My Gap Year

Having arrived in Arequipa on the over night bus from Cusco we got straight on a tourist bus to visit the deepest canyon in the world. The main principle of this trip was to see the Condors that fly up and down the canyon. They are teh second largest bird in the world.

On the first day we were driven to a town call Chivay. A small town in the middle of a dry valley. We had a guide who talked to us for the whole 5 hour trip which ment sleeping was not an opption. The tour made plenty of stops to look at Llams and different rock formations. The sceenery was very different to anything we had seen so far. There were many volcanoes surrounding us. At altitudes of over 3000m and a maximum hight on the trip of over 5000m everything was very dry and vegitation was sparse. So we were supposed to get exctited about a dry, green moss like plant that grew on rocks.

At Chivay we were given lunch, which ment having our first taste on Guinea Pig. It tasted ok but it was really just a mouth full of bones. after lunch we were taken on a walk up a mountain to visit Inca burial sites where you could still see the skeletons. This was followed by a trip to the hot springs.

In the evening we saw a cultural show of music and dance as we ate. Moo was draged on to the stage along with some of the other tourists to play with the “band”. The prive was given to the tourist with the largest cheer. So of course Moo won with Lydia and I sreaming. The prize a clump of goats hoofs…which is supposed to be some kind of musical instrument. We then all had a go at the traditional dances.

The next morning we were woken at 5am to get the bus to the Canyon. Along the way we made many stops to churches and view points. Eventualy we made it to thae actual canyon and were very lucky to see so many Condors and so close to us. Though taking photos was very challenging. The trip back ment more stop offs at various sites that all looked the same and constant streams of information about different mountains. We even stopped once to look at rabbits! This provided a suprising amount of entertainment as we laughed at the others on the tour run around trying to get photos. All very tired we tried to sleep but were reguarly woken by the man next to us who wanted us to take photos of hills from the other side of the bus.

At the end of the day we were happy to see the Condors and the Canyon but we have made a pact not to go on a coach tour again!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.