Day 84 02.10.15
Chivay sits close to the colca canyon. Today was the day we would actually get to see the canyon and hopefully some condors too. We left the hotel and drove a while through little villages and were climbing up the mountains. All around were beautiful pre Incan terraces, some of which were being used for agriculture, some of them were left abandoned (especially the ones higher up the mountains).
Some were pitch black as they had only recently been burned to add extra nutrients to the soil. It is impressive to think that many years ago this place was bustling with life, and to think that they farmed the land without any work animals. Remember, the cows and the ox only came with the Spanish. Before that the people used their own hands to plough the fields.
There were little stonewalls everywhere too, dividing the different pieces of land, either to separate animals from plants or separating the neighbours vegetable patch from your own.
At one lookout point, we could see ancient Incan tombs. These tombs were constructed straight into the rock. Maybe you can spot them here:
Ok, here is the solution what you are looking at. They would drill little holes into the rock, put the skeletons in fetal position into that hole with all its offerings etc. and then erect a stonewall around them. The Incas considered the Pacha Mama (Mother Earth) to be present in the mountains, or at least the mountains were her sons, their gods living in the highest parts. Hence, it was like being buried in a church – they were closer to their gods.
Again grave robbers were quicker in getting most of the mummies out, but you can still see the remainders of the graves.
At this look out point there was another speciality; an architectural model of the irrigation system of the terraces on the other side of the valley. They used to use large rocks to carve the terraces and irrigation systems into, in order to know what to build where. These types of architectural modelled rocks have appeared in other valleys and were apparently a common feature.
There is even a rock that is more like a map, depicting all four regions of Peru, the coast, the jungle, the highlands and the desert.
I just thought all the terraces were impressive and such a clever idea!
After the lookout point we climbed higher and higher and the valley turned from terraces more into the canyon. Steep mountains on one side, semi terraced areas on the other side.
The Colca Canyon is the twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.
Closely after we saw our first condor. It was only a little chick, or a youngster, but it was sitting on a rock, pretty much surrounded by tourists, just waiting for him to fly about.
Our guide estimated the condor to be about 5 years old, as then they are pushed out of their nests and have to learn how to fly. Yes you read right, incubation is about 45 to 55 days, and then the chick sits in its parent’s nest for up to 5 years. We were asking why such a bird would put in so much effort for their young, but we figured that if they live up to 80 years, waiting this long might not be such a bad thing.
Here is a photo of him taking off:
We then got to the main look out point, towering over the canyon in the hopes of finding more condors. Condors are considered the symbol of freedom as they can roam the air without boundaries. Just as in Ecuador in Quito where all the churches had some sort of condor statue, in Peru this bird has a high standing too.
The canyon itself is quite impressive and we were very high up!
Then we got to see the first condors. What majestic animals. As soon as the sun came out and the currents formed they were out about and flying. Sometimes it was hard to capture them as their feathers blend in easily into the background of the mountainside.
Up at this viewpoint again we saw many women selling their clothes, scarves and little llama figures.
We had been told by our guide that the locals, guides and drivers, skip breakfast at their hotels, knowing that the women up at this viewpoint make great sandwiches and in some cases even provide soups and chicken and rice. We thought we couldn’t miss the “famous” avocado sandwich, and it was delicious! Avocado, a little bit of onions and tomatoes and salt in bread. It made our guide laugh, since after arriving and the first condors flying about we asked her straight away where this avocado sandwich was being sold, instead of taking our first pictures of the condors – we knew we would be staying around here about 1,5 hours, so we knew we had enough time to take photos of the condors later. We had our priorities straight :).
More and more condors came out to fly and rose higher and higher, sometimes even flying over our heads. A great way to get a better photo of them – it seemed a bit as if they were flying a little show for us.
At some point we got a little bored and started playing around with taking pictures.
It got to the point where we pretended to be condors. And from then on out we had a mission to make the best documentary about condors. Just watch and see:
We then went for a little walk, testing our breathing in this altitude and awing over the beauty of this landscape, the canyon and the opposite mountainsides. Just impressive!
This is the national flower of Peru called cantuta.
After the canyon and our walk we headed back to Chivay. We again drove passed the different terraces and stopped at another viewpoint.
We also stopped at a little town where they had an old church, with different altars that had been painted gold and a little exhibition of the life around here in the communities. I decided to step out of the church and wander around a little, trying to find a traditional skirt. Apart from being able to take pictures with llamas and eagles (llamas are domestic, eagles are not and so I don’t like this photo nonsense), I managed to find a place that sold these skirts. I found one I really liked and put all my soles together, and lent some more to buy one of these. Now I just have to think about how I am going to get this heavy thing back home without having to pay loads of money on increasing my weight limit of 23 kilos with KLM. I think I might send it back as another package – I’ll see. Broke but happy I headed back to the bus.
Back in Chivay we got free time to find our own lunch and we stopped at a pizza place, where they prepared pizza on lava stones. It took a while for our food to be served but it was really good and we enjoyed the time just chatting about future travel destinations while we waited.
After that we headed to Sibayo, a small village up in the mountains where we were going to have our homestay. It was a picturesque little village, and even though it had just started to rain we were really looking forward to our stay.
Here is the bedroom we stayed at. Cute and absolutely comfortable. Maybe the only thing was the height of the door frame, on which I hit my head a couple of times, but other than that, it was basic but you were not missing anything.
After a cup of tea we got dressed up in the local attire. Here you can see me with Dora in the traditional skirt (she does all the embellishments on the skirts herself), as well as the little bolero jacket, also with loads of embellishments, a sort of wrap around fabric, also with loads of details and the traditional hat, which unfortunately was slightly too small for my head.
After having changed, we were happy to be wearing the extra layers of clothing, as it was getting a bit chilly, we headed out to help Dora with her gardening. We climbed up to a point where several green houses were located, where the community grows their own vegetables and fruits. The view from here over the village was spectacular too. They really chose a great place for their village, framed by the mountains and the river - it was just beautiful.
So we started doing some weeding in the vegetable patches in our traditional clothes. It was hard trying not to ruin the precious skirts, but still get in deep enough to be able to get all the weeds out.
The green houses are a great initiative by a group of women from the church that get together and look after these plants in order to harvest them and share them among them.
We were happy as we were shielded from the rain here, working away on the different patches.
Eventually we got too many head rushes from bending down and getting up again – thanks altitude! That we decided it was enough and that we were going to head back to the house. We did do quite a good job getting several large piles of weed out of the vegetable patches.
Back at the house we had another cup of tea – great stuff, both the coca tea and the orange tea, and we relaxed a little. Here is a cute little medicine cabinet with a first aid llama.
Then it was time to make dinner. We sat in Doras little kitchen, where she cooked mainly on the wood fired stove, and only used the little gas cooker when the wood is too wet to be used on the other stove.
We handed Dora over our little presents, which were just normal supplies like vegetable oil, salt, pasta, canned tuna, I bought her some Ajinomoto, some cinnamon and some flour. She was really thankful over receiving so many different supplies and stored them away in her cabinet, or in the case of the vegetable oil went straight on to use some of it for her cooking.
Dora is a 50 years old happy woman, who, sorry for the word play, is just aDORAble. She lives with her husband Castro in Sibayo, has three children; a 25 year old son that is married and already has a four year old son called Jefferson, a 22 year old daughter who is studying in Arequipa I think and a 20 year old son who is working as a police man.
Dora produces different handicrafts, either the embellishments on the skirt or detailed little purses or she knits alpaca gloves and mittens.
Her husband works wherever he can find work – either with construction, or he goes fishing or whatever the community has on offer.
The way the community works is quite special. They have different activities each day that are announced the night before over a large megaphone so that the whole village can hear. It starts off with some music and then the actual message will be pronounced. The community either offers some further education, groups the men together to go fishing, helps out with different chores around the town (for example they are currently adding more lights into their church so that they can see better during evening mass.) and just organises and strengthens the community. I suppose that is the way such projects, be it the gardening community or the tourists on their home stays can work, as they are all working together.
On the topic of working together, we helped Dora with the preparation of dinner. The girls shelled the peas, while I cut up some celery, potatoes, carrots and some silver beet (apparently they have that in Australia too, I had never heard of it before or seen it before…). It was nice and a good way to do something, talk to Dora and just be part of her life a little bit more. AND of course, preparing a lovely home cooked meal! Oh, I’ve missed cooking and being cooked for :).
These little placemats she made herself, it says Welcome to Sibayo:
First we had some alpaca soup with vegetables, alpaca and I think somewhere she must have added some quinoa, even though I didn’t see her add any to the pot. It was rich and yummy, and helped against the cold. So did our teas :).
At some point Castro walked in declaring that it had started snowing – no wonder we were feeling cold!
To fully stuff us, she prepared some tortillas with the silver beet I had chopped up and topped that with rice. It was delicious but we were full after the soup and were wincing under the pressure of the tightly knotted skirts rising over our food babies.
Dora offered to make us some hot water bottles to take with us into bed, so that we wouldn’t notice the snow and the cold that much when we were going to sleep. We felt tired and because it was pitch black already we headed to the bedroom. We then realised it was only 7 pm. So we stayed up and edited the video of the condors and then finally with our water bottles went to bed.
