Tres Días del Condor

Sunday morning I met up with Erica, my guide, and Jaime, my driver for a five hour drive across the Aguada Blanca National Reserve, where I saw my first vicuña.



Okay, kids, it's Biology Time! There are four types of camelids found in Peru. The llama, the alpaca, the vicuña, and the seldom-seen guanaco. The alpaca and the llama are very similar, except that the alpaca has a snubbier nose, softer wool, doesn't spit, and is generally a much cuter animal. See?



All across these pampas are miradores, or lookout points, from which you can see the Andes.



At these lookout points you'll find the natives, hawking their wares and being adorable.





Another interesting sight along the Andean roads are the apachetas. They're these piles of stones made as offerings to the mountains, which the native peoples held (hold?) sacred.



This was taken at Patapampa, a mirador that's at nearly 16,000 feet. It was difficult to breathe, even with a boca full of coca. Bitter stuff, by the way, tastes about as good as you would imagine chewing a handful of leaves tastes, but it works, so three days later, I'm still chomping away.

Our destination was the Colca River valley, which I'll get to in a second, but to get to the hostal we had to pass through the town of Chivay, and being as it was Sunday, the town square was a bustle of activity.







The people of Chivay are descendants of the Cabanas people, though the residents of Coporaque, the small town across the river where my hostal was located, are descended from the Collagua people. I'm still not entirely clear on the difference. They speak different languages, and it has something to do with the hats. But I'm no anthropologist (nor fashionista).

I am, however, a linguistics nerd! If you're not, skip this paragraph. But if you're an amateur Henry Higgins like myself, read on. OK, so people from Arequipa have a slight accent, Limeños will tell you that they sing their speech. But what I heard was that the double-l (which we're all familiar with because we enjoy quesadillas) is pronounced eel-YUH, as opposed to ee-YUH. So, remember sillar, that white stone? It's pronounced seel-YAR, not see-YAR. And Collagua? You got it, kohl-ee-YAH-wah. Maybe I'm the only one interested in that factoid.

So after five hours over roads both smooth and incredibly bumpy, we arrived at La Casa de Mama Yacchi (yep, same owners as La Casa de mi Abuela). Mama Yacchi evidently was a Collagua princess who married an Incan chieftain to avoid bloody conquest. Her name means "wise woman" in the local lingo. Here´s the view from my room.



Not bad, right? And here's the manager's pet llama.



His name's Mancha (or Patch or Spot or Stain), and he was always getting loose from his post and wandering around the grounds. He's actually a huariso, or llama-alpaca cross. See, the first two shavings of an alpaca give the best wool, and after that they usually kill the beast for meat. But the manager just couldn't bring herself to do it, so now he putters around, chewing up the lawn and waddling away from tourists looking to pose with him.

After lunch (mmm....barbecued alpaca steak...), Erica and I went for a hike to take in the canyon. Colca Canyon is a massive (twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and over 60 miles long) part of a volcanic mountain range. The people live there much as they have for the last thousand years, farming terraces built before the Spaniards and before the Incas.






After the hike, we visited La Calera, with its open-air thermal hot spring baths.



Now, you guys know me, and you know I'm never the first one to volunteer to strip down and show some skin (well, not publicly anyways) but I figured since the place was full of European tourists, maybe I wouldn't be the fattest, palest guy there. So I steeled myself and stepped out of the changing room. Just then, the strains of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" started coming out of the loudspeaker. C'mon, baby, let me know.

Back at the hotel, a roaring fire and a delicious buffet dinner awaited. Speaking of the music here, while there are the requisite American rock anthems, there's also a lot of that Peruvian pan-flute stuff. In fact, in Lima, I witnessed the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace and was surprised to hear the military band playing Paul Simon, until I remembered El Condor Pasa is actually an old Peruvian folk song. But here in the Colca Valley, far from the Internet and even television, familiar songs such as The Sounds of Silence and Hey Jude take on a haunting significance when played through an ancient wind instrument.

Anyways, we were up at the crack of dawn to drive over the dusty mountain roads again to Colca's main attraction, the Condor's Cross.



These giant majestic birds are too heavy to fly, so they take off from perches deep in the canyon, catch warm air drafts, and float in giant circles upwards, until they soar over your head before heading out along the river.




It's pretty breathtaking. I don't really have anything snarky to say about it. Awe-inspiring.

On the way back to Coporaque, we stopped in the tiny village of Maca, which has a plain white Colonial-era church.



At least, that's what I thought until I went inside.




So that's where all the gold stolen from the Incas went!

The town was nearly completely destroyed by an earthquake thirty years ago, but has been restored, largely thanks to gifts of the Spanish government. Which I guess is nice, but not really enough to make up for the conquest.

More cuteness...



They had an eagle there you could take a picture with, but they really shouldn't be in captivity, so I didn't want to reward that kind of ecological insensitivity. Plus the talons kinda scared me.

After lunch in Chivay, Erica headed back to Arequipa and Jaime and I went back to Mama Yacchi. That afternoon I spent dozing and trying to recover from a mild case of the soroche (altitude sickness). Another scrumptious dinner, then right to bed because we had the long drive to Puno this morning.



This is Lagunillas, a beautiful mountain lake and a good spot to see flamingos.




Not to get all Al Gore on you guys, but here you can see where the surface of the lake used to be.

Puno is about five hours from Chivay, but Jaime and I filled the time discussing basketball, pets, the habits of Peruvian truck drivers, and why Cyndi Lauper will come to Peru but the Red Hot Chili Peppers will not. I'll miss him.

Whew! That was a long one! Tomorrow I'll sum up Puno, and believe me, it won't take nearly as much text.