Arequipa & Colca Canyon (10/3-10/9)

Pankekes with bananas

Mexican food!

As opens Joseph Heller´s Catch-22 (bet you can´t guess what I just read for the second time), ¨It was love at first sight.¨ Reflecting on our time in Arequipa, it´s hard to articulate exactly what we did, although I could certainly tell you what we ate, who was there, and how wonderful it felt to have a relaxed, safe-feeling city to veg out in for a time. We made pancakes every morning in the ¨kitchen.¨ We found delicious burritos. We sampled ice creams all over town at least once a day. We befriended everyone in our hostel - the sophisticated, chess-playing employee who observed us bemusedly; the rambunctious Mexican who played music on streetcorners and drank beers throughout the day, while spontaneously breaking into serenades in the tight hallways; the mysterious older businessman who seemed to have nothing more pressing to do but watch the younger guests´ antics; the Corsican mafia man who´d just quit smoking for his 40th birthday; the Frenchman who was unimpressed with everything but who I suspect secretly admired us; the San Diegan motor sports afficionado whose girlfriend left us to keep him entertained for his 29th birthday 20 minuts after meeting him; and the lovely receptionist who tried (futilely) to keep everyone in check.

Rocoto relleno (top) y pastel de papas (bottom)

Last year, traveling in Morocco, Scott and I met an interesting girl named Sarah from South Carolina, known for her love of surf photography and hiking, craftsmaking, and wild animal research projects. Thanks to Facebook, we knew Sarah had been working in Brazil and then traveling in Peru, and we convinced her to use her last few Soles to take a bus from Lima (where she needed to be for her international flight home in just a few days) to Arequipa. Since you can never count on anything working in Peru, we weren´t sure when to expect her, or if we should expect her at all, and instead went on a journey to visit a picanteria, which - although the name implies would feature spicy foods - carried Arequipeñan specialties. There, I had one of the best meals I´ve had on this trip; it was an appetizer dish with a pastel de papas (potato pastry - something like potatoes au gratin in lasagna form) and a rocoto relleno (cooked red pepper stuffed with cheese, rice, and meat).

Hanging with the riot police - note the wine bottle

When we got back to the hostel, we were thrilled to find Sarah asleep in the sunshine in the common room! We spent the afternoon catching up, eating pizza and ice cream, drinking wine on the cathedral steps, and taking pictures with the riot police (who were engaged in the pressing task of managing a peaceful rally for the rights of the handicapped). We also went out for beers later in the evening, and sat next to two very drunk Arequipeñan businessman who wanted to make us understand that being born feet-first means that you were born under a star, like Jesus (??).

Cañon de Colca
The next morning we left for Cañon de Colca, at 4160 meters (13650 ft), the second (first?) deepest canyon in the world. Before we left, Sarah had bequeathed to us a Costco jar of peanut butter, which featured prominently in our diets for the next few days. The bus ride, in particular, was fairly entertaining, as we tried to make PB&Js with the driest bread of all time, which crumbled everywhere as we tried to stick the sandwiches together.

Scott and Sarah in the Oasis

At 3:00pm, after a 6-hour drive, we arrived at the canyon´s edge. Wanting to make it to the town at the bottom, aptly named Oasis, before dark, we set out immediately. The trail took no prisoners - it was a fairly straight shot several thousand feet down the dusty, rocky canyon walls to the river floor below. A mere two hours later, just as night fell, we arrived at Oasis, which was actually just a cluster of five fixed-price hostels with food and tiny, quaint, thatched huts.

Sarah and Scott braving the climb

The next morning, after consulting the maps on the backs of hostel brochures we´d received the day before, we decided to hike up the other side of the canyon to a small (30 tiny, tin-roofed buildings) town called Malata. Scott and I planned then to spend another night at the other end of the canyon, and Sarah would make the devastatingly steep ascent back to the canyon´s rim, so that she could get back to Lima in time for her flight.
The hike was steep, but manageable, and we enjoyed a beautiful lunch of cheesy sweet potato latkes, avocado salad, and soup at the town´s museum, then parted ways with Sarah, promising to see her again back in the U.S.

Trail wildlife - I almost ate this guy accidentally

Scott and I, consulting the ¨map¨ again, took off on what looked to be a roughly flat trail along the canyon´s far wall. It was supposed to take four hours or so, and we started out in high spirits under the scorching sun. The trail immediately began weaving through a complex  network of agricultural terraces, and we noted with growing dismay that our ¨trail¨ looked suspiciously like these terraces in width and general appearance. After hiking for perhaps an hour, the trail ended abruptly in a deep side canyon. In perfect form, we decided to abandon that trail and climb directly up the steep hillside - the nearby donkeys raised their eyebrows. Minutes later, we were scrambling through side gulleys and up near-vertical, crumbling hillsides with nothing but cacti for handholds. We reached a ridge and surveyed the surrounding canyon sides. There appeared to be another trail near us, which extended at least until the next ridge. We thought we could descry the actual trail winding gently along the slope about 500 feet above us, but decided to take the lower one and forgo the climb.

Sunset in the Canyon

Our trail served us well, although it was absolutely not the intended one, and we weren´t sure what we´d find after each towering ridge. We fought off cacti, scraped our knees, elbows, and hands, stumbled through spiderwebs, and took panoramic videos of the breathtakingly dry, scrubby canyon. At one point, near the end of the trail, I slipped and almost fell to my death. Harrowing.

Cactus CFLs - so cool

We finally arrived in Llahuar (pronounced ¨Jaguar¨) just as the sun set, affording us canyon vistas that can be described as no less than divine. We filtered some much-needed water at the river, then let ourselves into a beautiful, incredibly cheap little hostel with an intimate garden and delicious tortillas de verduras. In the morning, we found our hostel overlooked the river, replete with a cactus garden (which, incidentally, functioned as hanging points for the compact fluorescent lightbulbs in the yard, powered by a modest solar panel on the roof) and an adorable boy playing with a puppy.
Wishing we could stay longer in this Eden, but hoping to make the 2pm bus out of Cabanaconde (the village on the rim), and with several thousand vertical feet to climb, we set out around 8:30am.
The first part of the hike led us along the river, and we stopped to explore some geysers and mudpots before crossing the river. From there, the trail led directly up the canyon walls in steep switchbacks. It was impossible to tell where the trail led above us, and each ascent revealed further vertical height. The heat in the canyon increased as the sun grew higher, and we stopped often for sunscreen and water. Halfway up, we ran into Xavier, the Frenchman from our hostel in Arequipa, although none of us was particularly surprised, as Colca Canyon is definitely on the Gringo Trail.

Breakfast in paradise

Hours in, the trail leveled out, and I hoped the hardest part was over. We only had one banana and the jar of peanut butter, and we ate most of that before starting the next ascent. Which appeared never to end. I think overall we climbed something like 6,000 vertical feet to get out, and then hurried along the rim of the canyon, riding the tails of our peanut-energy and striving to make it to the main square by 2pm.
We made it with about 45 seconds to spare, which we used to buy bananas, breads, and sodas, then settled in to let the sweat dry on us and cause us to shiver. I was a bit disappointed we hadn´t stopped at the famous Cruz del Condor, where the magnificent, endangered birds can sometimes be spotted. However, as the bus rambled around the canyon´s curves, I glanced up in time to see an enormous, dark, predator bird pull out of a careening dive directly next to the front of our bus! As it wheeled away, I realized that I´d just gotten very lucky...

The ¨Hustle¨

the hustle

Back in Arequipa, our hostel friends were thrilled to see us (they were drunk). We passed out almost immediately, but awoke fresh the next morning with a plan to finally put our long-talked about ¨hustle¨ into action. We still had some peanut butter left from Sarah´s generous jar, and - recognizing the appeal of such an exciting foreign commodity - we bought 12 bananas, cut them in half, then cut them lengthwise and filled them with peanut butter. Our investment in the bananas was 3 Soles, or about $1 USD.
Then we wandered the Plaza de Armas, me shouting in my best Ecuadorian-ice-cream-saleslady voice, ¨Bananaaaaas! Bananas con mantequilla de maniiiiii! Muy ricooooo!¨

Within 10 minutes, all the bananas were gone, and my pockets were full of plata.