Falling in love with Peru.

Nazca is an interesting place.  I had never heard of the Nazca lines before this trip.  No-one really knows how or why these drawings and tracks were created in the desert by different tribes between 500 BC and 500 AD but it is fun coming up with theories.  The most popular one seems to be that they were associated with some kind of ritual by different communities or tribes. They cover an area over 80 km and have only survived through the years because it is so dry.  Certainly worth looking up if visiting this area.  Close by is a large area of sand dunes reserved for sand based activities.  Driving at break neck pace in a buggy across and over these dunes was an experience.  I loved it!  Sand boarding, or in my case lying down on a sand board, was fun too but it was really hard work climbing back up the sand dunes.  We also visited an area 4 km long where ancient graveyards had been discovered.  All looted of course.

Our journey took us on to Arequipa, my favourite Peruvian city so far.  Particularly enjoyable was the extravagance of the monastery.  This was the perfect place for my retirement home/commune!  During the 1500s the daughters of wealthy families were married off with handsome dowries, whereas second daughters were expected to become nuns.  The prioress hand picked her nuns from these wealthy families and also invited the daughters of Indian chieftains.  The "nuns" lived a life of relative luxury within the walls with their own homes, servants and well kept communal areas.  Each house had its own kitchen and dining room and apparently lots of entertaining was the order of the day until the Pope intervened in 1870 and ordered reforms to be made.  Nowadays 22 nuns reside in a small section of the mini city, which was a wonderful place to walk around.  A hiatus of coolness and calm.

Arequipa was also the base for a trip up to the Colca Canyon where the scenery became even more breathtaking.  This is an area of the llama and the alpaca.  The families in this part of Peru live simple lives based on agriculture and what they can glean from tourists through selling hand made goods, posing with alpacas for photos and selling maca based drinks made from the fruit of a cactus; it is supposed to make men virile and women fertile!  Another drink marketed in this area is mate de coca, a tea based on coca leaves.  We had a luxury version that included a potent mint based leaf and a third herb I can't remember the name of along with the coca leaves.  This drink was a remedy for everything from altitude sickness to headaches and upset stomachs.

The main focus of this trip up the canyon was to see Condors.  We did see three youngsters and a couple of adults from the distance, but there was no real sense of the size of these birds which can have a wing span of 3 metres and live for 70 years or more.

Life in the Andes is tough.  Most communities now have a local school with, perhaps, only one or two teachers who cover all age groups.  Our guide told us that most families now try to move to the cities or send their children to boarding school when they get to secondary school age.  Interesting that he commented on the problems rural children face when they get to senior school:  they are keen to learn but there are many problems from the city children who are more interested in having fun!

This canyon journey was all part of the acclimatisation process in preparing us for Macchu Pinchu.  We reached a height of 4800m and slept at 3500m.  No-one slept that well and as for walking up hills, you just felt hopelessly unfit!  We were taught how to chew coca leaves properly, a messy process, but it does seem to have a positive effect.  It was good however to get back to Arequipa at a lower altitude; it was beginning to feel like home!