We were picked up from our hostel this morning at 6 AM for our tour from Puno to Arequipa by way of Chivay and Colca Canyon. Today's tour activities consisted of three mostly unimpressive stops including Lagunitas and Patapampa plus a stop to photograph alpacas and another for vicunas. Apparently vicunas are wild; we weren't allowed to get out of the tour van to photograph them.
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| Alpaca farm seen from the side of the road |
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| Munching alpacas |
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| Vicunas |
Around noon, we arrived in Chivay, our overnight stop and starting point to visit Colca Canyon. After settling into our hostel, we wandered around town. At the local mercado, we witnessed women selling plastic bags of rolls and even a man with a hand-cranked sewing machine sewing a shoe. Any item or service needed could be procured here, cleaning supplies to a haircut.
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| Downtown Chivay |
Alli was hungry, so we stopped at a little restaurant at the main plaza that had vegetarian options. After lunch, we wandered a bit more, killing time. We moseyed back to the hostel about 3:15. We had been in our room all of 30 seconds when the receptionist knocked on our door to let us know we had 2 minutes until our tour bus arrived to pick us up and take us to the hot springs.
We entered panic mode, getting ready as quickly as humanly possible. As much as we rushed, the tour bus totally had to wait for us.
The hot springs themselves were nice, but a bit stressful at the entrance. I only had a 50-sole note, and the attendant wanted exact change. I thought she would never get enough change to give me mine. And when I asked her for my ticket, she acted as if she'd already given it to me.
In fact, nobody ever has change and nobody ever wants to make change for you, not even larger stores. As you can imagine, this doesn't always work well, especially as ATMs dispense only 100 and 50-sole notes.
After paying, our tour group walked across a precariously hanging swinging bridge. We walked across without incident and walked down the dirt path towards the pools. After soaking in the hot springs for about an hour, we returned to the tour bus.
After a short break at our respective hostels for rest and showers, we met again for dinner. Dinner was held at a local restaurant that obviously catered to tourists. What a tourist trap The food was only okay. I had the quinoa cream soup and Neopolitan spaghetti. Christmas decorations hung on the walls and ceilings and got in the way of the folk dancers at least once.
Yes, I said there were folk dancers, a couple who were enjoyable to watch. Backing them up was a group of 3 or 4 musicians wearing colorful ponchos and hats. After they were finished, they went around asking for money. I'm not actually a fan of performing unasked for diners and then trying to guilt the diners into tipping. In this case, we were told there were to be performers, but we were not told we were expected to tip them. I did not tip either the dancers or the musicians. I did not want to. The musicians were cheesy.
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| Male folk dancer with backup singers and musicians |
I suppose the most interesting part of the night was when Alli hit her head on a dead cat. Actually, the most interesting part was not her hitting her head, it was that there was a dead cat there for her to hit her head on. I am still wondering if a dead cat in a basket hanging on the wall of a restaurant is in violation of any health codes. It appeared that the cat crawled up into the basket and died unnoticed.
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| Dead cat in a basket |
Obviously, we ended the night talking about that dead cat.
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