Nazca, Arequipa & The Colca Canyon

The next stop on our travels through South America found us in the small but famous town called Nazca. Famous because it is known for its mysterious 1000 year old lines that can only be viewed from the sky. They form many shapes, such as animals and other geometric patterns.
We arrived and made our way to our hostel and made arrangements for our next day of activities.
The next day we had prepared to go out to the local airport fairly early to get a light aircraft flight over the lines, but because of delays due to bad weather we advised that the flight wouldn´t be until the afternoon.

As we had a few hours up our sleeves, we decided to take a trip out to the Chaucilla Cemetary where there were many ancient burial mounds of the Nazca people.

After the Spanish Conquistadores back in the 1500´s, the burial mounds had been desecrated and any valuables stolen, so originally the remains were just scattered around the desert.

When we arrived however, it was a very different site. Most of the bones had been collected and pits had been dug and the bones were neatly arranged to point east (towards the sun rise due to their worship of the sun.)

We looked around for about an hour and then headed back to Nazca to get ready for our flight.

Eventually we travelled out to the company that arranged the flight for us, but we soon found out that there was a big backlog of people wanting to get flights that day, and due to the earlier bad weather all flights had been pushed back, which we then realised meant we weren´t to be flying that day.

Luckily for us the kind lady from the hostel helped us reschedule our bus trip and gave us free accomodation for our trouble, and the next day we finally made it out to the airport.

After a brief video about the lines and theories about them, we went to the departure area and waited patiently for our flight to begin.

Eventually our pilot came over and we headed out towards our light aircraft.

A cosy fit was probably an understatement, but with a bit of elbow grease they managed to shove me into the cockpit, and I got to ride shotgun up next to the pilot.

Suz sat behind me and there were also 3 other passengers in the plane.

The whole time during take off (and during the flight as well) I tried my hardest not to bump my knees on any of the cockpit controls and end our flight prematurely.

Luckily I managed to keep my legs out of the way, and it soon dawned on us that we had bigger things to worry about: air sickness!

I was happily snapping photos by the dozen of the many lines and figures in the desert, but then the constant sharp banking left & right of the plane took its toll and I started to feel a bit queasy. I looked behind me to see how Suz was faring, and she was literally green by this stage, and she was just sitting there concentrating on keeping her breakfast down!

Our 30 minute flight eventually finished and we landed safely back at the Nazca airport, and we all came to the conclusion that it´s not something we´d do again in any hurry. As we waited for our ride back to our hostel, we noticed that the occupants of another plane obviously didn´t cope too well, because as soon as they hopped out of the plane, one of them just lay down on the tarmac and didn´t move for a good 15 minutes.

For the rest of the day we basically just killed time around Nazca and waited for our next overnight bus to take us to our next destination: Arequipa.

We decided to upgrade our seats on the bus to 1st class, and we got to ride in style all the way, and luckily it was a fairly uneventful journey (i.e. nothing got stolen this time).

When we made it to Arequipa the next morning, we caught a taxi to our next hostel, funnily titled ´La Casa De Los Pinguinos´ or ´The House Of The Penguins´ in english.

The hostel turned out to be fantastic, and we were happy to make this our home base for the next few days.

On our first day in Arequipa, we took a stroll around town, and we also booked a trek into the Colca Canyon, which was about 5 hours away by bus.

During our short stay in Arequipa, we also made a trip to the a local monastery which was basically a small city where the very well off nuns did their thing.

The day for our Colca Canyon trek arrived, and our guide turned up at our hostel to take us to the bus station (via a small detour to his house as he´d forgotten his wallet!) We met the other two guys doing the trek, and we hopped on the locals bus and headed off.

We made it to Chivay about 3 hours later for a bit of a pit stop (it was supposed to be about a 10 minute stop, but it ended up being about an hour stop as the bus driver had apparently gotten in a fist fight with another driver and was down at the police station for a while).

Our bus kicked us out at Cabanaconde, and we had some lunch at a local restaurant before starting our trek.

After lunch we began our very long trek into the canyon, passing through the town and walking for about 20 minutes before we got to the edge of the Canyon.

We could see the little town that we were supposed to be staying at on the opposite side of the canyon, and it was at this point we realised that it was not going to be a stroll in the park.

5 hours later (about 4 hours worth of steep down hill trek, and about an hour of uphill at the end to finish us off, and we made it to our accomodation).

We were all rather tired and emotional, and after a nice meal cooked by our guide, we soon hit the hay and tried to get some sleep for the next day trekking out(!) of the canyon.

The next day we got up, had an awesome feed of pancakes and tried on some of the locals traditional clothes for some kodak moments, and then we trekked along to our first port of call, which was a small oasis which included a few swimming pools to relax by.

We had some lunch there, and then waited around for a few hours for the sun to start setting, and then we started our 3 hour climb out of the canyon.

I believe the official time out of the canyon was 2 hours 59 minutes, so we timed it quite well in the end (our guide books said to allow about 3 or 4 hours).

Once we got to the top we walked in the dark back to Cabanaconde and stayed at a nice little hostel for the night.

The next day we got on a very early bus and headed to the Cruz De Condor where there was a high peak where the Andean Condors flew around in the thermal drafts and we got to take many a photo (unfortunately only a few turned out ok).

After an hour or two we hopped back on a bus and made our way back to Arequipa and stayed another night before getting ready for our next location: Cusco (and our long awaited Inca Trail trek)