Tuesday we were up relatively early, and grabbed our first coca tea with breakfast before heading out on our tour. Arequipa is at 2,300m elevation and we were heading up to the highest I’ve ever been on the way to the Colca Canyon. And the coca tea is supposed to help with altitude sickness, as were the acetazolaide pills that we’d all started taking.
Our tour worked started out fairly well. We were on a private tour with the 8 of us in a 12 passenger Mercedes minibus with our fabulous guide Jessica and our driver Juan, also known as Michael Shumaker. We got out of town and up to the Valley of Quescos at 3,000m where we stopped at a viewpoint, saw some great terraces in the valley below and enjoyed the view.
From there we kept gaining altitude and as such tried some coca leafs. You take about 5 of them and roll them around a little stone (still not sure what it was), and put them in between your lower teeth and your cheek for about half an hour. It definitely provided a “boost” of energy, as both Tyson and I were feeling sleepy, and it definitely woke us up. We continued to the antiplano Pamaps Cañahauas at 4,000m (the highest I’ve ever been with my boots on the ground) and we saw some vicuña. They are a smaller, wild species related to llamas and alpacas. There are only 6,000 remaining in Peru, and we managed to see at least 100 of them during our time there. It was excellent luck.
And the antiplano was gorgeous too.
Our next stop was for tea at the Qoqawa Turistico at 4,225m (again, the highest I’ve ever been on land). We had mate de coca triple which is a tea with coca, muña, and chachacoma in it, and was quite tasty.
From there we continued on to a local llama and alpaca farm at about 4,400m, where we got to see the animals up close in a corral. A farm is a relative term as they graze the landscape. However, as they graze there is a chance of one of them (especially juveniles) being caught by an andean fox, thus a person must always walk with them. They get placed in a corral for two reasons, to make it easy for their owners to do other household tasks with them nearby, and also to collect their dung to dry and burn as we are well above the treeline.They stitch dyed wool into their ears so they can identify each particular animal.
We kept working our way upwards until we reached the crater of the extinct volcano Chucura at 4,800m (again the highest I’ve ever been).
Again we gained more elevation until we reached the ultimate at Pampa pata Pampa at 4,910m!
It was very tough to catch your breath there, needing deep breaths almost constantly, and very hard to regain normal breathing after any exertion. Despite all that, we moved a bunch of rocks to make a apachetas, a pre-Incan way to show thanks and gratefulness for your journey. From the first stone we stated a goal of one 2m tall, it took a lot of hard work, but we made it. And we were well above everyone else’s.
After probably too much exertion at altitude we got back on the bus and descended down into the Colca Valley to the town of Chivay (7,000 people, 3,650m) for lunch.
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