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| Killawasi Lodge |
We finished off our stay in Peru with a visit to the historic city
of Arequipa and the small town of Yanque near Colca Canyon, the Grand Canyon of
Peru. In Arequipa, we visited a museum which tells the story behind several frozen bodies found on peaks around Peru and Chile. The highlight of the exhibit was the almost perfectly preserved body of a child who had been sacrificed to the gods by the Incas on top of a neighboring 20,000+ foot tall mountains. The remains and sacrifice and burial sites were discovered recently when glaciers melted on one of
Peru’s volcanoes. It is extraordinary
that the Incas climbed these tall snowy peaks so long ago without any modern
climbing gear – especially the children who were typically about 10 year old.
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| At 16,200 ft on the way to Colca Canyon |
Our travels to Colca Canyon took us over 16,000 foot passes
and we stayed again at 14,000 feet. The
Peruvians believe coca, which is from the same plant that cocaine is made from,
is an amazing cure for many aliments, including altitude sickness. We agree with them and drank a lot of coca
tea and ate coca candies and cookies during our high altitude journeys.
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| With Korel and Gilda |
The canyon was splendid, but next time we want to hike to
the bottom in order to fully see its beauty.
We had hoped to witness the condors gliding through the canyon with their 12-foot
wingspan, but rainy weather kept them in their nests. Our canyon trip was enhanced because of many
wonderful people we met, two of whom - Korel & Gilda - we will visit later in the trip in Turkey. Our hotel, Killawasi Lodge, was also wonderful.
We rented an apartment in Lima for our last few days and
pretended that we were expats. We caught
up on laundry, email and rest. Next stop Chile! We'll be there from February 4th until March 8th.
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| Random high altitude vendor |
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| Huge ruins near Yanque |
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| On the (very) high plains of Peru |
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