After two nights in Huacachina we were off again this time to Nazca where we had a flight booked over the Nazca lines.
I (Amelia) was of course dreading this, not liking planes and especially not light planes. But it was too late to pull out, the whole thing was paid for and before I knew it we were at the airport.
The plane was tiny and bounced around constantly leaving your stomach in your mouth as it twisted and turned over the lines.
The lines themselves were pretty spectacular but not as big as pictures had made them look. The meaning of the lines is still unknown as is there origin.
here are some of our less than spectacular photos
If you look closely you can see the condor shape in the centre. It is highly stylized of course.
Well Nazca whilst having the lines was one of the ugliest cities we visited, Arequipa the next city on our itinerary was one of the prettiest. Cobbled streets, colourful old colonial houses and an amazing and vast ancient monastery were why we fell in love with this place, and this love was further fueled by the super cheap room we stayed in in an old terraced house. It’s shuttered windows overlooked the monastery and the rooftop patio had great views.
The city also had some excellent food, we had the best Mexican food I have ever eaten in this tiny Mexican pub not to mention tequila slammers and pina coladas, and we had some of the excellent local foods (most of which included potato and the giant maize kernels, apart from the ceviche which Sam ate that was made from raw fish marinated heavily in lemon). We meant to only stay a few days in Arequipa but ended up staying a week. However three of the days were spent hiking through the Colca Canyon, we tried to hire a tent and do it ourselves however, the tour operators offered such cheap alternatives that we ended up going with a guide and four English lads on their gap year and a French Canadian.
The hike was spectacular( as the Colca Canyon is the second deepest canyon in the world, second only to the neighboring canyon which is much more difficult to reach and therefore more expensive. The hike began at the top of the canyon where condors could be seen gliding on the thermals. We then hiked down to the bottom of the canyon (a 1.2 km drop in altitude) along a narrow and slightly treacherous donkey path that locals that live at the bottom of the canyon use with their mules and donkeys to bring supplies and their produce to neighboring towns that can’t be accessed by roads. We passed several locals with their traditional clothes and animals laden with goods. We spent both nights sleeping in guest houses at the bottom of the canyon. The second night was particularly cool as we stayed in a hut made of bamboo in a oasis where all the guest houses had large pools filled with fresh water (which they drained and refilled every second day, much to our astonishment coming from drought effected Adelaide.)
On the second day I (Sam) made the mistake of agreeing to take part in a game of foot-to-ball or soccit or whatever it’s called. The teams were Commonwealth (read four English, one Australian) vs Peru vs a German, two Brazillians and two Fench Canadians. So anyway, as you can probably tell, I was surrounded by people who could actually play sport. Nonetheless, I managed to score the first goal of the game, before we were absolutely creamed by the Peruvians, and I managed to get completely buggered in the process.
The last day’s start was at 5 in the morning before we had to complete an uphill hike of about 3 hours back to the top of the canyon. It was moderately exhausting but we managed to avoid the sunlight and the canyon looked pretty spectacular under the (really) early morning light. We arrived at the small town at the top of the hill via the terraced corn fields and were treated with breakfast, before we caught the bus back to Arequipa. Because we liked the city so much (and because our accommodation was so cheap) we decided to spend some extra time in Arequipa before making our way to Puno.
Whilst Arequipa was one of the prettiest cities we visited, Puno was one of the ugliest, which seemed in stark contrast to the beautiful lake Titicaca which it was situated next to. The highlight of our stay was a visit we made to the floating islands. These are man made islands made from compacted reed which float on top of the lake. They are covered in small huts, the odd tourist restaurant and even the odd church and each have small communities living on them. They were quite beautiful as they are decorated in structures in the shape of animals and creatures from local folklore- and are connected through amazing reed gondolas that are two stories high and also shaped like various animals.
One of the more simple gondolas
Me dressed up in the local costume(as you can see it is colourful but the cut doesn’t do much for ones figure)
One of the local island women on the island
A view of Puno from the boat
Whilst we were in Puno we thought we would get our first taste of Inca ruins, so we visited a fertility temple in one of the neighbouring villages, of course it was full of penis statues and somewhat disturbingly was full of children who earned extra money for their families by acting as guides.
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