From the appendicitis scar of the universe, Part I

Last week, from my base in Arequipa, I took a two-day trip to the Colca Canyon, the second deepest in the world (if you are wondering which canyon is the deepest, that would be Colca's neighbor, Cotahuasi). It was one of those group guided tours, my first time going alone on one. I shared the van with a man from Prague, a couple from the Netherlands, a guy from Paris, a guy from Lima, a girl from Trujillo, a girl from Germany who had been traveling for ten months throughout South America (it was her year off between high school and university), a Jewish woman from Chicago who kept things amusing and made me nostalgic for home, and of course the driver and our excellent tour guide, both Peruvians. We shared the road with tour buses and tour vans and more tour buses, and the occasional llama, alpaca or vicuña.

We spent the night in Chivay, a tiny town in the Colca valley. The hostel was less than cozy (not to mention freezing), but I liked the light fixtures.




There are several tiny towns like this in the Colca valley. I think this one was called Maca. They each boast, oh I don't know, a few hundred residents and quite often have a pretty colonial church like this one, built with sillar, a white volcanic rock fairly abundant in the area. It is that same stone that gives Arequipa its nickname, la ciudad blanca, or, the white city.

On the way from Arequipa to the canyon, loads of tourists stop at this little restaurant/souvenir shop in the middle of nowhere, where we are urged to drink maté de coca to counteract the effects of high altitude. This alpaca and several mangy sheep were hanging around the hordes of tourists with their teacups and cameras. I wonder if the poor animal has any idea how abnormal its existence is?