hiking in the Colca Canyon

There are about a zillion tour companies in Arequipa that offer hiking trips to the Colca Canyon. We tried to pick one that claimed to be eco-conscious and socially responsible, etc, and cost a bit more (hopefully to good end). We had to leave Arequipa at 3:00 in the morning! to reach the Colca Canyon by 8:30-ish. First stop, the high lookout point at Cruz del Condor, where we were rewarded with a spectacular view down into the canyon below, and saw a few enormous condors gliding casually overhead.

condor sighting at Cruz del Condor. I initially assumed that the giant birds come here because they nest nearby or something like that; actually, our tour guide later told us that the town puts out carrion around this area to attract the condors here and give us tourists our photo ops!

Then we headed on to the town of Cabanaconde for lunch, and met with our group of fellow hikers, seven in total. We were lucky to be there for the start of a big four-day holiday, and we caught a really bright parade marching through town with a brass band and a big float covered with millions of fresh flowers and fruits. Mischief and throwing water on people are part of the holiday too – we saw at least a dozen little kids armed with water guns and water balloons (luckily we missed getting soaked) and saw a shop-keeper lady run out of her store and empty a whole bucket of water over some guy’s head and run away, laughing crazily.

celebration of the Dia de La Virgen de Candelaria in Cabanaconde

Like all the small towns around Bolivia and Peru, there were lots of ladies wearing beautiful and bright traditional outfits. Even more so here because of the holiday, I think. In this area, skirts, blouses and especially hats are covered in finely detailed bright embroidery. Our guide, Pepe, explained that since pre-Inca times, the Colca Canyon has been occupied by two distinct indigenous groups, the Kollawa and the Cabanas, and they are still easily distinguished by different styles of hats – the ladies of one group all wear rounded, brightly embroidered hats; on the other side, they wear white hats, with a more squared-off shape. In pre-Incan times, each group deformed the skulls of their infants to create a distinct cranium shape – the hats they wear now still reflect the different skull shapes traditional in each group.
After lunch we headed out of town and Pepe got us a quick ride to the canyon’s edge with some dumptruck drivers who were headed our way.

hitching a ride in a dumptruck

From the edge of the canyon, we peered down, down, down to the river far below… and we could see a few towns perched on the steep canyon sides opposite us.

looking down

The path down started out gentle, and then got steeper and rockier as we went down. I think it took about three hours of steady, often pretty steep descent to get down to the bottom. It was a narrow path, covered in loose gravel, and next to the path, just… straight down… so it was a bit scary, and tiring on the knees!

steep descent

My legs were all shaky by the time we finally made it down to the river at the bottom. We crossed a hanging bridge, and then had to scramble up a really steep bit before we got to sit and rest under some trees.

hanging bridge

It had started to sprinkle rain on the way down and by the time we stopped to rest it was really raining. The opposite side of the canyon was kind of a whole different world. We’d been descending through dust and gravel, surrounded by rocks and cacti and brush… the other side of the canyon was green and lush, with peach trees and avocado trees, terraced farmland and rushing irrigation brooks. We had a nice hour of gentle climbing through thick green forest, past waterfalls and terraced farms. Then crossed another hanging bridge, and then straight up up up up, and the rain turned to a downpour, and it was all a little intense.

climbing up into the clouds

We were very relieved (and wet) when we finally got to our destination, a little farm in the tiny town of Cosñirhua. We all stayed in a few adobe rooms owned by an older couple, Mauricio and his wife, who helped Pepe cook up a delicious dinner for us. Hearty sopa de sustancia, delicious fresh avocado salad, and sweet potato fritters! They had a tiny little store with some packaged snacks and beer, we asked for a bottle of wine and they didn’t have any… but Mauricio said “wait, I think I might have something in my house for you.” He came back with a giant jar filled with brown stuff, the label said Strawberry Marmalade, but Mauricio said it was homemade peach Pisco! Inside there were a half-dozen small brown pickled-looking peaches floating around… At first I thought “Is that safe to drink?!” but Mauricio offered us a free sample and we thought it tasted just right, so we bought the whole jar and shared it round with all the tired hikers. Perfect.

this is where we stayed in Cosñirhua. All the towns around the canyon were decorated brightly for the Dia de La Virgen de Candelaria.

In the morning, the sun was out again. We breakfasted, did the ritual sunscreen-slathering, and headed back out on the trail. Pepe stopped along the way for a few show-and-tell stops, explaining the different cacti and their uses (the Tuna cactus has delicious fruit and the plants host Cochineal bugs which are widely used for natural dyes; the San Pedro cactus is used to create a hallucinogenic drug used in shamanic rituals) and pointing out different crops, picking strange fruits from the trees and sharing them with us. He seemed to know everyone in all the towns, and stopped to chat or hollered greetings as we walked past. In the next town over, the plaza was littered with charred firecracker papers and remains of the previous night’s Virgen de Candelaria festivities. We stopped to visit the health center and a small museum, and Pepe explained lots of details about local life in the small canyon towns.

a baby fox at the museum in Malata. (Atoc is the quechua name, i think)

mules on the path ahead

Then down, down, down again, back down to the river bottom and across another hanging bridge. During the descent we could see the crazy path zig-zagging up the opposite side of the canyon, where we’d have to climb up after lunch. It looked intimidating.

below, the oasis… and above, the path we will climb up!

On the other side of the canyon we stopped at a touristy little oasis and had a glorious splash in a swimming pool and sunned ourselves on a huge rock while Pepe cooked up our lunch. He’d warned us that the ascent would be really intense and tried to talk all of us into renting mules to ride up the canyon! He said “I don’t know why you pay money to hike and suffer! Peruvians never walk up the canyon, they ride mules. Only foreigners come here and pay to suffer, climbing up in the hot sun!” Eventually Mike and Marthe were convinced, and agreed to rent mules at the oasis to carry them up. The rest of us were either gluttons for punishment, or too scared to imagine riding up that steep path on the back of a mule. Maybe both.

Mike and his sweet ride!

After all that, it wasn’t so bad. Just a long, slow, steady, hot climb. Luckily the sky was cloudy so the sun wasn’t burning. The second half was pretty spectacular, with the sun sinking, Andes all around, and the canyon below. Pepe somehow got the idea that we were crazy daredevils, and asked “Do you want to take a detour to do some rock-climbing?” Our first response was “nononoNO!” but somehow we agreed to it. We took a 20-minute “shortcut” that was super intense, we were just scrambling straight up these rock faces, hand to rock and foot to rock and it took complete focus to just pay attention to where to find the next hold. I looked down and there was nothing there! and I got all dizzy and had to just think about going up. When we finally got back on the path, we were all pumped with adrenaline and realized that for 20 minutes we had totally forgotten we were tired and hot and had heavy packs and all that. So it was kind of an awesome detour.

alpine glow

At the very end of the trail, the sky turned crazy orange and red and we got a spectacular sunset show as we came over the top of the canyon.

crazy sunset

It felt like a celebration of our arrival! I was seriously SO tired by the time we got there but SO excited and exhilarated about having made it. A high point of the whole trip, in every sense! Walked back to town in the pitch dark and enjoyed some excellent hot showers, roasted fish, and soft beds.

Quebrada de Humuhuaca

The Quebrada de Humuhuaca is the name of the valley that stretches from the town of Yala, north of the city of San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina, up to the city of Humuhuaca, Argentina. AR Route 9 follows the Rio Grande up through the valley, and around the river is green and lush, while the mountains above are dry and dusty, with lots of cacti and brush and not much other vegetation. The valley is oriented more or less north-south, and as you drive north the elevation increases steadily. Purmamarca is near the southern end, Tilcara is around the middle, and the city of Humuhuaca is near the northern end. In between there are a few smaller towns, and a few groups of adobe houses, with farmers herding goats and llamas and growing corn and potatoes in terraced gardens.

Waking up in Purmamarca, we had a nice breakfast of bollo (homemade bread) and cafe con leche, then hiked up a big cliff to look out across the town of Purmamarca to the famous Cerro de Siete Colores, a stripey colored mountain behind the village.

climbing up

Purmamarca and the Cerro de Siete Colores

Driving around the Cerro de Siete Colores

Purmamarca Cemetery

Before leaving town, we took a drive around a kind of sketchy dirt road that goes around the Cerro de Siete Colors and stopped at the amazing and beautiful town cemetery. We decided to take a side-trip to visit the Salinas Grandes salt flats a few hours west of Purmamarca, along the road towards Chile. To get to the salt flats we had to basically drive up out of the river valley and across the mountain range, onto the high altiplano. It’s a crazy switchback stretch of road called the Cuesta de Lipan, it’s a really dramatic ascent (the high point of the pass is 4,170 meters) but the road is two lanes and it’s in good condition.

Cuesta de Lipan

above the clouds

Salinas Grandes salt flats

We saw lots of llamas and vicuña and goats grazing happily among the cacti on the steep dry hills, and looking back over the road we could see clouds far below us. The Cuesta de Lipan ascends about 1,978 meters in elevation, then descends another 800 meters to the salt flats, over 17 kilometers of driving, which our tiny little rental car managed happily with Mike at the wheel. The salt flats are weird and unwelcoming, as soon as we arrived I felt blasted by heat and light and had to fight the urge to retreat as fast as possible. I remember feeling the same way when I drove through the salt flats in Utah long ago, it just feels intensely alien and unfriendly. We wrapped scarves and towels around our heads to fight the sun and glare, and wandered around a bit. There are square pools of salt water where salt has been harvested and water has seeped into the square hole. The salt underfoot is crunchy and crackly. There were some cool crystallized chunks of salt lying around. Unbelievably, there were some guys there selling handcrafts carved from salt blocks. They all had t-shirts wrapped around their heads too. I can’t imagine spending the whole day working there, yikes.
After the salt flats we had to descend by the same road again, and then headed further along the valley to Tilcara, another town along the Quebrada de Humuhuaca. It’s a slightly bigger tourist town, cute but a bit overstuffed with other backpackers. We found a place to stay at the local cooperative schoolhouse! The kids are on summer vacation, so they put beds in the classrooms and rent the little schoolhouse to travelers! It was a perfect place for us, with a kitchen and a barbecue in the back yard and beautiful fruit trees and gardens that the kids had planted. We felt super comfy and ended up staying a few nights in Tilcara.

our schoolhouse home in Tilcara

our schoolhouse home in Tilcara

There was lots of music and festivities for Three Kings Day, which I believe is a big holiday in all of Latin America. There were tons of kids in costumes marching around to drum and flute music all day, and there was a stage with performances in the town square, and there was a maypole dance which kind of blew my mind because I thought that maypoles were just a european folk tradition, I had no idea there were maypole dances in the Andes!

Three Kings Day in Tilcara

One day we did a great hike to a canyon with a waterfall called El Garganta del Diablo, it’s a 12km hike there and back, and there are really amazing views of the valley and striped mountains, there were only a few steep parts but it felt like we were so incredibly high up, we could look waaaayyy down into canyons below us and across to the pastel rows of mountains beyond.

Andrew and Vickie hike home from La Garganta del Diablo

Garganta del Diablo waterfall

Another day we climbed up to the Pukara, which is the site of a pre-incan walled city that’s been excavated and partially reconstructed by archaeologists from the University of Buenos Aires. The site is covered in cacti, with a maze of low stone houses that look very tidy and new. It was incredibly windy and surprisingly cold up there so I spent a lot of our visit hiding in the little stone huts trying to stay warm.

South America tour ideas

So, the idea was to not plan our trip too much – but of course we’re excited to travel and whenever we get a spare moment we can’t help ourselves from flipping through our dog-eared Lonely Planet and browsing through pictures, picking out which places we hope to see along the way. The only reservations we’ll make in advance are our first bus tickets out of Buenos Aires, our final flight home from Lima back to Buenos Aires, and we’ve reserved dates for the Choquequirao hiking trip in the middle. In between those dates we’ll just see what we feel like doing and see what fits in. We’ve never really had enough free time to travel without set plans, so we’re looking forward to having the luxury of making it up as we go along. Also, we’ve heard that transport in Bolivia can be pretty unpredictable so it’s best to keep an open itinerary with lots of extra time for delays. Anyway here are some of the places we’re hoping we might see!

first step: January 1st, 6:00 pm overnight bus from Buenos Aires Retiro bus station to Salta, arrive in Salta at 1:00 pm on January 2nd.

Convento de San Francisco, Salta

Salta street

We’ve visited Salta before but we’ll be traveling with Andrew & Vickie, who’ve never been there, so we might stop over for a few days to see this beautiful colonial city and/or visit some of the surrounding countryside, perhaps Cafayate or Cachi.

Quebrada de Las Conchas (near Cafayate), Salta, Argentina

Cuesta del Obispo. The road from Salta to Cachi runs through the Valle Encantada (The Enchanted Valley).

Then northwards to Jujuy and the Quebrada de Humuhuaca, maybe stay a night in Purmamarca or Tilcara.

Purmamarca. Jujuy provincia, Argentina.

Camino del Colorado – Quebrado de Humuhuaca, Jujuy, Argentina

If we can fit it in, we are eager to visit the isolated mountainside village of Iruya, 4 hours’ bus ride from Humuhuaca, over steep hairpin gravel roads but it sounds like it’s worth the detour.

remote mountainside town of Iruya, Salta, Argentina

Then we’ll part ways with Andrew and Vickie, who will fly out of Jujuy back to Buenos Aires and then head back to the US.

We’ll head northwards and cross the border from Argentina into Bolivia at the border town of Villazon. From Villazon there’s a train that runs north on Tuesdays and Saturdays or something like that. We’re thinking of riding the train up to Tupiza, and then in Tupiza find a jeep tour to bring us out to the salt flats (a place you can really only visit with a tour guide and a jeep). After the salt flats we’ll end up in Uyuni, and continue northwards, we’re thinking of stopping in Potosi, probably Sucre, maybe Ororu or Cochabamba, then a few days in La Paz, then on to Lake Titicaca…

Arequipa, Peru, with volcano Misti in the distance

Monasterio Santa Catalina, Arequipa, Peru

Monasterio Santa Catalina, Arequipa, Peru

TO BE CONTINUED…

usa part three: maine, new hampshire

Finally arrived at the family home in Maine on wednesday april 29th! had a warm reunion with dogs, cats, chickens, etc. and it felt so good to drop some laundry in the washer, browse for snacks in the fridge, and relax with some pups on the porch. We had one quiet day of chores and freelance work and stuff. Then on Thursday we packed up to head to the summer cabin in Intervale, New Hampshire. It’s a beautiful hour-and-a-half drive, and we got there around 3 or 4 on Thursday afternoon.

The house was all closed up for the winter so we had to start by unlocking, moving some furniture, turning on the main circuit-breaker, and then trying to turn on the water. I’ve never done the spring opening-up alone. Richard had warned me that the plumbing would be the most complicated part of opening up; every year something always goes wrong with the water turn-on. “What kind of problems? where should I look first?” “Well, it’s different every year. You never know what’s going to happen until you turn on the water main!” Sure enough, we sprang a leak in the bathroom near the toilet, and as the evening turned to night, we decided to give up plumbing for the evening and made do for the night with just one outdoor faucet running. In the morning, with lots of indispensable help and advice from Richard over the cell-phone, we devised a solution, bought the hardware, and fit everything together! Plumbing success!

Feeling grand after this problem-solving victory, we spent the rest of the day working furiously to drag furniture into place, sweep up drifts of pine needles, locate and dispose of dead mice, mop, scour, and generally clear away a winter’s accumulated dust and disorder. Finally we cooked up a great big pot of corn and potato chowder and had a well-earned delicious dinner by the fireside. Friday night around midnight, Emily and Pete and Elizabeth and Caroline all arrived from New York!

We spent a beautiful and crisp, chilly weekend relaxing and hiking in the White Mountains… Saturday we went out for a hike on the Imp Trail. We had expected a pleasant, moderate hike of a few hours; we had not expected that the upper half of the trail would be covered with deep, icy crusted snow. I’d never really hiked so high up in the mountains around Intervale so early in the year and I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. At first we thought it was fun to see a bit of snow, but it made the hike a lot more challenging than we’d expected. Every third step sent our sneaker-clad feet crashing through the snow and splashing into the mud and icy water running below.

Because we had mis-read the trail guide, we kept thinking we were almost at the top, so it didn’t seem worth it to give up and turn back. The last hour before the summit was kinda brutal, there was a lot of screaming as we continually plunged into ice and mud up to our knees, and a lot of laughing about our ridiculous situation, and I felt ignorant for not having had any idea about the conditions I was leading my friends into! I was a bit nervous that someone would break an ankle and the sun would go down and then we’d all freeze to death on the mountainside. But after wading through a few icy waterfalls and crashing and lurching our way very slowly through the final mile of the trail, we found ourselves at a spectacular summit indeed!

We limped out onto the sun-warmed rocks and took off our muddy shoes to dry our feet in the sunshine. Enjoyed some superbly delicious trail mix and sandwiches, took lots of photos, generally felt our spirits lifted by the beautiful panoramic view of Mount Washington Valley and warm spring sunshine.

The downhill part of the loop was much much easier, less snowy, and we thankfully made it back to the car just shy of sunset, several hours late but in good spirits, filled with the warm camaraderie of having survived a surprising and exhausting challenge and having a warm fire, a nip of whiskey and a big pot of corn chowder waiting for us back at camp.

All in all, it was such a lovely and cozy weekend that it was hard to head back to Maine again on Monday. The rest of the week was spent quietly with some delicious family dinners, visits with some old friends, freelance work and art projects, jigsaw puzzling with Judy, tasty home-cooking, fireside knitting and lots of snuggles with the dogs and cats. Mike’s last afternoon in Maine, we went out to visit the famous Portland Head Light, a picturesque 1791 lighthouse originally commissioned by George Washington, which was charming despite the cold grey misty weather.

Mike had to get back to Buenos Aires for work but I had work to do in Maine (packaging and preparing cards for Morris & Essex) and enjoyed more quiet time with the family.

patagonia!

April 2009: 6 days in the deep south of Argentina. Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, El Calafate, Glaciar Perito Moreno, El Chalten, Cerro Fitz Roy…

Day 1: it took us most of the day to get from Buenos Aires to El Calafate; we finally arrived at our hostel around 4:00 and then explored El Calafate. It’s a lot like Bariloche or any other Argentine touristy town; lots of fake-alpine architecture and chocolate shops and souvenirs. The view from our hostel was awesome, out over Lago Argentino to the mountains beyond.

Day 2: a visit to Perito Moreno Glacier and Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. We woke up bright & early and had a scenic two-hour bus ride through foothills and pastures and lakes, out from El Calafate to get to the park.

There’s an impressive series of boardwalks and platforms from which to admire the front edge of the glacier, watch little icebergs calving off from the icy mass and crashing into the lake below.

this ice is 400 years old! These spires of ice began as humid air moving east over the Pacific ocean and over Chile they condensed to clouds and then over the Andes they became snowflakes which fell on the Patagonian continental ice field and slowly made their way down to Argentina a few hundred years later. This is one of the only glaciers in the world that’s not receding. Between the melting and the giant icebergs constantly crumbling off the front end, it’s not really advancing either, but it’s more or less holding its own and neither advancing nor retreating.

After an hour or two of admiring the glacial action, we went to the tourist center and had a hot chocolate, then headed out for our hike across the glacier! We took a boat across the lake, then hiked along the lakeshore and up alongside the edge of the glacier.

Our herd of tourists split into smaller groups and we all strapped on crampons over our boots and gingerly marched, single-file, up onto the side of the glacier. From across the lake you see how massively wide it is, but from this vantage you realize how tall it is, like a giant ice mountain and all of the climbers are little tiny ants on its side.

The ice was all pebbly, just like crushed ice. Every now and then we came across crevasses where you could see deep into the ice, and it glows bright blue inside. The sun was surprisingly warm and there were rivers and lakes of melted glacier-water running all over the place.

Our guide told us to fill up our water bottles and drink from the puddles, it’s the purest water in the world! With the crampons it was really easy to climb up and down the ice. We had sweet views of the lake and mountains from atop the glacier. After clambering around for a while, we arrived at a little wooden chest nestled inbetween two great ice-drifts. Inside: a pile of hand-made chocolates, a bottle of whiskey and a dozen glasses; the guide scooped up glasses full of glacier ice and we each had a whiskey on the rocks and a tasty chocolate.

We were sleepy on the bus ride back to El Calafate but I was glad I stayed awake because it was the best colored sunset I have ever seen.

Day 3: bus ride to El Chalten and an afternoon hike to Laguna Capri brings us face-to-face with the mighty Cerro Fitz Roy.

Day 4: Blustery buckets of rain. Stayed inside the hostel knitting a scarf and cooked a pot of pea soup.

Day 5: hiked the Laguna Torre trail, a long but easy trail through amazingly bright fall foliage, and at the end a spectacular view of the laguna, Glaciar Torre, and the cloud-covered Cerro Torre. Snow flurry at the summit.

Day 6: bus back to El Calafate, had a few hours to relax in Calafate and then flew back home to Buenos Aires.

here are more pictures!!!

maine, new hampshire

Next stop, Maine! we turned up in Gorham, ME on Friday afternoon and after cheerful greetings from all family and dogs, settled right in to the back porch with a beer and italians from Amato’s. My sister Amy and her husband George were traveling in Italy so their two dogs Django and Annabelle were staying at my parents’ house, in addition to my parents’ two dogs, Paprika and Juniper. My two cats Buster and Boris are also living there, in addition to 8 baby chickens who were living in a cardboard box in the hallway. On top of all these animals, and Mike and I, Mike’s mom Bonnie and her friend Les had come out from Michigan to visit with us in Maine too! so it was a pretty full house. Bonnie and Les had never been to visit Maine or New Hampshire before, so we all wanted to show them the best of New England. On Saturday we drove over to Intervale, New Hampshire to stay in our family’s cabin in the White Mountains. We went to visit Jackson Falls, ate lobsters for dinner, enjoyed some beautiful hours relaxing on the screen porch, went for some beautiful hikes in the white mountains. We walked up Mt. Willard trail (aka Bubblegum Hill) with all four dogs and six people, under cloudy skies and by the time we reached the spectacular viewpoint at the top, it had started to rain… on the whole walk down it was pouring buckets!!

in general our time in Maine and NH included a lot of rain, though there were good hot sunny days too. After a few days in Intervale, we went back to Maine for a few days, snacked at a few seafood shacks, explored Portland, joined Amy and George at an idsva fundraiser, had a great dinner at Fore Street, took a ferry out to the islands in Casco Bay.

Mike left us on Thursday evening and then Bonnie and Les headed home on Saturday morning… but we weren’t lonely because my Aunt Barbara arrived on Saturday evening to visit for the week! We stayed in Intervale for most of the week. Amy and George and Alicia and Kathy all came up to Intervale too, so we had a cozy visit with lots of family and dogs and good food.
Again, it was so sad when I had to leave. I packed all my suitcases (I had accumulated SO much new stuff to bring home with me to BsAs… I had to take a whole extra suitcase to carry it all!) the night before and early Saturday morning, Judy and Richard drove me down to the Eastern Slope Inn in North Conway, where the bus to Boston stops at 8:25 am. Goodbye to family and goodbye to the mountains and my homeland. Snif.