Arequipa and Colca Canyons Rally: Dia Uno – Day 1.

Arequipa and a Colca Canyons Rallye: Dia Uno – Day 1. Buenos Dias! We touched down in AREQUIPA (I love to pronounce the name of this city very Spanish, so every single letter, with rolling the R, try it, it sounds so good, A R E Q U I P A). It is the second largest city in Peru, located in the Southern Part with 845.000 inhabitants. The city is located at 2,328 meters above sea level, so for the first time we are noticing the altitude. Air is thin and you kind of notice that when walking at your normal speed or when sleeping. Not bad so far, but you notice. Again, we woke up early around 5am (!) and had an earlier breakfast alone on the beautiful roof top terrace of Katari Hotel at Plaza des Armas overlooking the same. We saw the impressive Andes for the first time and Jonathan instantly started to google where to ski in Peru (Swiss guy). The Plaza Armas was looking almost the same as in Lima so we found out that dating back to Inca times every big city has a square like this. While enjoying our breakfast and our first Coca Tea made with the leaves the lady in Lima gave us, we planned our tour for today, which was namely not Arequipa (A R E Q U I P A, love it), but the really astonishing Colca Canyon or Canyon de Colca as in Spanish. We took a rental car and here actually the adventure already began, because everybody was looking at us as if we were totally crazy taking a car and going by our own. Almost nobody does. Well, why, we found out later, but coming back to the beginning of our trip. While Jonathan picked up the rental car and chatted with hands and feet with the manager of Hertz AREQUIPA (say it loud), I was talking to a cute young lady at the reception. She was also kind of, well let’s say, shy, when I told her that we are gonna go by car. Okay, think you got it. So, Jonathan came back with a sporty Hyundai in an even more sporty red. He was sooo happy because you know (well not all of you) that he is having a weekness for Rallies (he did Tuktuk Rally in India, travelled from Switzerland to and through the whole Mongolia in a car with a ridiculous small engine and so on). So, we just integrated our own little rally for my beloved sweetheart. And he was happy. The trip was about of app. 200km only and would take 3-4hours they said, well, easy we thought. So, full of energy we started our trip feeling independently and young because we were NOT going by a touristic bus. The adventure started when we found ourselves sharing the curvy street with mostly trucks and busses uphill after Yura . The street itself wasn’t steep but everything left and right of the street was. For Jonathan as a Swiss a piece of cake – but for me it was a challenge because it reminded me on the famous TV documentation of La Paz in Bolivia due to approximately 50, no 100 crosses and flowers at the roadside. Later, on a plateau at the altitude of approximatively 4’100m, named Pampa Canahuas, I recovered from the curvy road when we saw the first wild Vikunas – the wild and Bambi-like version of the Alpaca. Alpaca is generally something that belongs to Peru like chocolate to Switzerland or cars to Germany. So you gonna read and see a lot of these animals in the blog, sorry for that, but we instantly felt in love with these sensitive animals. We stopped the car to take some pictures of the Vikunas. They’re so sweet and I tried to catch one but apparently with no luck because with some shortage of air meaning breath due to the altitude. Jonathan laughed his ass of seeing me hunting the Vikunas and also warned me of the snakes under the rocks because the scenery was desert-like which brought me to come back to the car with Jurassic Park dinosaur steps. At the same spot we saw a sweet old Indio lady, sitting on the street in this middle of nowhere, she was knitting. I went to her and she was so cute that we had to buy some hand-made gloves in this nowhere making her incredibly happy because probably there were not so many tourists stopping there. We continued driving through beautiful landscape, getting higher and higher in the wonderful Peruvian Andes. After a Mate de Coca Tea break again in the middle of nowhere at a roadside little “café”, the road went up again to an area called Patapampa (cool name) and we achieved not the summit but the highest point of this road with a view on some 6’000ish summits. If it would not have been raining. And if we would have been able to properly set one feet after the other. Damn, it felt like we were on the moon! I really couldn’t hardly breathe! The both of us! Well, later we found out that this point of the road is on 4’910m altitude (!) and the fact that we were on sea level the day before (Lima) made our bodies feel like being on the last camp before Mount Everest. But this was quickly solved by hopping into the car again and driving down the curvy road to Chivay and Yanque being only (!) at an altitude of 3’400m above sea level. In the pics there will be a let us say not the best selfie of the two of us, this is the one at 5.000m a.s.l., so please forgive us. Down at a more convenient altitude we had another stop when suddenly a beautiful kind of oasis appeared with a big herd of wild alpacas on fresh greens and I had the opportunity to hold the first baby alpaca in my arms. Oh my god, these animals are sooo cute!!! And their fur is so extremely soft, you can compare it with the finest cashmere to give you an idea. Happily with this experience we jumped into the car again and after an unsuccessful search of our hotel, the Belmont Las Casitas in Yanquee downtown – downtown hereby is a slight exaggeration – we found the sign to the hotel around 4km after Yanque ‘downtown’. After the lack of vegetation (except the oasis) on the pass road, the whole Colca Valley where we arrived at, was suddenly looking like extraterrestrial with its green fields, terraces, alpacas, sheep, mules and horses as well as with trees like pines in the Toscana. The road down to Las Casitas Hotel was off-road and sort of adventurous. But once you arrive at the hotel area you really feel like in the nirvana: Everywhere little lakes, green grass, beautiful flowers (remember altitude of 3.400m a. s. l.). We were warmly welcomed by the very friendly Evelync, the desk manager and Jesus, the waiter. It turned out that we were the only guests so we had their full attention. Also, the full attention has been given to us by the Golden Retriever of the Manager – reasonably named Goldie – and the four baby alpacas that belong to the hotels ground to be fed by us with some milk bottles. Juhu!!! You now must know that baby alpacas give some sort of very sweet yells if they want to be fed sounding a little bit like children in class wanting the teacher to give attention. This in combination with the soft fur and the sweet look of these animals is really heart melting. In this moment, I would have loved to say goodbye to textile and to continue my career as a professional baby alpaca caretaker with special skill as feeder. But I think I don’t fit the job description not being Indio. In addition to that, the wages probably are too low for my shoe and newly found poncho addiction (Anmerkung der Redaktion: this part of the text has been ghost-written by Jonathan). Well, we enjoyed the beautiful hotel in our Inca-like little Pavillon which was our room with a hot spring on our terrace in the little garden belonging to it. We had our first massage (well not the best one but good for jet lagged bones) and also an intimate (just the two of us) and so very romantic dinner in the nice restaurant – Jonathan having a Ceviche with trout (Forelle) and me having a delicious vegetarian soup that they were just creating for me (so nice) because I needed something light due to the altitude. We fell into bed as we got up so early and our bodies needed to rest because the first headaches came up due to the crazy altitude jumps that we had made this day. Except this, the tour was let’s say still easy so far and we couldn’t understand why nobody likes the rental cars. Good night, sporty Hyundai in sporty red, you did a good job bringing us safely to beautiful Colca Canyon! Having Day 2 in this gorgeous valley ahead we dreamed of Alpaca babies.