For the boy’s half-term we set off for a week in the Colca
Canyon area, about eight hours from Cusco.
This was the first major outing for our car. We left on the Friday afternoon and spent the
night in the best hotel we could find in Sicuani, about 2.5 hours away. We would not go back to it. Zu was pretty ill and though he survived the
journey, he fell asleep as soon as we arrived.
I stayed with him while Martha and Titus went out and found what they
said was a surprisingly good supper.
Saturday, was Zu’s 10th birthday. He was marginally better but still had the
runs. We had a long but beautiful drive,
mostly on dirt roads over endless, empty green hills, with mountains in the
distance. After a couple of hours we
passed through Yauri, a surprisingly large and ugly town, and then an enormous
copper mine, which has scarred thousands of acres. (Local people’s protests
against this mine have since started to escalate and the other day two or three
protesters were shot and killed. Mining and its proceeds are a hot potato in
Peru at the moment.) Later we stopped at some amazing ‘stone forests’ where we
found a couple of snakes sunning themselves on the rocks. Zu said this ‘made’ his birthday. Just below a dam we found the road bridge had
been washed away but there was another way round using the base of the dam.
In honour of Zu we had arranged to stay in a smart hotel in
the Colca valley. By the afternoon we
were wandering down to their thermal pools in our white towelling gowns. These
pools are fed by hot springs and are mixed with river water to different
temperatures. We lounged around for
hours until our hands and feet were disgustingly wrinkly. The boys, who like a
little hotel luxury, were thrilled with it all.
The following day, after the boys had had time to get
sunburnt in the pools, we set off for condors and the Canyon itself. On the way we had a flat tyre but the jack
and spare all seemed to work fine and it did not hold us up much. It was another spectacular dirt road, winding
along the left side of the canyon which was satisfyingly deep. In the evening
we went to look for condors at a viewpoint – Cruz del Condor – which we had to
ourselves. We saw five or six and
watched them come circling majestically in, but none came particularly close.
We stayed the night in Cabanaconde, a sleepy town,
where the streets were full of donkeys bringing in the maize harvest. The next
day we returned for the morning viewing from Cruz del Condor. This time the place was crawling with
mini-bus groups. Though the light was
clearer the condor viewing was little better.
At one point a large bird circled overhead and we could hear all the
cameras firing away. “It’s a Variable
Hawk” said Zu to me. The cry went up –
“It’s just a hawk” – and the cameras went down.
From Cabanaconde we marched down into the canyon for two
nights. We had thought we would need to take our tent and camping equipment and
hire a man with a mule to carry it all.
However, at supper the night before, a nice Belgian girl – who ran a
hostel and a charity with her husband – had told us that it was totally
unnecessary; there were plenty of hostels in the valley. The walk down was on a good path which made
for pleasant walking and we could see next day’s path quite clearly. However, by the bridge, some 1100m below, we were glad to stop
descending. At the bridge was posted a guard, who asked
for our tickets. “What tickets?” we
asked a little disingenuously. They
charge about US$25 per head for entry to the Canyon area. We thought we had got
away with it and were very surprised to be caught out at this remote point. The guard also surprised me by telling us we
were the 60th and 61st adults to cross that day.
Sitting with the guard was a lady. When I asked them if they knew of a place to
stay in San Juan de Chucho, the first village, she said ‘Yes, as it happens I
saw you coming and came down to see if you needed somewhere to stay.’ She said it in such an unassuming way that we
fell in with her and allowed her to lead us to her hostal. It was comfortable enough and we shared it
with a charming French baker, his wife and their guide, two French girls who
were camping, and a mixed group of English-speaking backpackers with their
guide.
The next day’s walk along the Canyon was easy enough. At the
top of the only climb we found a man selling all the usual refreshments
together with local fruits – the climate of the canyon allows them to grow
semi-tropical varieties. We tucked into
grenadillas. From there on the path was
flat or downhill and we romped along enticed by the thought of... swimming
pools. One of the attractions of the descent into the canyon is Sangalle or
‘the oasis’. Here an ample supply of
clean, fresh water gushes from the rocks (not the river) and has been
channelled by the hostals into swimming pools painted the standard sky
blue. The day before we had been able to
see them while descending and now, in the heat of the day and the dust, the
thought of them was delicious. It was
hard to stop the boys running all the way down.
We wanted to set off early for the 1200m climb up since we
knew it there would be no escaping the sun but after breakfast we had to wait
for the mule man – we had arranged to have our packs carried up for us. Having rendezvoused with him we started to
plod up the steep zig-zag path. To our
surprise we all found the going pretty easy, though I did tell a diversionary
story. After an hour and a half we
passed our French friends who had left at 5am.
He was slightly overweight and she, at around 40, was pregnant for the
first time, so they were taking it easy. An hour later we found a couple of
ladies selling refreshments – we were at the top. We felt very pleased with ourselves and our
smugness was only encouraged when a young English couple appeared from below,
both riding horses. They said they had a
bus to catch. We celebrated by having a
second breakfast in the Belgians’ cafe and two more nights in our luxury hotel with the thermal pools.
No comments:
Post a Comment