Arequipa & Colca Canyon

Andean Condor at Cruz del Condor
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After a very hot, 6 hour bus journey (297 km) we arrived in Arequipa (1,011 km from Lima) and found a nice hotel on Calle Sugarte, close to the main square of Plaza des Armas.

Standing at the foot of El Misti volcano (snow-capped and 5,822 m high) and oozing the best of Spanish colonial charm, Arequipa vies with Cusco for the title of Peru's most attractive city. We definitely thought it was one of the best cities we have visited during all our trips so far. Arequipa was built out of a pearly white volcanic rock called ´sillar´ and the old colonial buildings dazzle in the sun, giving the city its nickname ´White City - Ciudad Blanca´. It has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Condor
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Arequipa has a beautiful main square and many interesting sites. We visited Monasterio Santa Catalina, opened in 1970 after four centuries of mystery. It is a complete miniature walled colonial town of over 2 ha in the middle of the city, where about 450 nuns lived in total seclusion, except for their women servants.The few remaining nuns have retreated to one section of the convent, allowing visitors to see a maze of cobbled streets and plazas bright with geraniums and other flowers, cloisters and buttressed houses. These have been painted in traditional white, orange, deep red and Greek blue. The pictures speak for themselves.

Andean Condor
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We also visited the Museo Santuarios Andinos. It contains the frozen Inca mummies found on Mount Ampato. The mummie known as ´Juanita - The Ice Princess´ is one of the most fascinating as it is so well preserved. The mummies were discovered by John Reichardt in 1995 after an explosion of the nearby Sabancaya volcano exposed and damaged part of the top of Mount Ampato.

Juanita was offered to the gods and walked all the way from Cusco to Arequipa (a long way!). She must have been sedated beacuse of exhaustion and cold and sedating drinks given to her once she reached the top. After a ritual was performed, they made her sit on a blanket in a featus position, hit her on the head and watched her bleed to dead. It may sound weird to us, but it was an honour for the girl to be sacrificed as she was told to become a half-God. The museum shows the gifts that were found around her grave and those of 1 other boy and 2 other girls as well as her clothes. A video shows how John Reichardt discovered her. It was definitely one of the best museums we have ever seen.

Colca Canyon - the deepest canyon in the world
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After 2 days we went on a 2-day Colca Canyon tour. This is the largest canyon in the world and twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. The Rio Colca descends from 3,500m above sea level at Chivay to 2,200m at Cabanaconde, the last village in the Colca Canyon.

Unspoiled villages lie on both sides of the canyon, and some of the extensive pre-Colombian terraced fields are still in use. We stayed the night in Chivay, visited Coporaque on a steep walk to an old cemetery, watched local kids perform a traditional dance at 6am in Yanque and aw plenty of vicunas, lamas and alpacas (a mixture of a lama and a sheep by the looks of it). The highlight of our trip however was seeing 6 Andean condors, the second largest flying bird with a wingspan of 3.20m(after the albatros, which can measure up to 3.50m). It was amazing to see the condors rising on the morning thermals.

Local boy in Yanque
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We got back from the trip in the late afternoon and caught an evening bus to Nazca.