Our week in Arequipa sold us on Peru pretty easily. Aside from Jimmy, Ryan and TJ, whose inconvenient location necessitated a 45-minute commute to and from the Spanish school, the majority of us took a quick liking to the new country – 5000-meter snow-covered warts and all.
This was especially good news because our next week was libre: We had six days to plan and follow our own schedule, operating within a given budget and landing us in the city of Cusco by the end. Within those parameters, we were free to discuss and decide our own week and our own fate. Yes.
The money, of course, proved to be our most limiting factor. Seventy bucks can get a person a long way in South America, but it wasn’t quite enough to realize some of our wilder fantisies. For example, it discounted the possibility of a quick jaunt to the Galápagos – believe me, we tried like hell to make that one work – and then anything further away (like Patagonia or the Caribbean) just kind of fizzled away by default. But we were more than happy to hang out in Peru, and Arequipa’s location in the Southern Highlands gave us tons of options that were relatively close at hand.
So on Sunday morning Lucas and I hit the Festivál de Comida one more time, met up with the rest of the Carpe Gentlemen’s Club, and piled into a bus that had at one time been bright purple but was now faded and patched with duct tape. Economy is key. Though the bus squirmed in protest all the while, the three-hour drive was a cool experience for most of us; we traversed a painted desert, between twelve and fifteen thousand feet above sea level, and witnessed an alien landscape and an evening sky that probably don’t have equals anywhere else on this planet. I just wish the windows would have been clearer.
We arrived in the town of Chivay as the evening fell and the cold rolled in, like it always does when it gets dark and you’re three miles above the flipping ocean. I still can’t get over that.
Chivay is a charming, historical place where the indigenous culture has blended uncompromisingly with 21st-century tourism. Women walk to and fro in enormous, brightly-colored hats and dresses, running an energetic open-air market and bumping elbows with adventurous gringos. Most of Chivay’s visitors are out to see the nearby Cañon del Colca, and we were no exception; the Cañon is the second-deepest in the world, bested only by a smaller and less-magnificent neighbor (the Cotahuasi) to the north, and it’s twice as deep as the Grand Canyon at it’s deepest. We spent a day hanging out in Chivay’s cobblestone streets and exploring the Incan ruins to the East, and then decided that the canyon would be better explored from a different town, Cabanaconde, a quick 30 minute drive down the rim.
After arriving in Cabanaconde on the morning of Day 3, we packed our bags and prepared for one of South America’s most insane hikes. Our descent – about a mile, vertically, I think – wound down an arduous series of dusty switchbacks, finally concluding at a weird little settlement known as The Oasis. An incongruous gem of palm trees and swimming pools located on the floor of this plunging, jagged, dusty crevasse, it’s wholly unique (albeit a little touristy) and it’s equal parts attractive and absurd. There’s a restaurant at the bottom, with accompanying cabins; all supplies (and some visitors) are hauled down by mule. Lindsay actually had to enlist one for the evening ascent, which was doubly difficult on account of the plunging temperatures and the lack of ambient oxygen.
The next morning, Morning 4, our stay in Cabanaconde was brought to a close by another long bus ride – less bumpy this time, but just as scenic – to the city of Puno. We had read that our destination is a sprawling dump full of smog and illicit activity; we justified our visit on account of it’s neighbor, Lake Titikaka, which is officially the world’s most fun-to-say geographical feature. It’s also Earth’s highest navigable body of water, and, according to legend, the birthplace of the sun.
We spent all of Day 5 on the water, hopping from island to island in a rented boat and reveling in the novelty of it all. Lake Titikaka? The one we’ve all been making jokes about since fourth grade? It was almost too much. The Islas de Uros, manmade islands which are composed entirely of lake-borne reeds and have been maintained by their indigenous inhabitants for centuries? No way. Taquile, a Mediterranean isle with Mediterranean scenery that looks like it was picked up and plopped down on a different continent? Come on. The fact all of this is perched around two miles above sea level – that my house is located something like 35 football fields straight down? Ridiculous.
We bedded down on a night bus and woke up in Cusco, our final destination, with little to do other than recharge and explore. Cusco is a big, beautiful, Spanish Colonial tourist haven situated on the edge of the Sacred Valley, and it’s probably one of my favorite stops on the trip thus far.
Maybe. I don’t know. It’s pretty hard to pick favorites.