Wednesday 9 May 2012

Day 43 - Arequipa, Peru (30 April 2012)

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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