Peru: Part Deux

Next stop: Arequipa my semi-cama shaped arse; my widely unanticipated return to Peru (via a border town I never knew the name of) was heralded by a comically awful military and school parade, which was in turn heralded by a comically off-key brass band. As the parade was held in the main road (thereby stopping all traffic for hours) and in full view of the (considerably more decrepit) Bolivian side of the border town, I'm fairly sure the sole purpose of all the flag waving and trumpet sputtering was to convince any potential Bolivian immigrants that this sort of thing happens daily in Peru and that they really are better off where they are. Our bus driver was convinced, so he beat a hasty retreat to find an alternate entry point to the country; stranding two English backpackers in the process (who amazingly embarked on a successful 30 minute long taxi pursuit of our bus).

Arequipa's a nice city, probably. I only stayed one night there before heading off to the second deepest canyon in the world: the Colca Canyon. Actually, one thing I liked there was the 6ft tall Jenga set (with log sized pieces) they had in the bar at The Point Hostel; though it was rather difficult to sleep with the tremendous crash and cries of "Oh my God, he's not moving!" or "I can't feel my legs!" every 20 minutes. They had most of the blood cleaned up by the time I left the next morning.

The walk in and out of the Colca Canyon is one of the toughest walks I've done: about 1000m (vertical), quite steep and on narrow slippery gravel/shale paths. Fortunately the opportunity to walk with a guy who looked like Lloyd Christmas (Dumb and Dumber); the scenery; and the campsite on the second night (with swimming pools!) are ample gain for the pain. The other cool thing about the canyon is that it hosts a sparrow-like population of condors. I have plenty of photos of blurry black blobs to prove it.

As I was on a bit of a tight schedule (flight to Rio), I jumped straight on a night bus to Nazca as soon as I got back to Arequipa. The next day was a bit of a speed-backpacking experience with a cool English lad (Ollie) I met in Nazca: after watching an hour long video about the Nazca lines (dull except for some '70s footage of some seriously tweaked shaman), we took a 30 minute flight around them (interesting, but not a breathtaking experience) then straight on a bus to Ica and taxi to the desert oasis: Huacachina for a dune buggy ride (scary, awesome) and sandboarding (sorta fun, but too slow); then on the next the bus to Lima. I'm not really a fan of tick-the-box tourism, but it was kind of fun to knock all this over in a day.

Not much had changed when I got back to The Point in Lima - a couple of lads had moved on, Steve had been hit by a bus, Nick looked like he had, and the girls were still lovely (and cheeky because of my crap Spanish, ¡pero soy listo ahora para ustedes!). I also met up with Hayley again who - while awaiting her flight to Costa Rica - graciously allowed me to win ten pin bowling and let me play Time Crisis 3 before dinner at Larcomar; in retrospect, I think I may have had the lion's share of fun on that outing...

After a last minute flight change, I managed to squeeze in a four day trip to Huaraz to do a little more trekking. Huaraz is about 7hrs North-East of Lima and sits at the base of the Cordillera Blanca; near the Huayhuash mountain range, which is where Simon cut a rope and Joe touched a void. Huaraz is mainly a mountaineers' and trekkers' hangout and isn't really on the mainstream backpacker circuit, but it really should be (just for these three): the Llanganuco National Park is stunning, my hostel (Churup) had an awesome open fire and views of the mountains, and Cafe Andino has top breaky, coffee and boardgames (Risk!). I was lucky enough to jump on a 3 day trek to the summit of Mt. Pisco (5,752m): 1000m ascent to base camp (4,700m) on day 1; summit and return on day 2, then descend to the road and back to Huaraz on day 3. Our group of 8 was very lucky in that no-one was too altitude affected to summit (we pretty much had to drag a fat German up, cutting the rope did cross my mind - I'm with you, Simon), though it was somewhat humbling to see a group of local Indian men and women skipping past us on the way down (and no Gore-Tex there, the women were all wearing skirts...). The toughest part of the whole walk was actually crossing the scree for a few hours coming back to camp: it was hard enough with sore knees and jelly legs, let alone Touching-The-Void-Joe's broken ones!