6. Peru - Nazca Lines and Colca Canyon

Plaza de Armas in Arequipe

Unless you want to travel eastwards and down into the Amazon basin, many of the major sights in Peru are along the coast and then as you get towards the

Nazca desert  

south heading eastward and inland.  We were staying away from the Amazon and every other potential malaria region on this trip and so we were on our way to one of the most famous prehistory sites in the world.  The Nazca Lines, something I’ve wanted to see since I first heard of them.   The town of Nazca is a little to the south of the desert where the lines are and there’s a viewing tower by the side of the Pan-American highway just south of 

The Lizard - sliced in half by
the Pan-American Highway 

where some dolt allowed

the road to be built right through one of the figures.  The lines, dated to between 500 bc and 500 ad are giant stylised figures and shapes formed on the desert surface covering in total an area of about 1,000 square kilometres.  This desert, one of the driest in the world, has an almost year round stable temperature of 77f, little wind and is composed of gravel and rock with little sand.  The lines are actually shallow trenches four to six inches deep and the largest figure is about 1,200 feet long.  
It’s impossible to see the figures properly from the 

ground.  Scientific and archaeological opinion conclude that they were 

built by the Nazca people, probably for religious purposes and some align with sunrises at certain times.  They were not built by prehistoric astronauts as landing strips which is what some of what I’d call the lunatic fringe believe.  But then people believe so many ridiculous things.  I understand that even the Flat Earth Society now claims to have members all around the globe.  

The Whale

The Nazca viewing tower gave us only a partial view over a couple of figures and so unusually for us we signed up for the only way to see the lines properly, a flight.   This really was a revelation, the desert is covered in straight lines, circles, angles and to top it all, the figures.  There are more than 70 anthropomorphic figures and some are obvious, the Humming Bird (290 feet long), Lizard (590 feet long) and Whale (201 feet long) for example.  They’re mostly straight lines with curves at the ends although the Human figure which the ancient astronaut lobby call The Astronaut is different.  This one is uniquely on a sloping hillside and is mostly curved lines with a head whose only feature is two eyes (a helmet, you see).  Unfortunately it holds a net in one hand and a fish in the other.  Make up your own mind.   To see these lines for real was a really stunning experience and more of these strange designs are still being discovered over a huge area of desert.

The Humming-bird

The Peruvians don’t go for background music in restaurants, they prefer foreground music and the louder the better, sometimes with a television turned on at the same time.  Speakers play outside shops in the street and noise is everywhere.  Mind you, when we ask for sound to be turned down in a restaurant it always happens.  They must think we’re very odd to want to eat with someone who we also want to talk to.  I think it must have been unintentionally ironic but in one town we heard a van blaring out a message and on the side we read that it was advertising an insomnia cure.  Really.

We only stayed in the town of Nazca for one night, after all there is only one reason to even stop here.  Our Peru Hop travel out was a night bus which I don’t enjoy.  Proper comfortable reclining seats yes, no hotel bill for that night yes but the scenery goes past unseen in the dark and it obviously isn’t as comfortable

Indigenous people in traditional costume 

as being in a bed.  We were able to check in to our hotel in Arequipa about 6.30am, had a pleasant buffet breakfast and strolled slowly into town.  The slowness wasn’t just because of a night bus ride, we were now at altitude.  Nazca lies at about 1,600 feet and Arequipa at about 7,250 feet above sea level.  Altitude sickness has to be considered and it seems to hit people almost randomly and at its worst can be fatal.  It’s nothing to do with age or fitness and is essentially caused by lower

inside Arequipa's monastery

air pressure which means that oxygen is more thinly spread, even though it is still the usual roughly 20% of air.  At around 7,000 feet we would be extremely unlikely to suffer from it apart from puffing more on hills but we will be going to over 14,000 feet where the effective oxygen % is less than 12%.  There are many ways to tackle it from chewing coca leaves or taking coca supplemented tablets but the second best way is to go up slowly and acclimatise.  The best way of course is not to go to altitude at all but that would rule out an awful lot of this trip.

If I describe any of these towns as attractive, clean, interesting or similar, you should understand that I mean the old centre, usually the colonial centre.  Outside that they are invariably a terrible mess, looking like a cross between a war torn city and a building site.  I think (as I believe it is in Spain) that tax is only payable on a finished structure so almost every building is made habitable but the top is never finished and/or the walls are unrendered.   Litter is surprisingly lacking in the centre and people are street cleaning all the time but it seems they just take it to the outskirts and dump it.  Bearing this in mind, we always go for an old town centre hotel and central Arequipa was indeed clean and attractive with views of snow-capped volcanoes behind the Cathedral. 

There were as usual few actual beggars in town but lots of people selling something small or offering a minor service.  Perhaps a few sweets or small knitted objects, or sitting next to a weighing machine or a typewriter waiting to type an official letter and the more shoe shine operators than I have ever seen in one place.  There’s the first we saw of the traditionally dressed women carrying a tiny lamb around or leading an Alpaca about touting for a photograph and a tip. 

It was from Arequipa that we had our first proper expedition of this trip.  There were two day or three day treks in the Colca Canyon which lay some four hours drive from the city.  So an early start again and as we crossed the high Altiplano at just under 16,000 feet we had our first views of Vicuna.  There are four Camel related animals here, Llama, Alpaca, Vicuna and Guanaco.  Llama always remind me of General de Gaulle and Alpaca look enough like Boris Johnson for me to want to punch them in the face.  Vicuna and Guanaco are wild, only seen above 10,000 feet and we never did see Guanaco.  Vicuna which are the most beautiful elegant creatures are rounded up every three years and sheared with the resultant unbelievably soft wool said to be the most expensive material in the world.  

 

Vicuna

at the start - the river we dropped to is way down there

Few of you will have heard of Colca Canyon but it’s twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in Arizona (USA).  I’ll give ‘em London, Engaland.  We opted for the three day trek and while you might think the two day would be more suitable you need to know that the two day covers exactly the same ground in two thirds of the time.  It was a tough walk in three days through rugged and dusty terrain and it was at an altitude ranging down from 10,000 feet.  There were seven of us plus a guide and we worked out later round a table that excluding the 54 year old Belgian our ages were equal to the other five added together.  So here just for those who like figures are the stats.  First day down 3,500 feet in 2.7 miles, second day 3.5 miles and an up and down 5,000 feet height gain and loss, third day 2.5 miles and a 3,000 feet climb up a very steep slope which I estimated to be about 45 degrees. 

Our second night's stop. Our approach was down that wiggle on the right
 and our way out was up that wiggle on the left 

Towards the end of the second day we were told that we were staying at a different lodge than the one planned.  It turned out that a Frenchman had gone for an evening walk 24 hours earlier by himself from the lodge we were supposed to be at and gone missing.  There is no official search or rescue service, no mountain rescue, no access with vehicles, apparently no helicopters.  The police were looking and the Frenchman’s wife was waiting at the lodge.  Not to put too fine a point on it we knew that he must be injured or dead and that the Condors would locate him soon enough.  They are after all, vultures but condor does sound nicer.  As we drove back to Arequipa on the following day, news came that he had been found alive after 36 hours and there were photos to prove it although we didn’t see them. 

The route up on the 3rd day - all the way from the out of sight river.
The horizontal line on the hillside opposite is a road.

Heather taking the easy way out - for a change

We were really tired after the second day and chickened out of the last day’s climb by taking an unusual train up to the top.  A mule train.  Well not really a train, we and the Belgian each had a mule taking an hour and thirty five minutes to get to the finish.  Good fun but precipitous.  I remember reading that you can get a mule to carry you up from the bottom of the Grand Canyon (Arizona, USA) but they’ve learned that if they walk close to the edge of the drop, most people get off.  Clever old mules.

the view from a mule

the Altiplano at a little over 15,000 feet