In which Roz and Layla try to give themselves psychosomatic altitude sickness in city and country

Our first move on Monday morning was, naturally, breakfast. So we headed upstairs in our hotel to find ourselves offered a delightful selection, including pancakes made with quinoa (which Layla had) and a yoghurt, fruit and granola combination (which I had) together with some delicious local "triangular" bread (which only disappointed by not being triangular). Have lingered a while, we headed down to reception where we were to meet Carlitos, the man who runs the top rated tour company on Tripadvisor who was to be taking us to the Colca Canyon over the course of the next three days. Carlitos arrived about ten minutes late, and it was immediately apparent that his top rating on Tripadvisor was not something he wore lightly - he apologized for being late many many times, giving some complicated but very reasonable excuse as to his lateness.  He then took us to a cafe and bought us coffee (again the guilt at being late) and talked us through our tour.  In some ways it was a little odd - the information he had come to impart was all information that had already been covered before we booked. And in many ways it was a shame that we had to confirm - again - that we really did want a "matrimonial" bed whilst on the tour. But quite funny.  He then asked (with some horror) if we would mind delaying our tour of Arequipa (included in the price of the tour) until later on in the day, due to some medical emergency.  Fearing that this rather over-enthusiastic man might start giving us unfortunate details of his medical issues, we quickly agreed. As it happened, we had no plans for the day except acclimatizing to the altitude (which Layla had managed to get us both over-worried about). So he pointed us in the direction of the Santa Catharina monastery, built centuries ago, telling us it was well worth seeing, and hurried off.  

So with no other plans in mind, we did indeed head over to the monastery, which turned out to be this huge complex (the size of a city, we were told) whereo nuns had once lived.  This confused the Catholic schoolgirl in me (I thought nuns' habitations were always convents) but I was later able to prove my schooling in correctly identifying a "monstrance" and explaining its purpose to Layla.  Strange the things one feels proud of...  It was fun going round the place, contemplating that these nuns, at least, had fairly spacious "cells" and unexpectedly stumbling across pretty views of the city and surrounding mountains / volcanos.  

After this, assuring ourselves that we needed to take things easy to help with the acclimatizing, we headed to a pretty courtyard for a crepe and a salad in a place affiliated to the Alliance Francaise.  We also drank a remarkable amount of Coca tea, allegedly excellent for altitude sickness, and this proved an excellent excuse for sitting in the lovely warm sun under a brilliant blue sky and reading our books.  Eventually we tore ourselves away and headed back to the hotel for our city tour by the excitable Carlitos.  

A apologetic Carlitos turned up again late to find us somewhat grumpy (not least because we'd been enjoying our books) but he then did take us on a very pleasant wander round the city, taking in views from a pretty bridge and  satisfying my urge (albeit in a very dodgy location) to purchase earphones (having left mine at home). But the highlight was undoubtedly the market which he took us to: bustling, full of locals and with more variety - of everything - than I've seen before.  Having shuddered at the animal foetuses which were being sold at the medicine stall, marveled at the number of variety of potatoes which exist, neatly avoided going to the meat part of the market (whole guinea-pigs not being either of our cup of tea) we headed to a juice stall where I had a fabulous juice made largely of fruit that I hadn't heard of before, whilst Layla struggled over a drink also made of a mysterious fruit (but which tasted of cold caramel custard, which she somewhat struggled with). During the course of the juice stop, Carlitos made a quite sweet but very awkward reference to having a gay employee (and a pink music player myself) having clearly just put two and two together about us.  Cute.

Having left Carlitos, Layla put in a plea for a "normal" drink to take away the taste of her custard-ish drink, and so we headed back to the Alliance Francaise creperie, to linger over drinks and ice cream.  This delightful experience concluded somewhat abruptly when I finished my book and began to sob my heart out at the apocalyptic ending - clearly time to head back to the hotel.  I distracted myself when at the hotel, by contemplating food options for the evening (which was fast approaching) and was almost back to normal when we headed out, in search of a potato restaurant (which gets very good reviews indeed).  Alas Lonely Planet let us down in its mapping of the restaurant, and so we wandered the streets somewhat at a loss.  But we then stumbled across the fanciest restaurant in Arequipa, and persuaded them to let us in (they were almost fully booked) and to serve us a potato quinoa gnocchi item (preceded, I am not proud to admit) by some cheese. But we enjoyed ourselves immensely and stumbled across the potato restaurant on our wander home - something for a future night.  

Neither of us slept well (my sleep was disturbed by random dreams of the world coming to an end - I must choose my holiday reading more carefully in future!) but we woke up excited at the prospect of our 2 night / 3 day tour of Colca Canyon - almost the deepest in the world (for a while it was thought to be the deepest - but then two deeper ones were found in Japan, though it sounds as though this isn't something which the Peruvians have necessarily come to terms with yet!). After another delicious hotel breakfast, we met our guide and set off.

Having got out of Arequipa (morning traffic being more exciting than one might have expected) we began to head up into the mountains.  Both of us immediately developed psychosomatic altitude sickness symptoms. The mind is a curious thing.  But we didn't let these distract us from the remarkable landscape - it was like nothing I have ever seen before.  At times it felt as though we were in the desert - until you looked up and saw snow-capped volcanos, getting ever-closer.  And previous eruptions had left their mark, with massive cliffs of stalagmite randomly popping up every now and then.  Although it felt warm, the few bits of water which there were had turned to ice and it was fun to see birds skating around... We stopped often to take far too many photos, particularly of llamas, alpacas and vicunas, but nevertheless arrived in Chivay (the largest town in the Colca area) in time for an early lunch. Apparently almost 1000 tourists descend on Chivay every day, which is all the more remarkable when you contemplate that the town itself has a population of around 5000. But we had arrived before any of them, which had the double benefit of not feeling as though we were somewhere touristy and also of getting first dibs on the really excellent buffet which we'd come to for lunch.  During lunch, our guide informed us that we definitely didn't have altitude sickness - first because he'd be able to tell, and second because we would have fallen "like chickens" to the ground at one of our stops (almost 5000 meters) if we had.  We then went for a meander round a blissfully tourist-free Chivay before hopping back in the car / van. 

Continuing though the strange landscape, we hopped out for a small-ish hike of an hour or so along the side of the canyon which we will be hiking down tomorrow.  At the bottom of the canyon are some small villages, which can't be accessed by road - which must make for a strange life.   Both Layla and I looked increasingly nervous as we saw the steepness of the descent to the bottom of the canyon and Layla began to talk of hiring a mule to take her up again on Thursday.  We'll see... It was a very pretty hike, and at least we were able to blame any out-of-breathless when going uphill on the altitude.  Or at least we were until we saw the only tourists we've seen so far, who had come by bicycle.  I felt inadequate.  We also saw some giant birds, called Condors, which seem to be the national symbol of Peru (or something like that). They have a wingspan of 3 meters, are black and generally look quite menacing.  But they don't have claws, so they can't kill anything that's alive.  Intriguingly if they can't find any dead meat, their approach is to swoop down on prey and scare whatever it is into jumping off a cliff - for their enjoyment at the bottom of the cliff...

Back in the car for the final hop to a small village where we are staying the night, we were intrigued to pick up a local who was hitch-hiking (we hadn't seen another car for ages, and I'm not sure the cyclists - however hardcore - would have been able to help). And we are now in our room, where Layla is lying on our matrimonial bed with a hideous headache - presumably altitude-related.  I'm not sure that writing a blog is absolutely the way to show sympathy, and so with that I will leave you...