EC-Rider Travels

A chilly, early start and a sad departure from this very nice hotel and its exceptional staff. There was ice on the bushes as we left and headed towards the Colca Canyon which was another spectacular drive.

The canyon is 120,000,000 years old and 3,600m deep – apparently twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. It is surrounded by the most beautiful terraces some of which are over 2,000 years old, pre-dating the Incas. We weren’t the only people at Condor Cross waiting for the condors, but my goodness it was worth the wait. They performed for us as if it was their last show. Flying up the canyon and straight over our heads.

They are HUGE – with a wingspan of about 3m and can go up to 4m. They depend on thermals to get their huge bodies into the air, having to migrate to the coast in the rainy season when there is not enough heat. They are vultures and carrions, living off dead llamas, alpacas, sheep etc and can live for up to 70 years.

Marcelo showed us the cochinilla beetle, from which comes the red dye, living as a parasite on a cactus – fascinating and a great source of income for the Andean people.

We went to the small town of Maco where he continued our education telling us how to tell pure alpaca from a mix and also introduced us to a new pisco sour called the Colca Sour made with cactus fruit – indescribably delicious even at 11am in the morning!

We then headed off on our drive to Lake Titicaca. A long but stunning drive two hours back the way we came and then South West to Puno. Unbelievably beautiful scenery with volcanoes, wide open plains and many very sweet alpacas and llamas on the road. We went through a few, but not many villages in our six hours, as most of the indigenous people seem to live independently up in the hills in the very simplest of homes made of mud bricks, with no power or running water. We drove through what appeared to be a ghost town and stopped for petrol where there were six petrol pumps in various states of disrepair and covered in polythene and beside each was a little plastic house in which lived an attendant for each pump! It really is the most extraordinary country and impossible to believe people can still be living like this in the 21st century. All very sobering

We had a picnic lunch on the way and arrived in Puno on the banks of Lake Titicaca at about 6pm in the evening. Puno is a sprawling city with 160,000 inhabitants and a huge centre for dance with dance festivals taking place at any opportunity. Their biggest is in February – the festival of Virgin de la Candelaria – which lasts for most of the month, involving 70,000 dancers and has recently been recognised by UNESCO. Amazing really as the town appears to be complete shambles until you reach the centre, with barely a roofed house. Having said that, they have a stadium in down town Puno which would rival any in the world, but Marcelo very much warned us to be particularly careful if we were to head into town. Our hotel is on a peninsula on the bank of the lake – a huge GH hotel – no baby alpaca hot water bottles here.

We had to say farewell to Marcelo and Kevin our driver – I am really sad!