This morning I left Arequipa by bus at 6:00. The first hour on the bus was pretty depressing - a lot of rubbish on the side of the road, no green, houses that seemed to going to break down any minute... but after leaving the greater Arequipa area and entering the mountains everything changed! On the right you could see the snowtopped El Misti vulcano and on the left side I spottet the first vicuñas - the wild cousin of the llama! The mountains got higher, the villages smaller and less frequent... the view from the bus alone was worth the trip! Unfortunately I really had to go to the toilet but there was none on the bus, neither did it stop for a bathroom break. I was already contemplating all possible solutions - from getting of the bus and waiting for the next one to just letting my bladder explode. Thank God the beautiful landscape destracted me a bit and I made it to the town of Chivay without accident! The second the bus door opened I raced to the "servicios higienicos" of the bus terminal - and still made it back to the bus before departure. From Chivay on I enjoyed the landscape much more ;-). And not just the landscape seemed to be out of a Peru tourism brochure - also the people seemed to be paid by the local tourism industry: women in colourfull embroidered hats, velvet vests and big skirts boarded the bus - some of them with a pretty baby in a scarf on their back. Others were working in the fields or riding donkeys, nearly all in traditional clothes! The trip to Cabanaconde is quite exhausting - 6 hours on pretty bumpy roads (which seem even bumpier if you suffer from a full bladder ;-)) - but definately worth it!
Stil, when I arrived in Cabanaconde I was pretty tired and too lazy to look around long for a hostel, I picked the first one I found on plaza de armas. Its not the Ritz - but at 10 Soles (not even 2,50 Euro) there is nothing to complain about. And it has a great view on the pig stall and its inhabitants - "vista del chancho",in Spanish.
After refreshing a bit I took off to explore Cabanaconde. Its a tiny village - its only difference to other villages on the way is its proximity to the Canyon and to the Cruz del Condor, the famous view point from where you can see the condors fly over the Canyon. There are no restaurants or cafes so I was happy to see that one of the hostels, Hostel del Valle de Fuego, offers food and drink as well. I went in - its quite rustic with an open fire and a stone bar - and decided to have a mate de coca and read a bit in my new book about Macchu Picchu. There was one more guest - a Swiss guy who spoke German and told me about their disastrous attempt to climb the Ampato - a 6000m peak near Cabanaconde. They left yesterday but decided to give up the ascent as the material supplied by the tour agency was desastrous - both tents collapsed and flooded and the food they had taken tasted of cat food or worse. He told me about some other tours they had done in Ecuador and in Peru - and he explained in detail how the wife of on e of their guides had prepared cuy for them. He was also able to anwer my question of how they get the hair of the furry cuys - just soak them in hot water and the hair will fall out. Not very appetizing but it stilled my curiosity - I had always imagined the indigenas shaving the cuy!
After the cuy story I felt that I needed some more coca tea and also asked the guy at the bar about what the time would be best to see the condors and avoid the crowds. From the subject of condors we got to the canyon, to Cusco, to stupid guides, to gringas falling for the wrong peruanos... Yamil is about 35 years old, has shaggy dark hair and a beard and is pretty funny! He told me how the Cusqueño guides all invent cooler Inca sounding names, usually Quechua words for Sun, Moon Wind and how this impresses some of the "gringas". It started raining and I spent the whole afternon chatting to Yamil, helping him lite the open fire and drinking heaps of coca tea. Yamil has this really quirky senseof humour: when thefoggot thicker and the open fire started smoking he commented "Looks like London,right", adding some seconds later "...after the Germans bombed it, ofcourse". Later on some Spanish and Czech tourists joined us and decidedto have a litteparty later on. The place is pretty nice and I think I will move there tomorrow for my second night in the Colca Valley.
Oups, my dirty little friend is not happy any morw with pressing the enter button and started deleting what I just wrote. I'll get some rest now and then get back to the other hostel - Yamil promised me fried bananas and some stories of his life. Both sound promising!
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