04:30 AM. Alarm clock goes off. We need to leave, but the hotel owner says he has no change, even though we warned him beforehand. We feel tricked. Sylvia runs through half of Arequipa and comes back with the change and we can catch a bus to Chivay, in the Cañon del Colca . The panorama on the journey is rather boring, very dry and we go so high we see snow from the window.
Once we get off the bus we are surrounded by three different hotel owners who try to lure us to their hotel. We pick one. There we chat a bit with a girl who works there. She tells us a lot tourist come there, pay a kind of entrance fee (Boleto turistico), but the community never sees anything of it.
We hike to the next village: Yanque. It is the kind of mountain road where you bump into lamas, donkeys, bulls, horse, sheep and traditionally dressed women. While it is getting dark we arrive at the local openair swimming pool, which consists of natural hot thermal water. We shiver, because of the cold, but we do get in. At first we are a bit careful, as we only see boys, but they turn out to be lovely, as they walk us back in to the village in the dark and make sure we get into a cab. Of course this cab is overfull. We sit in the hood of the car. Since we are tourists the driver does not let anyone else in the hood...lucky hey!
The alarmclock is again set for 4 o´clock, as we are taking the 5 o´clock bus to spot condors. How much fun is that! After hours and hours of waiting I see about two, but too far away for a picture. We decide to walk to the next village. After an hour a pick up truck stops asking if we want a lift, it is still hours away to the next village. We get in -no need to say it was overfull. It is an interesting bunch. Regional elections are coming up and the are campaigning for the National party. The national party being left wing. It is unclear what they really stand for; equality, more democracy..well...Their main aim seems to be end of corruption and better care for tourists. Better care for tourists seems to mean paving more roads and lower prices for us. The driver tells us Peru is the fourth richest country when it comes to natural resources. I ask what is done for the locals that don´t live in touristy areas.I ask him if he doesn´t find it sad that in spite of that their whole economy drives on tourism. He does not understand my questions. We spend the rest of the day with them, visiting many small villages, to just arrive in time to catch the smelly nightbus to Cuzco.
No comments:
Post a Comment