WEATHER: Finding the mornings cool and 15C – afternoons a glorious 22C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Dipping in a 39C outdoor hot spring when it is 15C outside
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Sitting in a ‘small’ minivan after Rosita
BUYS OF THE DAY: Nothing bought today – I know, shocked?
WORD OF THE DAY: TMI – Too much information
The best place in the world is here
The best time in the world is now
The alarm was set for 4.15am this morning for a 5am departure. I think this may have been the earliest start I have had all Odyssey. The Colca Canyon better be worth it is all I have to say. We also say good-bye to our wonderful and spacious Rosita and we get to travel in a small 15 seater van for the next 2 days. There was plenty of room for our bags in the back of the van; space was at a premium in our seats though. But we have been quite lucky with having 2 seats to ourselves with Rosita, so we just need to suck up the ‘sardine in a tin’ feeling for the next 2 days.
We are travelling from 2300m to our top height of 4900m passing over the Andes and then we spend most of the next 24 hours around the 3300m. We travelled the first 1000m in less than 30 minutes which is a pretty big deal and this is the point that we found out who was going to be affected by altitude sickness and who wasn’t. Poor Lizzie was a little under the weather to start with, so it knocked her around to a point where we had to stop around 4000m for some fresh air and then there was Sharon, who out of all of us got the worst of the altitude. Her eyes were rolling back in her head, her pupils were fixed and she had literally passed out for a few minutes. It was scary stuff. So the stop was also for her to get some fresh air. In their defence to come up 1000m to around 4300m in half an hour, and the driver was driving like a bat out of hell, I can see how it could affect people. I was taking altitude pills for the first few days prior to hitting altitude, but then I misplaced the pills and I haven’t taken them for the last 3 days and I have to say I am one of the lucky ones and haven’t been affected – touchwood. Altitude doesn’t really discriminate between healthy, unfit, old, young – thank goodness otherwise I possibly would have been a prime candidate for a few categories!!!! We have been told to try and keep up our fluids with drinking plenty of water as dehydration is a big part of the sickness.
The scenery was pretty sparse heading up in altitude. The higher you go the less plant life exists and the main fauna was a plant called yellow hay and it added colour to the otherwise barren looking mountains, volcanoes and hills. The Andes are pretty amazing and with the overtaking of the trucks on the main road from Arequipa to Cuzco it made for a busy morning on the roads.
After 3 hours we hit the Colca Canyon National Park and then an hour later we got to the mornings destination of Cruz Del Condor where we hoped to see these massive birds in flight, which are most active in the early mornings and this was the main reason for leaving so early from Arequipa. Like any wild animals you are never guaranteed to see them, so after 45 minutes we were still waiting along with 100 other people to see these massive birds ride the thermals that come up from the canyon floor.
Colca Canyon is a canyon of the Colca River in southern Peru. Peru's third most-visited tourist destination with about 160,000 visitors annually, it's located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Arequipa. It is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the United States at 4,160 m depth, and it is promoted as the "world's deepest canyon," although the canyon's walls are not as vertical as those of the Grand Canyon. The Colca Valley is a colorful Andean valley with pre-Inca roots, and towns founded in Spanish colonial times, still inhabited by people of the Collagua and the Cabana cultures. The local people maintain their ancestral traditions and continue to cultivate the pre-Inca stepped terraces.
The Colca River starts high in the Andes at Condorama Crucero Alto; below the Colca canyon, as it crosses the plains of Majes it is known as the Majes River, and then is known as the Camana before reaching the Pacific Ocean at the town of that name. All of the valley and parts of the canyon are habitable, and Inca and pre-Inca terraces are still cultivated along the less precipitous canyon walls.
The canyon is home to the Andean Condor, a species that has seen worldwide effort to preserve it. The condors can be seen at close range as they fly past the canyon walls, and are the region's most popular attraction. 'Cruz Del Condor' is a popular tourist stop to view the condors, an overlook where condors soar gracefully on thermals of warm air rising from the canyon. The condors are best seen in the early morning and late afternoon when they are hunting. At this point the canyon floor is 3,960 feet (1,200 m) below the rim of the canyon. The Andean Condor is a species of South American bird in the New World vulture family Cathartidae and is the only member of the genusVultur. Found in the Andes Mountains and adjacent Pacific coasts of western South America, it has the largest wingspan at 3.2m of any land bird.
It is a large black vulture with a ruff of white feathers surrounding the base of the neck and, especially in the male, large white patches on the wings. The head and neck are nearly featherless, and are a dull red color, which may flush and therefore change color in response to the bird's emotional state. In the male, there is a wattle on the neck and a large, dark red comb on the crown of the head. Unlike most birds of prey, the male is larger than the female.
The condor is primarily a scavenger, feeding on carrion. It prefers large carcasses, such as those of deer or cattle. It reaches sexual maturity at five or six years of age and nests at elevations of up to 5,000m, generally on inaccessible rock ledges. One or two eggs are usually laid. It is one of the world's longest-living birds, with a lifespan of up to 100 years old in captivity.
The Andean Condor is a national symbol of Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador, and plays an important role in the folklore and mythology of the Andean regions. The Andean Condor is considered near threatened by the IUCN. It is threatened by habitat loss and by secondary poisoning from carcasses killed by hunters. Captive breeding programs have been instituted in several countries.
So after an hour we were just about to head on our walk that follows the canyon on a designated walking path when some-one spotted the first Condor emerge. At this point there were still busses of people still around, but after the first sighting they had pretty much had seen what they came to see and all got out of there faster than you could say ‘who saw the Condor’. So it pretty much just left our group at the look-out point and we were lucky enough to get a few more sightings before hitting the walking trail. This is where I find the altitude kicks in for me. I know I am not the fittest person in the world, but I can generally manage a few steps, but I found I was out of breath after the first 10 steps. It really does take the breathe out of you being this high, we are currently at 3300m above sea level and 1200m above the Colca River. I was sucking in some big ones and I wasn’t the only one. This just confirms that I am doing the right thing not doing the Inca Trail, I really don’t think I could have done it, and if I did and all that bullshit about accomplishing something and the feeling I would get at the end would be little consideration when I was on the trail. There are 5 of us not doing the trail. 4 of us are not doing anything in the hiking department and Debbie is doing a different trail to some different Inca Ruins that sounds just as hard if not harder than the trail itself.
On the walk of the canyon edge we were looking for the world’s largest humming bird, some other local animals and of course keeping our eyes peeled for the Condors, which we saw a couple fly above us a few times which we all were able to get some good photos of these birds in flight. When you see photos of birds you can understand just how difficult it is to take them with them flying, I have a new respect for ‘bird photographers’. The ‘sardine’ was waiting for us at the end of the trail and we were driven the 40 minutes to the town of Chivaya and where we would be staying for the night. Lunch was on the cards and we had it at a local restaurant, buffet style and I have to say it was the most delicious food I have eaten in a long time. I even had some Alpaca meat, which is like a cross of lamb and beef and it was the best thing on the whole table. All the food was awesome and for the grand cost of 26SOL which is like 9AUD!!! AWESOME!!!!
The hotel was only a 2 minute drive away, so we arrived just after 2.30pm. So far we had been on the move for 9.5 hours and we were all starting to feel it and I don’t think the altitude helped us at this stage either. Chivaya is a town in the Colca valley located at about 12,000ft above sea level; it lies upstream of the renowned Colca Canyon. It has a central town square and an active market. As we had free time till 5pm when we were going to visit the hot springs, we went for the 10 minute tour of town and the local market. There was a lot of food produce and as you lapped back around the other side of the market was the ‘hardware’ stuff. It wasn’t for tourists it was purely for locals. There were a few silver shops on the way back, which we just had to stop in, and Kate bought a very nice bracelet. I didn’t see anything so my wallet strings survived another outing.
At 5pm, with our swimmers on and wrapped up, with the sun setting, it was turning a little nippy at 3400m we wrapped up and drove the 8 minutes to the thermal springs which were located 3 km from town. A number of heated pools have been constructed. Not all the pools are open all of the time, but the one we went into was a nice and toasty 39C. With the outside temperature around 15C it was going to be heaven. You have to rinse off in the showers first before getting in and luckily they were also hot water, so it wasn’t such a big shock getting into the pool after that. When the water first comes out it is a boiling 80C!!!! Scalding, but by the time it travels and passes through other pools it gets to our pool at 39C. There was a lady running back and forth from the bar getting pretty much anything alcoholic. They had a drinks list as long as your arm in a plastic sheet which was just as well as we dropped it in the water – twice! I ordered a large local beer, why not, and enjoyed that for the hour that we were in the pool. It was at one point getting a little hot, but if you sat on the step and had half of your body in and half your body out this kept the equilibrium just right and I was able to stay in a bit longer. By the time we got out, we had wrinkly fingers and toes and I was starting to feel a little light headed, but I think this was a combination of the beer and the altitude. Not a great mix I now understand. If this is how the girls have been feeling all day, then I can truly sympathise as it was an awful feeling and I only got a little light headed for a few minutes!!!
Dinner was at an Irish pub, not too many options in Chivaya and as the day had been massive, we pretty much just wanted to eat and get back to the hotel. Well Kate and my meals were the last to arrive, and I am talking that everyone else had finished their meals last, so nothing like 11 pairs of tired eyes to make you eat your meal a little faster so that we could all leave at the same time. It was nice that they all stayed though, seriously we were SUPER tired.
When we got back to the hotel, they had prepared hot water bottles for all of us to take to bed with us. They were HEAVEN wrapped in plastic let me tell you. The hot springs had just started to wear off and we were starting to feel the cold again. Now isn’t that nice hotel service. A nice touch. We have acquired Malar tonight making us a triple share. We were going to make her our ‘roomy gofer’ for the night, but before we could think of any jobs that could be done, she was fast asleep.
I am starting to get some ‘new’ sayings/personal jokes for this trip which is nice. It is hard to share sayings from previous trips that mean nothing to everybody else. ‘Our’ thing, Kate, Mark and I seem to have going is initialising our quotes! So Too Much Information becomes TMI. Good Times becomes GT, WTF is not what you think and stands for Why The Face and LLD is Little Lie Down. We think it is hilarious, but can see that not everyone gets the jokes, which I think sometimes, makes them even funnier.
So good night from the Colca Canyon. We have a BIG travel day tomorrow and really the first for the trip so far, so everything is on charge tonight ready for the long drive to Cuzco.
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