Arequipa - Air-a-keep-a



Chivay to Arequipa

The view down the street from our hotel.

Another view from our hotel.

There is a nice feeling waking up to cool mountain air carried in to town on a light breeze off the snow capped mountains, especially when you don’t have to shovel snow to start your day. Instead we roll the bikes out of the hotel lobby and start the day’s adventure with a twisty road along a valley towards the Colca Canyon. The Colca canyon is said to be deeper than the Grand Canyon, this is accomplished by the extreme height of the mountains surrounding it.In any event the canyon is spectacular and we enjoy the views and talking with some other travellers along the way. While at the Mirador Condor we met some people from Toronto, Germany, and Siberia. We did not however see any condors, we could barely see the road due to the clouds at that elevation. The best part of the tourist stop was a lady selling spaghetti w/chicken out of a large pot on the side of the road. The first bowl was so good we had to share a second one, we caught a few stares from some other tourists as they would most likely not eat this stuff for fear of getting sick, but I think we have developed the guts for it.

Once moving again we are surprised to find that we are only about 500 meters from a clear view of the valley, we drop in elevation for a little while down to the small town of Cabanaconde. We just wanted to see this town and as the canyon appeared to be directly behind the town it only made sense to see if there was a good view somewhere. The little town was very old and the streets were build for horse and carriage not gravel trucks and busses, so there were times when it was a bit crowded. Well ok, there was one bus and one gravel truck, the town is only a few square blocks in total but they did have a nice little central park. We stopped to get a picture or two and a young couple almost immediately starting talking with us. They were from Germany and had bought  a little 150cc bike to tour on instead of taking busses all the time. Anyway, we talked for about 30minutes before we finally had to say good-bye and get moving. We monkey around town a little bit to find the lookout point, snap a picture and then hit the road. We take the alternate route which is gravel, and deserted.

At times it felt like we were the only people on the planet, then before we know it we are back into civilization, sort of. What we came out of the picturesque mountains to was a sandy desert landscape with little houses made with woven grass panel walls.

These were similar to the one we seen along the coast with only slight differences in the rock walls around the property. The rest of the way into Arequipa would be on the Panamerica Highway, long straight boring and windy. Due to the crosswind and the sand at times the highway was covered with what we would call ground drift, only this was sand instead of snow.

Arequipa is a large city with large city traffic, we slug away between taxis and busses and trucks until we find our way close to the central square. After looking at a paper map it was apparent that the old city of Arequipa is only a small portion of the overall new metropolis of Arequipa. The old town is the gem, the rest is pretty much just a big city.

 

 

Awesome antique store.

Arequipa to Arequipa

We put a little more pavement on that road of intentions today. As we tried to make our way to Montgengua in the South of Peru we encountered a serious detour. There was road construction on the already long route and the detour added another 70km, and with the likelyhood of no gas along the way combined with it being 2:30 the possibility of us completing the desired route before dark was not going to happen. So in light of all this, we decide it best to return to Arequipa and start in the morning on a different route that would take us to Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Once back in Arequipa the decision was made to stay in an area of town closer to our morning start point rather than in the downtown core. The hotel was clean and they had secure parking for the bikes, usually this was used for the “utmost discretion” of the guests, and not so much for the security of their vehicles. In any event it was a quiet night and we got an early start the next morning.