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Previous: Peru (3)
I was pleasantly surprised to discover beautiful Arequipa after the long dusty drive through the coastal desert it took to get here from Nazca. This is the Cathedral in front of the Plaza de Armas.
There are lots of cheap places to stay in Arequipa. I had a comfortable room for 4.65$ at the Hostal Niko not far from the Plaza de Armas.
I enjoyed Arequipa, the colonial architecture had a lot of charm, it had several fine old churches and the Santa Catalina Convent was definitely worth a visit.
More importantly, the people seemed friendlier and I felt safer than in Lima as I roamed the streets and enjoyed the sights such as this Franciscan Monastery.
As I probably have mentioned already, I just love mountain scenery. That is why I got up very early to catch the local 4:30 am bus to Cabanaconde on the rim of the Colca Canyon, seven hours north-west of Arequipa.
From Arequipa, at 2350 meters, the bus climbs to 4800 meters before dropping down to Chivay at 3700 metres on the edge of Colca Canon.
It gets pretty cold on the high plateau which is often lost in the clouds like now. I was luckier on the way back for I got a glimpse of the views I had missed on the way in.
Chivay is a fair sized town with a busy market even on Mondays when I was there.
I was surprised to see so many people in this isolated place 160 kms from Arequipa. Actually Chivay is not as isolated as it looks for the nearby Colca Canyon is terraced and has been inhabited for centuries.
There is something magic about discovering this Lost Valley high up in the Andes, miles from nowhere and surrounded by inhospitable peaks. It is much like stumbling upon a lush oasis in the middle of the Sahara, or the Gobi.
The road follows the southern rim of the canyon as it narrows and deepens going westward towards Cabanaconde.
Further west it gets really deep, deeper than Nevada's Grand Canyon. Contrary to the wild Grand Canyon, the Colca Canyon has been terraced and inhabited for perhaps as long as 2000 years. The development of agriculture in the high Andean canyons and valleys obviously required stable social structures strong enough to muster and manage the collective labor required to build the extensive system of terraces that are still inhabited today as you can see in the next two photos.
The next two photos were taken from a spot called the Condor's Cross not far from Cabanaconde. I had a glimpse of one of the huge condors but by the time I had taken my camera out I couldn't see it anymore.
There were two other backpackers on the bus, the other passengers were all local people. The three of us, the Chilean Carlos Gonzales Shanel, the Swiss-Italian Aldo Crivelli and myself had a chicken cooked especially for us by Cabanaconde's only restaurant and had a ball.
Very little is known about the ancient civilisations that organised life in Peru's cold highlands and arid coastal areas not only because they did not have writing but also because the absolutist Spanish Catholic Church went to great lengths to eradicate every trace of beliefs or cultures other than their own. It was largely successful in imposing its power and in mobilising the local collective efforts to build its churches, monasteries and convents but it failed to wash out completely the old beliefs from the minds of its indigenous subjects.
Almost all Amerindians have retained their original language which is Quechua everywhere except around Lake Titicaca where Aymara is spoken. They have generally well maintained their customs and traditions and in some remote areas, a large proportion of the people have not bothered to learn Spanish.
As everywhere else in South America the descendants of those who survived the Inquisition are all nominally Roman Catholic. Those who survived the persecution of heathens and heretics did so by giving their ancient deities, the names of Catholic Saints so as to disguise their ongoing practice of forbidden cults.
Fully half of Peru's 20 million people are "campesinos" (and another third are "Mestizo"). The wealthy, predominately white, ruling elites and the generals who are never far behind, do not seem to recognise that hidden face of the Peruvian reality. It is not surprising that rebellious movements like Sendero Luminoso and Tupac Amaru should arise in that context.
In the usual order, Carlos Gonzales Shanel, Aldo Crivelli and I standing outside of the Hostal Solarex where we had spent the night for 1$.
