoes in the background and the snow and clouds both reflect dawns golden hues.

Due to the altitude issues of my early days in Huaraz I thought it better to go at a constant, steady pace and do the projected 3 hour climb in about 2 hours. Along the way I graciously stepped aside to let a group of young guys, Americans and Brits from the accent pass as they were obviously in a hurry. However it became fairly obvious that 3 of the 5 were going way too fast, with me overtaking them every 10 mins or so as they panted on the corner of a switchback, only to have them charge past me again on the way up. It turns out that these were the guys my hostel had organised for me to climb El Misti with later in the week, but at the time I didn't realise I was watching that trip fade in their youthful inability to pace themselves. This I can forgive, but one of the rest of their group kind of ruined my morning.

On my arrival to the top, possibly the 5th or 6th person up I was able to get a full panorama of the valley as the sun was just starting to pierce down into the depths of the river at the bottom, something that would have been awe inspiring to behold in contemplative silence. Instead I got the sound of an Oxbridge accent trumpeting his sheer awesomeness of being the first up the mountain and how the woman at the top who was selling food and drinks gave him a free banana as a reward. It would have been cool if it stopped there, but I had to listen to this tale retold to everyone one of the 60 or so people who reached the lip of the canyon, and his constant update on how long he'd been waiting at the top. A big part of me wished I'd gone up at full pace, just so I could have beaten him and sat there without saying a word, just to take away his ability to continue to expound on his hill climbing and banana receiving talents, but then you have to remind yourself that some people are just dicks, and are best ignored.

An hour in some hot springs and a full buffet lunch restored my good humour and despite the lookout at the high pass back to Arequipa being pointless to stop at, due to the clouds reaching right to the lip of the valley below it was a fairly pleasant ride back to town. The sun was well and truly out and it was possible to make out the agricultural terraces that made these valleys farmable all along every steep surface it was feasible to carve them in.

The people around Arequipa are probably as close to the stereotypical descendants of the Andean natives as it's possible to imagine, with all of them being short, broad and able to function quite well on a 1/3rd of the oxygen the rest of us usually deal with. Like most of the Latin American countries there is still a very stark divide in the visual appearance of the taller, light skinned European descendants that people the better parts of Lima and the natives that live in the rest of the country, and unlike Lima, Arequipa is small enough for you to pass the mass slums that have built up around it since the large scale migration of rural people into the cities started as agricultural productivity has risen since the 1960s. However, the divide in Peru feels far more stark than it did in any of the other countries I've visited (with the possible exception of Mexico) and that has been a constant tension pretty much since the time of Pizarro.

Over the years the indios have risen up various times, but the most recent and violent of those uprising has scarred much of Peru's modern history. Much like the FARC in Colombia or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the victory of Fidel Castro's communists in Cuba inspired a local professor of philosophy, Abimael Guzman to start an armed revolution that would come pretty close to civil war territory in the 1980s and early 90s. Due to long standing divisions in Peruvian society it became fairly easy for his group, Shining Path to recruit young people in the poor rural areas of the Andean foothills to their cause and despite their dwindling power since Guzman's arrest in 1992 they managed to shape much of the modern politics since. The President who brought the Shining Path to heel, Alberto Fujimori did manage to restore the country to some sort of order, but he was later convicted of crimes against humanity and corruption, mostly due to his involvement with directing extra-judicial killings by right-wing death squads who had been given carte blanche to do whatever they needed to to bring down the Shining Path. Latin American history across the whole continent has depressingly familiar themes.

So my Inca Trail deadline is approaching fast, and I can't really think of enough stuff to do to justify another day in Arequipa so it's off to Cusco tonight on the night bus. I did manage to spend some time today seeing another of the ice mummies the Inca left on the mountain tops as a sacrifice to stop things like El Nino (the other I saw was in Salta in Argentina). Juanita, the Ice maiden was found on top of a volcano near Arequipa but due to the fact she'd slid down the crater sometime in the last 500 years her face is severely damaged but you can still make out the wrinkles in her skin and the colour of her fingernails on the parts of her that remained hidden from the elements. Despite the guide telling us there were no other ice mummies on display anywhere in South America (hmmm...) it was just as creepy to see a girl 500 years old so perfectly preserved again. It did also take up a whole hour of my day, between breakfast and a surprisingly good cerviche for lunch, mostly because we're so far from the sea you'd not think much of fish steamed in lime juice and chilli.

The next one of these I write should come after I've seen Machu Piccu, only the second of the New Seven Wonders of the World I get to see on this trip!

Snowboards & Spacemen

Arequipa :: Peru

Moving fast with my first deadline in ages looming.

Places: Huacachina, Nazca & Arequipa.

Coolest thing I did: Flew over the highly mysterious Nazca lines in a tiny little light plane.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The strangely yellow Inca Cola has about the same amount of caffeine as Coca Cola. That would explain why it's done nothing for my sleep when I've replaced one with the other.

I'm being repeatedly amazed by just how different the scenery is in different parts of Peru. After a night bus got me to Lima from Huaraz just in time to change buses to Ica I already felt overdressed for the heat. Arriving in Ica, the pivot town that gets you to my goal of Huacachina I felt the change even more readily, the fact being there's a 500m high sand dune right in the middle of the city. Once you get away from the Andes the coastal region of southern Peru turns pretty quickly into ultra dry desert, and the reason you'd keep going to Huacachina rather than Ica is it's an oasis that kind of sits at suburban distance from the main town itself, and as a result is chock full of tourist goodness.

Huacachina is a briny green pool you'd think more than twice about swimming in surrounded by massive sand dunes, and it's those sand dunes that attract most of the backpackers who want to slide down them on boards. Unlike the time I did this in Floripa in Brazil, the sand dunes are high enough in places to be way too painful to walk up, so you go at sunset in a 9 person dune buggy out into the dunes and ride down a progressively more scary array of sand walls. I decided that I'd try my hand at doing it with an actual snowboard (complete with boots and bindings) instead of the sand board, and very quickly remembered why you do your best to find boots that fit properly and bindings that make good contact with the board. Due to having a shoe size basically unknown to anyone but giants of legend in Peru I was forced to wear boots two sizes too big, which were designed for old-school step-in bindings, so the contact with the board was non-existent. Add to this the fact I haven't been on an actual snowboard in somewhere approaching 5 years and I was destined to eat a fair bit of sand on the way down.

The first dune would have counted as a short blue run and my attempt to make a toe turn resulted in me face first practically every time. I managed to ride the second one (which would have been a long blue at a ski resort) without turning once, which solved the problem for a bit, but the last two drops were massive and steep. The penultimate ride was basically me going down on my heels, falling over on my toes, repeat about half a dozen times, which wasn't much fun. The last drop was really, really scary but I managed it by basically starting on my toes and doing it in one really long toe turn. It was very cool to be able to do it all without having to climb up hills, but I suspect I probably could have had just as much fun on the actual sandboards, which most people rode flat on their bellies face first.

For me the best part was riding around in the dune buggy, as the driver did his utmost to treat us like we were in a roller coaster. Hitting the lips of the dunes at full speed makes for excellent jumps, and he had absolutely no fear of just pointing the nose straight down and letting gravity do the rest. Add to this the sunset over the dunes and the view back into town were breathtaking and even with the bad equipment the day out was well worth it.

Which was good, because despite their best efforts to milk the place there isn't a whole lot to do in a desert oasis except be hot. You can wander around the whole of Huacachina in something like 3 minutes. Bring a good book.

So due to the fact I'm running into a deadline to be in Cusco two days before I start the Inca Trail (otherwise they say they won't take my money and let my spot go empty - something tells me they'll take the money anyway...) I decided to take the next afternoon bus to Nazca and try and see the Nazca lines in the morning before heading off to Arequipa in the afternoon. I'm glad I did this, because much like Huacachina, Nazca is a one-trick pony.

What are the Nazca lines? Despite Speilberg's best efforts to wind them into the recent Indiana Jones movie,  no-one really knows. It seems like the Nazca people (who were top dogs in this part of Peru up until they were taken over by the war-like Wari in about 600AD) decided to make these huge glyphs on the desert flood by turning over the rocks in lines and then letting the desert preserve them (it really doesn't rain much in Nazca if the lines are still there 1400 years later). They're in the shape of things like monkeys, dogs and birds, but the one everyone likes is called the 'Astronaut', to take into account many a nutjob has decided that the anthropomorphic figure set out on one of the hillsides could only have been an alien. That goes into the deeper question of why the Nazca decided to draw these lines that could only be seen from the air, with being-used-to-signal-aliens being only one of the wackier theories, but the truth is no-one really knows, as the Nazca weren't literate and didn't leave a whole lot of other remains to give clues. There are some irrigation ditches and aqueducts, but none of those seems to suggest a reason for the lines.

The area has been pretty steadily populated for thousands of years so it was a total surprise when someone flew over the desert at Nazca in the 1930s and saw the lines for what they were for the first time. This is still the best way to see the lines, and as a result there is a minor airforce of light planes at the Nazca airfield waiting to take tourists up for a 30 minute flight over the lines. I actually thought that was a pretty cool way of doing it, with the pilot and co-pilot taking it in turns to wheel the plane over the glyphs so each side of the plane gets to take pictures and they spend more time pointing out the lines than paying attention to how level the plane is. Of our flight of 5 people that did, unfortunately make one of the girls sick as a dog and we had to spend most of the flight with a strong whiff of vomit emanating through the plane. The pilot was pretty quick to open the windows the second we were landed again.

So from Nazca it was a nice ride along the coast until sunset, taking in the long waves off shore and the close mountains in the desert above the road. By the time I rocked into Arequipa at 1am the temperature had most definitely dropped and I assumed I was in for another cold town, much like Huaraz.

Waking up on Sunday morning however showed me I was wrong. I've been walking around in a t-shirt all day, ever since I stumbled out looking for breakfast at about 9am. I turns out there was the Peruvian equivalent of Anzac Day going on, so I sat on a balcony above the main square to breakfast and watched people with uniforms and guns do some marching and yelling. The rest of my day was mostly devoted to taking pictures of white buildings, which there are a lot of, and going to the local convent, which is a city within a city. The Santa Catalina Convent was founded not too long after Arequipa itself and was a closed area to everyone but nuns until the 1970s. As most of the nuns came from aristocratic backgrounds they lived in pretty good style, with massive cells, orchards and large courtyards to go about doing nun-ley things in. I especially liked the massive sign calling for 'silenco' on entering, because lets face it: who likes a mouthy nun? I had thought I was fairly churched out, but the area covered by the convent is the size of a small village and the bright colours offset each other very well, making the whole place very photogenic. If, of course, you like your photos full of fat German daytrippers, like all mine seem to be. The only downside is the reason the colours seem so bright is because they were very wet when I was there, and my daypack now has a nice rusty hue to it. Bloody nuns, can't trust 'em.

So towering over Arequipa are three volcanoes, one of which I'd really like to try my hand at climbing. I've spoken to people who have climbed El Misti as recently as a week ago, but I have had some trouble finding someone reputable who will ensure I can actually climb it overnight Thursday. Right now I've spent a bit too much time at sea level so I'm off to the Colca Canyon for 3 days in order to get some more time at altitude and due to the fact I have to be in Cusco by the weekend I'm really running out of days. If one of them has to go, then I'm obviously not going to climb El Misti instead of the Inca trail, but it has been frustratingly hard to organise anything with a guarantee of leaving on the day you are told you will be in Peru. I don't know if it's just the off season, but even doing the most popular things in Peru seems to involve a lot of wasted days of waiting around. I'm guessing Bolivia won't exactly be more organised, but it surprises me that places so reliant on tourists can't get this kind of thing right. When I'm in charge, things will be different.

So we're down to the last 6 weeks, and all going well I know exactly what I'm doing for about the next fortnight. I can feel Santiago and June creeping up on me now.