Travel Blog Peru - Cañón Colca (15th July 2019)
I had booked a 2 day 1 night trekking tour for the whole family into this, the world’s second deepest Cañón, said to be just as magical as Machu Picchu.
Having perambulated around beautiful Arequipa the previous day, feeling dizzy and funny in the head from the first day of altitude, we were not sure what to fear more: the infamous soroche, or altitude sickness, or the climb down and up 1,110 metres of altitude, described as ‘moderate’ by the tour operator.
Juan Carlos of Pachamama tours (highly recommended) had furnished walking sticks not to tumble down, and headlamps not to stumble up in the dark on day 2, on which more below; so we had the gear, at least!
A 3:30am start was not for the faint hearted, but with so much adrenaline and Vorfreude, we put on all the gear, thermal underwear, boots, woolen hats, mittens, rain capes, 9 litres of heavy water distributed over three too heavy day packs, and embarked into the dark. A 3.5 hr drive took us past the highest pass at 4,900m altitude, freezing in the early hours, past sleepy flocks of alpacas, a cousin of the lama used for wool and meat in the Andes.
Arequipa and the Cañón are surrounded by a multitude of 6,000m volcanoes, the Misti behind the magnifícame Arequipa cathedral of white volcano stone (sillar) impressing the visitor in first sight. Lea had asked if any were active, and as if by command upon entering the Cañón we were greeeted by a grey cloud of smoke emanating from Sabankaya Vulcan, waving from the distance and reminding us how geologically alive this whole area of the Andes is.
Our friendly guide, Omar, who hails from a village in the Cañón, explained that the Cañón had only been ‘discovered’ by a Polish expedition (sic!) in 1981 ... coming back to navigate the Colca river in 2005 for 100km and nearly dying in the enterprise. It was, of course, another piece of Eurocentric history telling.
The Spanish conquistadores who zigzagged Latin America from the early 16th century for gold and riches and fame, adventurists and gold diggers and caudillos armed with the support and documentary auhority of the Catholic Church and the Spanish monarchs, termed the ‘new’ continent ‘mundus novus’, a new world, despite it being inhabited by peoples for over 10,000 years.
All art and culture before 1492 is consequentially known as being pre-Colombian, i.e. dating from before the discovery by Cristobal Columbus, the Genoese seafarer sailing for Spain. The native people today are today still known as Indians, a European error of historic proportions that originated in Columbus’ dream of finding a westward passage to the fabled Asian spice lands (something only accomplished by Magellan, a Portuguese sailing for the Spanish, through Patagonia in 1520). History, it is said, is written by the victors.
The first thing that strikes one in the canon are the terraces, carved with great effort into the volcanoes’ slopes and the ravines of the canon, irrigated by a sophisticated system of canals to maximize agricultural yields - not unlike the rice terraces of Bali, for those who have marveled at them. These were carved out by pre-Inca people from 1,100 AD, and expanded under the Inca 1,200 to 1,400 AD, the empire builders of the Andes to rival our European Romans, on which more later. But not by the conquistadors nor the Polish expedition ...
The Canon Colca is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon created by the Colorado river, but like the Gorges Du Verdon in southern France that your correspondent regularly visits on his Mediterranean motorcycle tours, it is a better kept secret. The Verdon used to house vultures, and they have recently been successfully re-introduced. But the Peru-enamored backpackers come here for the views, and the fabled Peruvian vulture, known as ‘el condor paz’ or ‘el condor andino’, with famous songs written to celebrate its majestic flight (google,e.g. Inti Iliimani).
It’s wing span is up to 3,5m, and it only feeds on dead animals, sometimes going for a week without food despite scouring the mountains and valleys from great hight. So how has nature endowed this animal? It uses aerothermics to glide, and rises in circles, carried by the heat emanating from the canon’s rocks as the sun rises and warms them. Apparently effortless, certainly majestic, and giving you a sense of why Ikarus wanted to fly like a bird.
Omar had more interesting stories for us. The condor lives up to 75-85 years of age, i.e. he can outlive a human, and lives in monogamous couples. When one partner dies, the surviving one never looks for another partner again. In rare exceptions, the solitude is too much too bear, and the condor circles up several thousand metres and then commits suicide by crashing down onto the rocks. We humans don’t have a monopoly on sentiments and despair (if that was not obvious before).
Having gone from Arequipa and its 2,500m of altitude and the pass at 4,900m, we descend by car via the touristic miradores (lookouts) to the starting point for our treck at 3,400m of altitude, in the left bank of the Colca Canon. On the right bank we look at Volcano Mismi, where the Amazon river originates, flowing via Peru and Colombia and Brazil into the Atlantic, even though we are a mere 2 hours from the Pacific here.
To the indigenous people, the mountains were Gods, given that they provided the water from which all life flows (the sun being the most important Inca God, allegedly coming from the Isla Del Sol on lake Titicaca (for another day)). Often young girls were sacrificed near the top of the volcanoes, some only recently discovered; animals are still ritually being sacrificed today, we are told.
Still respectfully dressed at the top of our descent, with declining altitude and rising sun we strip down as much as possible. The top of the canon is freezing, the river bed at the bottom boiling. You go from wearing ski wear to beach wear within 3 hours and 1,100m of knee-splitting altitude, with lurking ravines and cactuses bent out of shape to accompany your downward travails, excessively packed backpacks breaking your backs like the last straw on the camel’s back.
‘Moderate’ seemed like a misnomer by the time we hit the river below, exhausted as many young travelers, including some strapping lads indossing marathon and triathlon t-shirts with bulging biceps, crawling along like the rest of us. After 4 hours and 6km we reach a lunch rest. My old friend Mr Migraine calls upon me, and thanks to Aspirin and valiant daughters taking my back pack, we continue through the fertile tropical garden or Eden, with avocado trees, papaya trees, palm trees, waterfalls, and a flora that belies the exhaustion to reach this point.
After 7 hours of bone breaking trekking and 12km, and some 1,500m of altitude, we reach Sangalle Oasis - none has ever deserved its name more than his green island full of water, river-filled pools, palm trees, waterfalls, yellow stone walls of canon sheerness, and a rare spot of flat earth abottom the canon. We sink onto the deep green grass, knees weak and trembling, but spirits high and hearts soaring like the condors above us. No pool has ever felt as divine and refreshing as this one. The relief among all fellow travellers is tangible, as is the pride in having gotten this far.
The boss has gone on strike on the last metres, and threatens to open a Polish Pirogy Reataurant in the oasis, unless a mule is organised to carry her out in the morning. Only 4km, a trifle really, but a ‘direttissima’ wall of 1,100m altitude straight up, with endless switchbacks and large boulders; rising at 4am, more than two hours before the sun, whence the headlamps a really good idea now!
Mules are crosses between horses and donkeys, apparently themselves infertile, i.e. not capable of having a family, which is cruel enough. These do bone-breaking work day in day out, up and down the canyon with slouching tourists or beer bottles atop - enough to feel as suicidal as a lonely condor one might think. They are incredibly sure footed and see at night, and some 40 passes us the next morning, empty ones coming down the dark path with the ‘mulero’ behind them, laden ones with apologetically looking tourists on the way up, the animals sweating and swaying as the morning sun raises temperatures and the rising altitude takes our breath away.
Mummy headed a trek of some 10 mules, having slept 50 minutes more than the valiant girls and papa, and duly overtook us triumphantly halfway up the canon’s bank. Maybe it was just a fleeting impression, but the mule winked at me as to say, ‘not a bad girl atop; had been thinking about throwing myself and her off a ravine, but then she whispered something in Polish into my ear’, and I thought better of it. But maybe it was just the altitude and exhaustion playing tricks with my mind.
On the last metres the girls start singing and bantering. I try to join but run out of breath, even when my beloved Bohemian Rhapsody is intoned with conviction.
3,5 hours later, muscles aching but not as bad as having to go down the previous day, we stand atop the world again, exhausted, happy, relieved, and kind of proud of having redefined the word ‘moderate’, and lived to tell the story.
In the picturesque village of Cabanaconde, replete with baroque church thanks to the Franciscan Order, we enjoy a much appreciated simple breakfast, and marvel at more than 30 wind instruments accompanying a fiesta around the city square celebrating the ‘virgen de Carmen’. Catholic religion and pre-Colombian religious concepts are amalgamated and fused, and entirely natural as such.
On the way out of The Valley, around 10am, more than a dozen magnificent condors are circling overhead. We bathe the battered legs in thermal baths, warm from volvanic activity in the area, with the Sabancaya volcano emitting a few waving clouds of ‘hasta luego’ at us.
We are now hooked on Peru.
As so often in travelling in developing countries, it is the amazing nature and the local people in their natural surroundings, and not in the overcrowded, congested, polluted cities with their dignifity-depriving pervasive poverty and inequality, that provide the inspiration to want to know more, to travel afurther, to start the next conversation.
More to follow, we hope.
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