World´s biggest canyon and world´s sneakiest thief

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  Arequipa, Arequipa, Peru
Monday, August 30, 2010

This blog entry should have been about our Visit to Copacabana, on the Bolivian side of the world´s highest lake, Titicaca. However, after arriving late at night and going to bed, we got up to find out that there was no ATM, all the banks were shut for public holidays, and we had just enough money to get the next bus out of town. Oh well, we saw the lake briefly anyway. Its big and high and that..

So, after that minor failure we headed to Arequipa, Peru´s second largest City, mainly because of it´s close(ish) proximity to the world´s two largest canyons - Colca and Cotahuasi - both of which are twice the height of the Grand Canyon.
Arequipa is a really beautiful little city, full of grand old colonial buildings built from a local white Volcanic rock called Sillar, and set at the base of a couple of huge snowcapped volcanoes - one of which is still active. In fact it is so active that apparently the city has something like 12 minor earthquakes a day. Yikes. Still, it makse for some pretty impressive views.

The day after we arrived we went and visited a huge old convent that still houses a few nuns, but is mainly just open to tourists. It has been damaged by earthquakes and rebuilt many times, but is still in perfect condition. It was quite humbling walking through all the tiny "cells" where the nuns used to live, since they´ve all been presevered exactly as they would have been, complete with beds, prayer books etc..

The majority of visitors to Arequipa come to go to Colca canyon, so we went into a couple of tour agencies to find out about the different treks on offer.
The last one went in to put on his best salesman smile, then spent 20 minutes telling us how terrible and overcrowded Colca canyon was, before giving us the sales pitch for his other (much more expensive) tour to the further away canyon, Cotahuasi.
Fair play to his sales patter, he made it sound much better, so we signed up and we were off the next morning for our latest 4 day adventure.

We got picked up the next morning with the rest of the tour group and headed off, stopping at a couple of places on the way for a quick "get out and take a picture" stop, but day 1 essentially consisted of 14 hours of sitting in a minibus.
The next day we were up pretty early back in the bus, and drove for another couple of hours through the canyon to meet up with some donkeys and start hiking.

We´ve been on some pretty scary roads already in Bolivia, but nothing like the road down this canyon, it was way scarier - see the pics. Fortunately the driver we had in the minibus was really careful, otherwise I´d have been jumping out and walking.


In fairness to the salesman in the tour agency, one of the main things that sold us on that tour was the fact that there weren´t 400 other gringos stomping along in front of you, and we didn´t see anyone else the whole day (other than some old hippie from Colorado who lived in the mountains with his donkey), and the scenery was every bit as stunning as he´d promised.
We walked for 5 hours or something down through the canyon, passing cactus forests, old inca trails and terraces, terrifying wooden bridges, and the aforementioned amazing scenery.

We finally arrived at a little village at the end of the walkable bit of the canyon, and set about pitching out tents in the main square - I´m sure the locals just love that.
After getting the dinner going our guide told us that we could buy locally produced wine from some of the houses nearby, so a couple of us tramped off in the dark with empty coke bottles, knocking on doors till someone filled them with wine.
It wasn´t too bad either.

The next morning, we were up at 5 to trek back up the canyon (previous journey in reverse), ditch the donkeys, and back in the van to had back to the hotel, stopping off at a big waterfall and some thermal baths on the way.

 
 
The final day, we were up at 4.30 (ouch) and back in the van for another mammoth drive to Arequipa, stopping off at some Petroglyphs (ancient rock carvings) on the way.
It was a really good tour and the canyon was amazing, but we both felt it was way overpriced since most of it was sitting in a van.

We got back to Arequipa that night pretty exhausted after yet another tour and some brutally early mornings, and decided just to go get some food at a wee pizza restaurant 20 yards from our hostel. The place was pretty much deserted when we went in, and we sat and ate our pizzas pretty much in a daze. Once we´d finished, Helen went to get her bag to pay, and realised that it was gone, complete with all her cards, her IPhone, and most importantly her passport.
After thinking about it she reckons that two guys came into the restaurant and one of them bumped into her slightly, which must have been when he grabbed the bag.
It´s incredibly annoying, because if we´d not been so tired after all the early starts we´d have been more switched on and I´m sure we´d have noticed. (I didn´t even notice anyone in the restaurant).

Anyway, after a visit to incredibly unhelpful police (who wouldn´t even go look at the cctv because they were insisting the restaurant would be closed, even though we´d just come from there) and several failed attempts to contact the British Consulate in Arequipa we have found out that it´s going to take about 4 weeks and a bunch of cash to get a new passport, and that´s after we get her birth certificate Fed Exed out to us.

Luckily it happened when we´d just arrived in Peru though, so at least we´ve still got the rest of the coutry to explore. Worst case if we run out of stuff to see, we can go sit on the beach for a couple of weeks and wait for it.

So, a lesson to you all - keep your bags safe kids, especially in Peru.

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Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Boat to Copacabana	decorated vehicles in Copacabana	Arequipa	Convent
Convent	Convent	Convent	Convent
Convent	Convent	Peruvian Atacama desert	journey to Cotahuasi
spikey!	Llama	road to Cotahuasi	Cotahuasi Canyon
Canyon trek	Cotahuasi Canyon	Donkey	Road to Cotahuasi Canyon
Canyon trek	Canyon trek	View over the side of the road	Cactus Forest
Canyon trek	Canyon trek	Inca terraces	Canyon trek
village square where we camped	Canyon trek	village where we camped	pigs in the village
village where we camped	camping spot	kids in the village	kids in the village
Canyon trek	Canyon trek	Canyon trek	Canyon trek
Canyon trek	Volcanoe and lake near Cotahuasi	more spikey	Petroglyph
Arequipa	Arequipa	Arequipa	Arequipa
one of a million beetles in Arequipa	Arequipa	one of a million beetles in Arequipa	suspected Murder Mobile
Arequipa	Arequipa	Arequipa

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