Day
43 – Arequipa, Peru (30 April 2012)
2.40am arrives and we are up and about!
We quickly get dressed and wait in the foyer for our ride. At 3am on the dot our van arrives. We are slightly surprised as South American
time is at least half an hour behind normal time. Funnily, as we are jumping in the van we see
that the nightclubs on our streets are packed with people still partying from
the night before. We also notice that
there are three police officers standing on the corner. I feel good that there are cops hanging
around our hostel. At least we know
nothing bad is going to happen where we are, well theoretically anyway. We jump into the van and go to sleep as it is
a three hour drive to Chivay where the canyon is located. At 7am we arrive in Chivay and get out for
our breakfast which is included in the tour (I know 7am minus 3am does not
equal a 3 hour drive, we did stuff around for about an hour in Arequipa driving
around picking up other passengers, and generally just stuffing round really). We have tea, buns and jam, a typical South
American breakfast which I guess we are kinda used to now. We then jump back in the van and drive
through the Colca Valley and to the Colca Canyon. We stop at the Canyon del Condors which is a
part of the canyon where the Condors live.
Condors only fly first thing in the morning while they are looking for
food. Once they have found food they
will sit all day and eat it. Usually
each day you can see one maybe two Condors flying. Today there are eight Condors flying around
so we are pretty lucky. One even flies
directly over my head! They are so large. We stood at this point for an hour just
trying to get the perfect picture of them flying. But no picture can really compare to see them
in person. After this, we drive to
various points in the canyon and stop for pictures. We then stop at some market and we see some locals
have caught birds and tied them up and are charging tourist for photos with the
birds on their heads. We are disgusted
and there is no way we are giving them our money for that sort of cruelty. We then drive to the hot springs in
Chivay. We are given 40 minutes
here. Ann and I decide it’s not worth
it. By the time we got our tickets from
the queue, got changed and jumped in, it would be time to jump back out. So we decide to have some lunch. After this, we are then taken to a place for
lunch, but as we have already eaten, we have a walk around Chivay. Here we find a market where locals must do
their shopping as it is not touristy at all.
We see a watchy for 13 soles and we manage to talk the lady down to 12
soles (NZ 6), so we buy it (what a saving!!!).
Ann’s watch broke the day before, so we really needed to buy in order to
tell the time! The watch is really
heinous obviously but that is what we want, something that we don’t mind being
broken, lost or stolen.
We then jump back in the van for the ride back to Arequipa. Along the way we make two stops. One at the highest peak to take some photo’s
of the surrounding volcano’s. The other
is to take some photos of the wild llamas and vicunas. We arrive back in Arequipa at 5pm. Overall I find the tour disappointing. We only just went into the Canyon where the
depth was 1,250 metres. This is the
world’s deepest canyon and at its highest point has a depth of about 4,000
metres, which is what I wanted to see.
Instead they took us to small towns with markets, thermal pools etc so
we could spend some more money. After
the tour we head out for dinner at the restaurant under our hostel as we are
very hungry by the time we arrive back.
What a bad choice that was. This
was by far the worst meal we have had in South America. We went to a Mexican place and our tortilla’s
taste like cardboard, the rice has no flavour and the chicken is bland. I still eat the whole meal because I was
starving, but it wasn’t too flash. After
dinner it was back to the hostel and an early night was on the cards since it
was a very early morning.
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