Looking back, it is not exactly clear how Peru wound up being our December destination. Certainly there was an element of upping the ante after having gone to New Zealand and Costa Rica in 2009. For a while we considered a sort of meandering road trip through New Mexico, but it did not grip the imagination and always remained nebulous. And who hadn't heard of Machu Picchu - that famed lost city of the Incas, "re-discovered" in 1911 by the American historian with a suitably exotic name (Hiram Bingham)? Whatever be the cause, after much waffling, we settled on Peru and the planning was on. Much of the Costa Rica gang demurred and only the original planners - Murthy family, RD, & us were in the group.
As usual, we checked and rechecked the fares (no doubt causing flares to go up in airline circles that there was an impending rush to visit Peru in Dec) and finally when we pressed the buy button, only Vinay was able to actually get the tickets for our original planned date of Dec 16th. We couldn't leave him hanging, so we bit the bullet and bought tickets for a day earlier (Dec 15th). And then a weird coincidence - a few weeks before we were to leave, Vinay was told by the airline that the flight on the 16th was being canceled and that he had to leave either on the 15th or the 17th. And, so it came to pass that on the evening of Dec 15th the gang of nine was gathered in LAX airport for our non-stop, red eye flight to Lima, Peru.
The flight was fine and upon reaching Lima, the first blow fell - our flight to Arequipa (our first destination city) was delayed by over 4 hours. Lima airport is quite nice, but a 8 hour layover was a bit much. The airline gave us lunch coupons to make up, but we would have been better off without those - the place we had to go to was some fusion of Peruvian and Chinese cuisines and given that we had no clue about Peruvian food, we tried to stick to the Chinese side, with some rather unappetizing results. The best part of our meal was the bottled water. There was more confusion as the promised flight time got closer, but we did manage to get away and arrived in Arequipa around 5pm. And thankfully, the hotel guy was there to pick us up and RD got quite a thrill from seeing his name on a chalk board.
(We were greeted by the view of 'El Misti' on the right just after landing.)
As we drove from the airport, my first impressions of the city were not very positive. It looked like a dusty little town with lots and lots of construction going on. Traffic was chaotic and it was hard to tell why any tourist would come there. All of sudden we realized (prompted by Pallavi) that a Hindi song was playing on the car stereo and we asked the driver to bump up the volume - sure enough, it was Runa Laila belting out some disco hit from the past (I forget the song now). Our moods brightened somewhat.
After checking in we headed out of our hotel in search of dinner and given the long day we had had, we settled on trying a place called 'Lakshmivan' which promised vegetarian fare. The name, decor, and menu suggested that the food might even be mildly Indian-inspired. It was a disaster. Perhaps the second-worst meal in our entire trip. The soups were thick with starch and my "fried rice" dish was under cooked rice liberally garnished with the strongest smelling basil leaves I have encountered, all chopped into tiny pieces. It was near impossible to eat, but I was really hungry. So I picked each little piece out and chewed my way through most of it. We did pick up tasty mangoes on the way back and enjoyed them and another local fruit in our room.
Day 2 was going to be a city tour that we had arranged with our hotel guy - a friend of his was going to take us around. We asked - does he speak English? Well, not very well, but enough to guide you. And he knows all the spots. We were a bit skeptical, but the price was good, so we agreed. The morning dawned early (Dec is the start of Summer there) and it was a beautiful day. Breakfast had an assortment of grains that we had not seen before - our first encounter with Quinoa was here. We left with our new guide and soon it was apparent that he knew no English. We started with the central square or 'Plaza de Aramas' - every Peruvian city and town has one - and the source of Arequipa's moniker 'The White City' was immediately obvious.
Almost all the construction is from bricks made out of volcanic ash, which has an off-white shade. Arequipa is surrounded by a chain of active volcanoes and as a result the land is very fertile despite it being very arid - geologically, it is an extension of the Atacama desert (in Chile).
Arequipans consider their city the 'second-most' important city in Peru (after Lima) and it is clear that it is a town on the make - trying to compete for the tourist dollar, that in Peru mostly goes to Cusco/Machu Picchu. We visited a couple of grand churches - another legacy of the Spanish - and checked out several views of lush valleys ringed by white tinted volcanic mountains.
Later we visited a museum which had a total of two small rooms, both of which could easily fit in the average San Diego apartment. The city was not without its charms, but it still felt a bit a of stretch to qualify as a major tourist attraction - especially all the way from California. In our eagerness to make most of it, we peppered our guide with questions about the history of the place. Getting through was easier said than done - we had to rely on RD to translate and for some reason the answer to every question seemed to involve the 1500s. Sure, that time period looms large in the Peruvian imagination given the Spanish victory over the Inca king in 1532, but after a while it began to strain credulity. The guy meant well - he knew a few words of English and he tried hard to convey his thoughts with them, but the mental strain of trying to follow him started to tell on me and I would wander off taking refuge in my photography. At one point Malini came to me and whispered, "What is he saying? I can't understand a thing!" I consoled her that I had given up a long time ago. The tour ended with a late lunch back at our hotel.
After a short rest, we headed out to the Santa Catalina monastery on foot.
We got there with just an hour to go for closing, but that was sufficient for a conducted tour. This is a cloistered convent that was started in 1580 and even today has some nuns living there, although most of it is open to the public. One interesting feature (at least from a photographic perspective) were its intensely colored walls. One would expect a devout and solemn air about a monastery, but such was not the case. Most of the stories were about the class levels that existed even within a place supposedly given up to the service of God and how almost everything was about money, power, and prestige.
After the tour, RD went off for a 'carne' meal that he had read about, while the rest of did some looking around. Eventually, we found a French place and had some mildly reasonable food. And so ended our second day in Peru. We had an early start the next morning, for we were heading to the Colca Canyon for a two day stay.
We had to take a bus to the top and eventually reached there around 2pm. The whole morning (and apparently the previous day as well) had been overcast and rainy and folks had been putting off their visit to the top. However, we were in luck - soon after we reached the site the sun broke out and we had glorious light for our entire stay. A guide was waiting for us and we proceeded to walk around for almost 3 hours (the site closes at 5pm). The guide was not the greatest (her English was a bit challenged), but she tried hard and we all enjoyed the tour (although the kids were flagging after a while - they are a bit young to appreciate history and archaeology). MP was a sanctuary of the Incas - built in the mid 1400s and used for about a 100 years - but was never discovered by the Spanish invaders. As a result, it remains a pristine example of Inca architecture and is designated a World Heritage Site by the UN. It is a beautiful setting - encircled by a deep valley (through which the Urubamba river flows), which is further surrounded by a ring of tall peaks. To the north and south of the site are the two peaks - "Machu Picchu", or "Old Peak" and "Huayna Picchu" or "Young Peak." The peak that is seen in most MP photos is Huayna Picchu.
