Chivay intro

Chivay

3:00 in the afternoon, I was in the back of the police pickup truck with the Colonel and 5 other police in the cab. They were taking me 2 miles out of town to put the heat on me.

Actually they were the tourist police and I was to be their guest at the local hot springs! I stopped in on the local Tourist Police office to get information on things to do around Chivay the main town in Colca Canyon. The County seat so to speak. I heard the population is 5,000 but it looks smaller than Marshall. There were 4 Officers including the Colonel and one woman, she spoke some English and became a friend to talk to in a town with few English speakers except some tourists. After several days of casual contact I was a friend.

At 13,000+ feet adjusting to the altitude was difficult. I was doing well when I could get half dressed before taking a breathing break. I did manage to take a walk each day and by going slowly managed to see some great sights. I could just go to the top of my Hostel and see the 3 main volcanoes of the area all near or above 20,000? Ampato, site of a late Incan child sacrifice (Juanita) found in the late 1990s; Sabancaya, most active volcano in South America (no eruptions so far); and Mismi, the source of the Amazon by some accounts and on the continental divide.

The first day, Friday the 28th, Oct.) I went to the local market still with the companions of the canyon trek. There were lots of different fruits, some from the canyon, and others like mango from the hotter coast. My favorite became granadilla, a 3" passion fruit with sweet juicy seedy pulp looking much like a mass of frog eggs! There were probably 20 kinds of potato, and all kinds of dried corn including the almost black purple corn for making a deep purple drink high in antioxidants, chicha morada, as well as a multicolored corn from Cabanoconde. That night I walked to Calera, a hot spring center 2 miles up stream from Chivey. The attendant spoke no English and at first I got the impression that there was no space left. Eventually I got in and was assigned to a 30?round pool inside. There was a couple from Argentina, the husband speaking good English and several Peruvians who seemed to understand my broken and improperly tensed Spanish to some extent. All were very friendly.

Colca Canyon Trek

Colca Canyon Trek

Left Lima on Tuesday the 25th for Arequipa at app. 9,000' with the intention to see the architecture of this old Spanish city. I had a recommendation to look up a trekking guide for a hike (trek) into Colca Canyon, in places twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and the best place to see the Andean Condor. After settling into my hostel, Casa Sillar built over 100 years ago of the local white volcanic rock used throughout the city. It turned out that they had a trip planed the following day and I decided to go against the general rule to spend 3 days adjusting to the altitude, and booked the trip with 3 others and our guide Ion as they didn't know when the next one would be. We left at 6: AM for the 5  hour bus ride, past a vicuna reserve at 12,000' (saw a dozen of these rare graceful cameloid ancestors of the alpaca)Saw my first bofedal, an alpine wetland populated with low dense  mounds of sedge with other minute plants providing dependible grazing through the dry season. The road peaked at 16,000' in a rocky landscape populated by dwarf cushion plants especially the llareta, a bright green mounded member of the parsley family. They are so dense and woody that they are sometimes used as fire wood. A long streatch of the road was unpaved and  so corrigated that at times my feet were doing an tap dance all on their own.

Cabanaconde was our destination. Surrounded by ancient terraces just showing 6" corn and broad bean plants. We had a good lunch and headed off across the gently rolling fields to the canyon edge. The trail down zigzag ed down a desert landscape studded with various cactus, agave, and shrubby asteraceae plants. Dusty and rocky, dropping over 3,000' in 2 hours. We met several small mules with there drivers bringing covered loads At the bottom a new cable bridge 5' wide and 150' long crossed the river, shrunken to a small stream by a massive irrigation project for the coast which takes 80% of the normal flow. After a steep switch backed climb of couple hundred feet we arrived in San Juan a village of about 25 families. After the dessicated trip down the canyon wall, San Juan (as are most of the low canyon villages) is a verdant place where the main crops are various fruits such as avocado, cherimoya, fig, apple, and others unfamiliar to me. They practice a form of permiculture here and trade their produce for the corn, beans, and potatoes grown on the higher fields around Cabanaconde. A small aqueduct followed the edge of the trail and at one point the whole trail was in use carrying a rush of water to lower terraces. We had to cut through an elderly Quechua speaking woman, a bit reluctant to have gringos in her yard and apparently astonished by my beard. The accommodation was in adobe huts with bamboo and thatch roofs (with a layer of blue tarp in between for the tourist's fussier demands for water proof bedrooms. It does rain some in December through May. Looking back the way we had come one could make out only a short stretch of trail the rest was sheer cliffs of columned basalt like the Devil's Causeway but only maybe 16" across but over 1.000' high and in places twisted to show the ends of the columns.

The next day we more or less contoured along the lower part of the canyon through 4 other villages, stopping in one to visit a friend of the guide who showed us around part of his farm, he had been to college and learned grafting and other techniques which he used to improve his plants. He was also the only bee keeper in the canyon. After a about 3 hours we arrived at a small resort called simply the Oasis. Maybe 5 acres of green amidst the dry canyon, with 3 rustic pools filled with water from a spring about 75 degrees (the river was more like 50 so it was a step up. We spent 4 hours relaxing swimming, eating, and taking a short walk to the waterfall still powerful after giving up part of its supply to the oasis. The temperature had dropped and a breeze had come up which helped temper the climb, but 3,700' starting at 6,000' it was the limit of my endurance. The guide took my 15 lb pack for the last hour and a half of the 4 ?? endurance test. On the way up we were passed by several mules going up as well as down. There were 3 crosses for people who died from falling off their mules It was evident that the mules often stumbled coming down on the loose rocks. One particularly well dressed woman, all in the intricately embroidered skirt, jacket and hat that make up the traditional dress here, passed us going up and stopped about 60' above and stared silently at me for about 15 seconds before resuming her ascent. Having barely survived the climb I went to bed with only water and coca tea. I bought a few rolls which I finally had an appetite for at midnight. Did have enough energy to take a picture of a children's parade with candle lit icons including a miniature church, which passed the restaurant.

We arose at 5:30 AM the last day to make it to the condor viewing area. Crowded along the edge of the road were dozens of women selling their native crafts. We went to the edge of the canyon and were rewarded with the sight of several condors including an adult which cruised several times within 100'. On the way back to the bus the woman from the trail was there selling traditional weaving etc. and I had to buy something so to keep my weight to a minimum got 2 pair of alpaca socks. Hard to tell if her statuesque gaze the day before was a sales ploy or a genuine curiosity about the grey bearded gringo.

Cheers Roger

Around Lima

Around Lima It's been an interesting few days in Peru. I arrived Thursday in Lima and and spent 2 days seeing museums and an orchid exhibit as well as circumnavigating a preincan ruin near my hostel. When setting up reservations for accommodation, I ended up calling the wrong place so I had directions for one hostel with the name of the other in my head. The taxi driver tried to take me some where he recommended but I kept to my mistaken address. Don't know what either his recommendation or the one I thought I was going to were like but the one I ended up at is fine and met an American ho is writing a book on Machu Pichu and am invited to look him up when I get to Cusco. At the orchid exhibit I met professora de botanica and am waiting for information on contacting a another botanist about places of special interest. Rather than heading to Arequipa Saturday as planned, I decided to wait for the contact info as this botanist is in Lima. To get out of the city I took a bus a couple of hours north to a fog desert reserve. It was a bleak st reach of highway where I was dropped off and 2 hours walk up hill to the campsite with all my lowland camping gear including 8 lbs of water, as there is no supply there. I would have had to walk another 20 minutes walk further to the information center to store most of my stuff, but a couple from Lima (who gave me a ride the last 1/4 mile) offered to look after it as they had just finished the 3 hour loop trail and were about to set up there camp for the night. I did so and set off for the loop track myself.There is almost no rain here but abundant fog April through November which creates a unique vegetation among peculiarly wind sculpted rock outcroppings. I was surprised to find wild heliotrope, white ageratum, as well as several interesting solanacea, asteracea, malvacae, etc plants in bloom. The couple Pepe and Mili, from Lima and I shared conversation part in Spanish and English by a campfire started with the aid of wood scraps from another camper who just happened to have a big box of wooden Venetian blind scraps from his factory. Camping under a eucalyptus tree, I was sent to sleep by the patter of dew drops which had condensed from the fog. After a short walk the next morning with Pepe when I pointed out the plants he had not noticed (being a marketing major) , I was invited to go with them to a bay 20 minutes away by car where we saw flamingos, as well as other shorebirds. Afterwards they gave me a ride to my hostel door as they lived in the neighborhood. All in all a good start with new contacts. Cheers Roger