Saturday, June 29, 2019

Day 6 - Colca Canyon

some things you'll do for money and some you'll do for fun
but the things you do for love are gonna to come back to you one by one
Love Love Love - The Mountain Goats

Day 6 started really early. Pick up time was supposed to be at 02:30 AM, but the lady who picked us up arrived earlier. While Gioia was ready and good to go, they had to call my room twice. It was kinda bad that they had to call twice, but hey they arrived earlier. That day we were going to Colca Canyon to see the condors. Side note: Indonesians my age would be familiar with the Hong Kong tv series, The Return of the Condor Heroes, which we watched when we were young. I guess it's kinda sweet that I finally saw real condors :D

So 02:30 AM was early, very early. I think I managed to get some sleep along the way. It was a long drive. Before the breakfast stop, we stopped somewhere for toilet and let me tell you it was cold, super cold that I was a bit concerned. Then it was a breakfast stop which was sometime after 06:00 AM. Breakfast wasn't good :( Let me just say right now, I like Asian bread. What the hell is Asian bread? Well most Asians eat rice right, so when we make bread, it tends to be soft and come with filling and stuff. Even if it's not, I guess we're more used to the standard white bread that you can put jam, nutella, peanut butter, chocolate sprinkles, etc. In bread-eating countries, they tend to make different kind of bread and I don't know why they like bread which are a bit harder. Maybe it's supposed to be more filling or to hold better when it's made into sandwich, but I do not like it. Anyway for breakfast that morning, it was bread and jam. Bread was too hard for my liking, but Gioia found it okay.

At the table, one of the guy in our group asked if we're okay with the altitude. It seemed he might not be doing so well. Though Arequipa was actually at a lower altitude compared to Puno and Cusco, that morning we were going higher and higher. We suggested that he took the coca tea. I've been having that for breakfast since I reached Arequipa. Though hotels also provide the leaf one, I always used the tea bag one. I don't know if that helped, but I was just drinking that diligently because that and the coca candies which I bought the day before were kinda the only thing I have to help me. You know, I had a lot of worry about altitude sickness before the trip simply because I'm just that kind of person who think that bad things would of course happen to me. Though I felt that way, I didn't have medication to prevent this because the medication cannot be bought over the counter and no matter which doctor I chose to see, the queue would have been very long and I just didn't want to go through that. The plan was just to pray a lot and thank God, God really helped me. In general I was okay, but maybe because I felt okay, I kinda forgot that with less oxygen, one does have to take it easy a bit. You would definitely feel something, it's just a matter of how big the magnitude is. I didn't really have headaches and all, but I guess there's some fatigue. Gioia and I were talking about how it's perhaps everything, like the extreme changes in temperature all occurring in one day, the amount of traveling, the amount of physical activity that we don't normally do, and then the altitude, all that combined together do make you weaker and in my case those things plus the not enough proper rest caused me to have a bit of flu in Cusco. In retrospect, I have to say that I was perhaps rather careless for not getting the medication because I saw many people struggling and the suffering was real. Another guy in our group that day was like suffering the whole day, we didn't really see him get out of the car much. Also later that day Gioia was talking to an American lady in our group who said that within 5 hours of arriving in Cusco, she couldn't take it and had to go to a pharmacy to get medication. Gioia herself got medications from her doctor before the trip and even her was still affected. So I would suggest that you prepare medications before the trip if you can. Another thing that I did starting that day was taking the motion sickness medication diligently in the morning. With the mountain roads and long journey in cars, I thought at least eliminate one possible source of trouble.

Alright, back to the trip. The sun was slowly rising after we finished breakfast and the day was getting brighter and warmer. As we went driving along, our guide who was this short lady with admirable energy pointed to a volcano which was blowing smoke. She got the driver to stop the car and we all got out to take pictures. I was like amazed. As I told to Gioia, though I come from Indonesia with volcanoes on alert every so often, that was actually my first time seeing a volcano blowing smoke. No one was alarmed and I was so curious. I know we're far, but the smoke was big. I wondered if it's just a normal occurrence that there's no concern for alarm or if it actually charted on some alert level but since there's no settlements near the volcano, it's all good? I should have asked the guide. The guide must have explained what the name of the volcano is, but I wasn't paying attention, I was too amazed.

Then we arrived at this small village called Yanque. There were locals dancing at the square, I think they do this for tourists. Of course there were also many people selling souvenirs. There's also a small church, which I entered. Other than that I didn't do much there.

Then it's more driving to Colca Canyon. First stop was at this look-out point to see the canyons. It was pretty interesting though again forgive me for the bad picture :(

If I'm not mistaken, then it's a short drive to another point where we got out of the bus and started walking on a trail that allows us to see more of the canyon.

Before beginning the walk, our guide pointed to 3 condors sitting together. All were amazed :) There were also one or two flying. You know I asked my guide a stupid question - if the condors were flying because they're hunting. She said they eat carcasses. I felt so dumb :D Gioia asked a better question, if the condors are endangered and she said no, they're okay.

I thought the trail was quite fun. It's not very hard, but with the altitude you may experience a bit of out of breath. Do take it easy, if you're doing this. The trail was taking us to another look-out point for the condors. At one point we saw like a group of 10 condors flying there. I read some people said they didn't see much when they went on the trip, but I guess we're lucky, we saw quite a few. Along the trail, I saw cactus on the rock wall, it's really something unique for me :) When we reached the look-out point, our guide gave us some free time. She also pointed to another look-out point that we could go to if we're interested. I did one of them, but Gioia didn't. I know my pictures are not that amazing, but here are more pictures of the condors. The Singapore Bird Park has a Birds of Prey enclosure and me and Gioia think they have Andean condor too. Though their cages are big but we thought it is sad now that we see them in their natural habitat flying free.

After I got back to the meeting point, my concern was sugar level. I was worried that I didn't eat enough, so I got a banana and kit kat. Side note: do you remember the kit kat packaging with 4 bars? That's the one I got and I got nostalgic because in Singapore there's no longer that bar, the bar that filled my stressful emotional university days especially during exam time. In Singapore now, it's either the bag of kit kat mini or the chunky version. I missed the 4-bar version. Then I saw the American lady eating beef soup and I asked her if it was nice. She said it was, but I wasn't confident I could eat the generous portion. Though I used the word soup, to me it looked more like Indonesian soto and so I was even more curious. In the end I had steam corn after asking a signore, donde estás, while pointing to the corn he was eating :D Gosh, how I wish I could speak Spanish. With my Italian, I can understand a little bit of Spanish, but I don't think the Spanish-speaking people would understand my Italian. Maybe they would wonder, do you know you're not speaking Spanish. Anyways, the signore pointed back to the lady who sold it. I actually only wanted the corn, but the lady gave me corn with cheese. The cheese wasn't great. The corn was another curiosity of mine. The corn kernel was the size of my thumbnail which means bigger than usual and the colour was pale yellow. It's not sweet but it's very value for money. Maybe we should cultivate this kind of corn more. It can feed more people. I managed to finish that corn. Really I was really concerned I wasn't eating enough for the physical activity :D

After that it was a stop for a buffet lunch and it was really good, I liked the options. For the first time I had quinoa soup and it quickly became a favorite. Unfortunately I found out later that not all quinoa soup was created equal; that lunch place that day made a really good one. I also tried alpaca meat which was okay. It's a red meat, but since I don't eat a lot of red meat I can't really comment much. When we got out after lunch, the sun was like hot hot hot. That's what I mean extreme changes in temperature. People living there must have gone through 5 to 30°C in an entire day. Anyways, after lunch we went to another small village called Maca. There's also a small church here.

Here Gioia decided to have cactus fruit juice. It was green (looked like kiwi juice) and sour and as such wasn't very nice to me. I think they chose the green one because it's more suited for the alcoholic version with pisco which by the way was the main thing they're trying to sell to tourists. By the way back in Lima I tried another cactus fruit which I didn't know was from cactus at that time. It had a weird name of tuna and looked like red dragon fruit so I was curious. It tasted nice but I didn't enjoy the texture because its seeds (for lack of a better word) was more pronounced, more like guava seeds.

Usually for this day tour, we should be visiting a hot spring but no one aside for the American couple was interested, so sadly they were overruled. They were okay though :D The guide said we're going to see more of the mountains instead. I actually like this change of plan, but since it's on an even higher altitude, I guess some people like Gioia kinda struggled a bit. On the way there, we saw this beautiful open plain with alpacas or perhaps llamas or both.

Then we also saw vicuñas, but the car didn't stop for us to go nearer and take better pictures. As mentioned in the previous post, they are not domesticated, these are rare protected animal. Since they're skinny, they also looked more delicate.

The viewpoint where we saw the mountains is called Patapampa if I'm not mistaken. It was really really cool. You see the Misti mountain and the Chachani mountain range. This is really high up at around 4900 m. I'm thankful, I was feeling okay.

For pictures from the trip, please go here. It was a long drive back, but we didn't get back too late. The sun hadn't set when we arrived back in Arequipa. It was interesting to see people hanging out in Plaza de Armas. We decided to just pack Burger King for dinner to make it quick. The hotel had HBO and Gioia hadn't watched Game of Thrones finale and it so happened that day HBO was showing the finale again. I was still heartbroken watching it the second time, poor Dany *sigh* Anyways, it was a good day that day and I'm thankful to God for everything.

:) eKa @ 8:18:00 PM •