Poor as church mice

I REALISED today, when Helmet was telling us about the teams of UNICEF staffers roaming hiking around the Colca Canyon to vaccinate the region’s youngest residents, that Peru is one of the poorest places I have ever been.

This is one of those countries where the United Nations and charitable organisations like World Vision deposit big bucks just to give the locals access to the things we take for granted in the developed world like clean water and disease-free childhoods.

So, when we drove back into Arequipa this afternoon, after our two-day adventure in the Andes behind Peru’s second-largest city, I paid close attention to the communities on the outskirts of town and realised they were the closest thing to a shanty town I had ever seen.

The people who live in these poor neighbourhoods build a tall wall around a austere one or two-room dwelling, and when I took a close look I realised the locals didn’t even have the money to buy concrete so simply stacked the blocks and bricks one on top of each other to protect their small patch of real estate.

Our guide told us that these neighbourhoods are hubs from immigrants from the poorest parts of South America, people who flood across the porous borders near Puno and Lake Titicaca and then head into Arequipa to find work and the means to build a better life.

It made me wonder that if these decrepit neighbourhoods were an imporvemet on thier old life, what had these economic refugees left in their home countries? 

Ladies in hats

PERUVIAN ladies love a hat.

During the past couple of days in the Colca Canyon we have seen the women wearing a variety of colourful creations on their heads, but it's more for function than style with the sun shooting out some pretty powerful rays this high up in the Andes.

A hat is also a good way for the local dames to show where they come from, with each region of Peru adopting a particular style of chapeau, and while most are decorated with a colourful array of embroidery and ribbons the wearer's home turf is identified by the shape of the hat or the way the brim is curled.

When second is best

IT’S fair to say America’s Grand Canyon is the world’s most famous gorge.

But when it comes to deep, the Grand Canyon is a couple of spots from the top sitting third on the list of the globe's deepest ravines.

There are two canyons in the Peruvian Andes that are considerably deeper than the American offering, with both of these South American formations more than twice as deep as the one tourists – and football teams – flock to see in the desert near Las Vegas.

Sitting on top of that list is the Canyon del Cotahuasi which, at its deepest point, plunges 3191m straight down while the nearby Canyon del Colca comes in a close second ranging from 1000m to 3000m deep as it follows the curves of the Rio Colca through the Andes.

I visited the Colca Canyon today, and while the journey was planned to see the condors that live on one of the gorge’s steep cliffs it was the early-morning views that proved to be most memorable for my travelling companions and I.

The Colca Canyon is 100km long, but we were up very early this morning to see the short section between our hotel near Chivay and the rocky ledges where the community of condors live, and we stopped several times to take in the grand landscape.

Our guide Helmet, who hails from nearby Arequipa, told us the villages on the far side of the Rio Colca were so isolated that they didn't have roads running between communities and the only way in or out was on foot across the mountain bridges.

He said UNICEF was currently running a vaccination program in the Colca Canyon, with staff hauling all the equipment they needed in packs on their backs as they walked from one mountain hamlet to the next.

The Colca Canyon is "geologically young", with the racing water slicing through volcanic rocks deposited in the Peruvian Andes less than 100 million years ago along a major fault in the planet’s crust.

The early start was necessary to see the condor at their most active – they search for food in the hours after sunrise, and glide above the Rio Colca on the powerful updrafts that shoot out of the gorge as they sun warms the air – and when we finally arrived at the vantage point after a bumpy ride on the unmade roads there were a collection of birds surfing the warm wind.

Climbing to the canyon

TRAVELLING in Peru is all about altitude, and today we got our first serious helping of high.

We started the day at 2335m in Arequipa, tonight we're sleeping at 3635m on the edge of the Colca Canyon, and we crossed an Andean mountain range that took us up to 4910m to get here.

It cost us the best part of the day to get to Chivay, the hamlet considered the gateway to the Colca Canyon, and it was a slow journey with bad roads and slow traffic combining to reduce our pace to a crawl.

We also had to stop on a couple of occasions to help our bodies copy with the drastically increasing altitude, and we lingered over a morning tea of cocoa tea and Anzac cookies - it's Anzac Day, and one thoughtful member of our group came prepared - at a way-side stop near the base of the day's steepest climb.

There was a break in the trip to take in the view at 4910m, we paused on several occasions to look at gaggles of alpaca and lama, spent some time observing two local girls who were looking after the family's animals, and even found a couple of places to shop.

The sisters and their dog were watching a herd of mountain alpaca - I got the impression the girls we watching the animals, and the dog was protecting the girls - as the flock grazed on a rare patch of grassy mountain land.

Our guide had a quick chat with the kids and discovered the big one was about to start school so was training her little sister to do the guarding job for the few hours a day she would be away learning to read and write.

We made one last stop of the long journey just outside Chivay, after the bus crept down from the highest point on the trip with our driver taking it very easy on the breaks, to take in our first view of the Colca Canyon.

The attraction is the world's second-deepest valley, slightly smaller than another Peruvian landmark not far from here but twice as deep as America's Grand Canyon which is a baby in comparison, and that first view was awesome.

The lookout was a market where local ladies, dressed in the regional costumes that define this part of Peru, sell handmade goodies and a few members of our group parted with cash to purchase alpaca scarves.

Every part of Peru has a slightly different costume, and while all are bright and colourful little things are unique to a district like the shape of a hat or the lace on a shirt.

But all the women wear a full skirt and our guide told us this was so they could relieve themselves while out in the fields without showing any skin.

- Posted from my iPad

On shaky ground

IT was back on to a plane today for our first flight in Peru with a LAN Airbus taking us Arequipa.

This is the second-largest city in Peru, a destination that's growing at a rapid rate with tourists using it as a launching point to see the Colca Canyon, and we had a driving tour of the destination before heading to our hotel for an afternoon rest.

Taking a nap is a requirement at altitude, and it was delightful to be told to stop for a few hours in the afternoon to help the body get used to the elevation.

Arequipa is home to 1.2 million people and most live in the white buildings constructed from the soft stone that's been ejected from the surrounding volcanoes over the years.


"The buildings that radiate out from the city centre are made from this white volcanic stones,'' our Arequipa guide Helmut explained during the morning's orientation tour.

"The highest volcano that sits right behind the town gave us most of the stone, there is the pink variety as well as the white stone, and it is a mix of ash and gas which is why it's so light.

"The white is a more popular building material because it's stronger, it's like a pumice so it's easy to carve, and it lasts a long time because our environment is so dry but if it rained a lot we wouldn't be able to use it to build our houses because it erodes easily.''

After an afternoon of napping we headed into town to see a little more of the city, starting an evening of exploring at the Convento de Santa Catalina which has been home to an order of cloistered nuns since the 16th century.


Santa Catalina, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is described as Arequipa's "city within a city" because it's been a self-contained settlement for so many years catering to the needs of the women who lived within the high walls.

Back in the early days of the convent the place was a comfortable place for the daughters of wealthy Peruvian families to live, and that was because every family gave its second child to the church and they were sent away with all the luxuries of home.

"Centuries ago certain responsibilities came with the place children occupied in rich families," our Convent guide explained during a tour of the compound.

"The first child was for the family, they would inherit all the wealth and work to keep the family dynasty going, while the second child was for God with sons becoming priests and daughters becoming nuns.

" And the third child was for the country, meaning that sons would join the military and go to fight in wars."

The girls that went to live at the Arequipa convent took servants and cooks, we're given heirlooms to decorate their comfortable multi-room quarters, and didn't have to do much when it came to working and praying.

The Convent de Santa Catalina was also home to many widows, who took children to live safely inside the walls when husbands died and they were left to fend for themselves, and the families lived in apartments flanking a network of narrow lanes.


Life wasn't always comfortable for the nuns with one pope changing living conditions after visiting the settlement and deciding the nuns weren't satisfying the poverty clause in their vows.

He made the women move out of their private apartments and into vast dormitories, evicted the cooks and servants that looked after them, and sent them to work in dark kitchens preparing all their own meals.


The austere period didn't last long, with that pope dropping off the perch not long after he told the nuns to live frugally, and the ladies went back to their old ways with the deal sealed after an earthquake destroyed the dormitories.

Arequipa is at the centre of earthquake territory and Helmut told us there are about 30 seismic episodes every months, so we are paying close attention to see if the earth moves while we're in town.

- Posted from my iPad