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Our last night in Cusco was spent
at a place called Don Antonios, where local groups play traditional
Peruvian music and apparently you go wild and dance a lot! Well that's
what the Mexicans and French must have been told! Although one lady in
particular must have drank too much Coca Tea because she was having a
great time "dancing" and didn't care that 200+ people were all laughing at
her! Good on her I say!
So, off to Arequipa. Puno, who
said Puno? This is the Arequipa bus isn't it? Where are you lot going?
Puno! We were told this was the Arequipa bus! Run! Stop! Don’t panic!
Get back on the bus, it is going to Arequipa, after Puno, so sit back and
enjoy your thirteen hour bus ride! What a great way to get the heart
pumping early in the morning!
Finally, after leaving Cusco at
9:00am we arrived in Arequipa at 10:30pm! Arequipa is 2,325 metres above
sea level and known as "The White City." Firstly because of the white
clay that they use to make houses and buildings, but also because the
people from Arequipa are more "white" than other parts of Peru. It is
also surrounded by three volcanoes, Pichu Pichu at 5,644 metres and
Chachani at 6,075 metres, both are extinct, and Misti at 5,825 metres,
which apparently is just sleeping! The backdrop to this beautiful city is
spectacular.
The following morning we set off
to Colca Canyon hoping to see some Condors soaring over the canyon. On
the way, again over the Andes, we saw dozens of wild Vicuñas, Alpacas and
Llamas.
We spent the night in a town
called Chivay, 3,633 metres above sea level, so walking, again became a
task in itself! Our group was dropped off, one party at a time, at
different hostels until there was only us left and our Tour Guide
announced, "That is your hotel up there on that hill!" It was awesome, in
fact it was so nice we declined the afternoon walk and evening
entertainment to enjoy the time in the hotel. To rub things in, as the
rest of our group were walking down the hill past our hotel after going to
see the ruins, we happened to step out of the hotel grounds, next to the
track, to take a photo of the town below! The afternoon walk we turned
down was from the town up to the ruins right next to our hotel!
Flashpackers!
The following morning we set off
to Colca Canyon, a forty-five kilometre drive that took nearly three hours
because of the state of the "roads!" However, when we got there we were
treated to a real spectacle as more than twenty-five Condors soared above
our heads. Condors have a wingspan of over 3.2 metres, making them one
the biggest flying birds in the world!
Back in Arequipa we walked around
the city's churches and cathedral. The architecture and decoration of
these buildings was incredible, very ornate and the attention to detail
was amazing.
We wished we had more time in
Arequipa, but we had already booked our bus tickets to Puno, yes we really
wanted to go to Puno this time! However, a surprise was still waiting for
us! The agency in Arequipa, obviously wanting to maximise profit, put us
on a local bus to Puno, which instead of taking just three hours took
nearly six as it stops everywhere it can so the bus driver can cram more
locals onto it. The guy sat next us had a live chicken in a bag and three
locals decided my legs, chair-arm and chair-back where excellent leaning
posts for themselves, as they didn't have seats. Still, I’m sure nobody
noticed that we were the only white people on the bus and quite obviously
not meant to be there! We enjoyed it nevertheless!
We learnt a valuable lesson here
about pre-booking tickets and also using travel agents. If you pre-book
everything it can be costly to change your plans. It is just as easy,
although a little more time consuming, to book things yourself. It can
also be far cheaper to book things yourself!
Puno had been described to us as a
bit of a dirty, hole of a town, full of pickpockets and conmen, but we
quite liked it and felt very comfortable walking around on our own trying
to find various places of interest.
We stayed in Puno, 3,830 metres
above sea level, as it gave us easy access to Lake Titicaca, which is
apparently 3,831 metres above sea level, where we wanted to visit the Uros
Reed Islands and the island of Taquile. If the measurements are accurate
then surely Puno would be underwater?
So there we were in a minibus,
having just stopped at a different hotel to pick up some more people for
the trip when all of a sudden we heard, "Angela, is that you?" When we
turned round a lady called Hayley was grinning at us. Hayley had been
trained by both of us at the bank in previous years! Small world eh?
Both Hayley and her friend, Sophie, had walked the Inca Trail raising
money for Tiny Life Campaign and The National Association for Colitis and
Crohn's Disease, respectively.
The
island of Taquile was a bit of a waste of time, too much walking for no
real purpose. However the Uros Reed Islands were unbelievable. A
population of 1,500 people living on floating islands made purely from
reeds. The history behind this population and how they came to live on
these floating islands is fascinating. Six hundred years ago they lived
on the mainland, but to avoid being conquered by other tribes they made
boats out of the reeds and lived on the lake, in the boats, for nearly
five years with nothing but Llama skins for shelter. They then figured
out that they could strap two boats together and build a reed shelter over
them, and they lived like this for a further sixty years, before finally
working out how to use the reeds to make floating islands. To this day
they live on the islands going ashore once a week to trade, fish being one
of their biggest assets. |