Peru

At one of the villages that we stopped in, during this morning's hike through the Cañon del Colca, we found the famous "museum of local life", which is run by a charming and extravagently-dressed Quechuan lady called Victoria. Most people in the village only speak Quechua, but Victoria also speaks Spanish, in order to communicate with her gringo visitors. She gave us a cute and interesting tour of her little museum, which is just one room in her house, that she's filled with the little artefacts of daily life around here. She's one hell of an entrepeneur.

Our second day doing the Cañon del Colca hike was spent entirely within the bowels of the canyon. We started from the little village hospedaje that we slept in last night, and hiked all morning until we reached the oasis, stopping along the way at Victoria's museum. As with yesterday morning's hike, the walking this morning was quite pleasant, and the scenery was simply to die for.

Roy was our guide on our three-day hike in the Cañon del Colca, and he's one of the funniest and craziest guides I've had so far on my trip. Every time we asked him how much hiking we have left for the day, he'd say something like: "nueve horas mas" ("nine hours more"). Sometimes it was hard to tell whether he was joking, or being serious. But we all loved his humour, and he did a great job of leading us through the canyon, and of then helping us get safely back into Arequipa at the end of the trip.

Lovely couple from Seattle, USA, that came with us on our three-day hike in the Cañon del Colca. Sarah's a nurse for psychiatric people, and Dan's an ESL teacher (also a qualified Spanish teacher — he spent many years living in Central and South America). Dan also has a massive patch over his left eye, which he lost to cancer a few years back. These people were good fun to take hiking, and to share a few beers with.

This morning, we began our three-day hike into the Colca Canyon (Cañon del Colca). Our group of six — myself, Chris, Sarah, Dan, Jean-Claude, and Marie, plus our guide Roy — left Arequipa in the wee hours of the morning by bus; and then it was downhill, all the way to lunch.

Dear visitors,

As of today, this site has received a number of minor enhancements, in order to improve the ease of browsing through my numerous blog entries. I hope that you will find the following new features on the site convenient:

1. There is now a monthly archive of all blog entries. You can view all blog entries for each month (grouped by day) on a single page! Should make it much easier to catch up on older blog entries, and to keep track of which entries you have and haven't read. Also provides fixed pages from which you can access all the entries, rather than the reverse chronological listing, where the entries on each page number change constantly.
2. At the bottom of each blog entry (the full entry, not the summary), there is now a link to the previous and next entries (according to date and time). So you can now "cruise" from one blog entry to the next, without having to keep going back to the index pages.

Went and had a look at Monasterio de Santa Catalina today, a 400-year-old monastery and convent in the middle of Arequipa. Apparently, it's the only monastery in the world that's considered to be "a city inside a city". It's also still fully functioning, and inhabited by the same order of nuns that began it in Renaissance times. Interesting to see the antique sleeping rooms, the beautiful architecture, and — bizarrely — the ingenious laundry system that they have inside. Worth a wander, if you're in Arequipa and have an hour or so to spare.

For our first day in Arequipa, Chris and I awoke to find the city overrun by protestors. Seems that there's a teachers' strike going on here: staff in the city's pre-schools, primary schools and high schools are off work, and have taken to the streets, (presumably) demanding the usual things such as higher wages and better conditions. The demonstrations are fairly peaceful, but they're disrupting traffic really badly, and they're resulting in numerous road closures.

Crossed back into Peru today, from Arica in northern Chile; and I must say, it's good to be back! Almost feels like coming home again. The money looks familiar. The food looks familiar. And the people look familiar (and they have that familiar Peruvian friendliness). Got a shared taxi across the border this morning, from Arica to Tacna; and then it was a long evening's bus ride, from Tacna to Arequipa.

I can't just call this entry "Peru: the wrapup", because I have definite plans to return to Peru (after seeing Bolivia and northern Chile), and to do the coast from south to north. It seems that two months in Peru simply wasn't enough for me — especially when I spent almost all of that time loitering around in Cusco. Anyway, my time in Peru (and in South America!) so far has been spectabulous; and I can't wait to get back here, and to see the rest of the country. Except next time, I'm not coming to Cusco — not falling for that one again — if I go back there, I might not ever leave!