Oh Peru! From Lima to Nazca and more…

Well, when you find yourself in Santa Marta, Columbia with 3 weeks to kill before you can head north to Cubu (November 1st is the official end of hurricane season)…what do you do? ….Peru!! We flew down from Columbia for 3 weeks of the Andes, the Incas and the Amazon…

We arrived in the bustling metropolis of Lima, found a hip little cafe for dinner and soaked up the cool and delicious ambience of one of the more affluent urban areas of this massive, throbbing city….The kids have been shy to use any of their Spanish words but the reward of the best churro’s we have ever tasted had Kai eagerly ordering from the delighted waiter in perfect Spanish! 

As we passed through the sprawling outlying districts at the fringes of Lima city the following morning, the shiny houses, retail outlets, arty restaurants and thriving  suburban streets quickly turned to a landscape of square, concrete huts, dusty streets, crumbling whitewashed walls adorned with political slogans, colourful street vendors, stray dogs, and an eclectic mix of people from both Inka and Spanish heritage. The urban and the rural seem to clash in an infusion of old, new, uber cool, working class, slum dwellers, farmers, Catholicism and Indigenous spirituality.  Peru is nothing but diverse!

Large Pacific Ocean waves roll onto the beaches next to endless clusters of raw, block buildings and a stark landscape of rock and sand hills. They say that west of the Andes is dry desert and east is lush jungle and we were certainly viewing the west…

We arrive in the Nazca desert, home to hundreds of ancient geoglyphs created by the Nazca culture between 500 BC and 500 AD. They depict geometric shapes and animals including hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, whales and lizards. They are impressive!

The plane was tinsy, with room (just) for the 4 of us, a pilot and our co-pilot/guide. And there was a lot of rolling from one wingtip to the other as we peered left and then right at the ancient lines and stylised shapes…

A 9 hour bus ride took us to the city of Arequipa where we met our lovely Peruvian guide Coco…He took us on a 6 hour drive via Chivay, Yanque and Maca- dusty villages with magnificent catholic churches towering over stone walls, plazas and shanty huts to Cabanaconde, a small rural town perched on the rim of the mind-blowing Colca Canyon.

We loved Coco immediately and his gentle nature, big heart and love of the ‘puchamama’ (mother nature) Inka heritage and detailed knowledge of the area made him the perfect guide for our 4 days in this area. We drove through the ‘Salinas y aquada blanco’ national park flanked by the live and  smoking volcano ‘Misti’ to our right and the towering snow peaked mountain ‘Chachani’ (6057m) on our left. We saw many alpaccas, llamas (both the fluffy and the dread-locked variety that look like something out of the muppets) as well as the smaller (and more valuable) ‘pequenas.’

Local men and women in traditional dress trek the roads and tend rickety street side stalls selling colourful alpaca wool clothing with the stunning backdrop of jagged peaks and snow capped ‘montana’s’ … We stopped for a walk (and the kids first ever touch of snow) at the 5000m pass and huffed and puffed from the altitude as we stretched our legs and breathed in the mountain air!

With a total descent of 3270m, the Colca is one of the deepest canyons in the world. Of course we had to hike down into it! Next post…our epic 2 day walk into the Colca…