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Giardino Tours pick us up from our hotel for an overnight mini bus tour to Colca Valley three hours outside Arequipa. The desert landscape is dramatic, the land covered in harsh shrubs and spiky grasses, which is the staple food of the llamas, alpacas and vicunyas which live in these areas. We stop to photograph wild vicunyas, which are the smallest of the Andean camel family. They have soft padded feet which do not harm the earth. These animals historically provided a sole source of sustenance for the people of the Colca Valley, using their wool, meat, milk and oil for cooking. An ancient llama reproduction ritual is still practised twice yearly wherein a shaman sacrifices the best llama of the flock to the mother earth (Pachamama) and cooks the liver to make a soup which everyone takes, in order to pray to the volcano gods for more healthy llamas. Misha, our guide, says the people tend to take these things too seriously.
The Colca Valley is covered in Pre-Inca farming terraces, dating back to the 11th and 12th centuries, some of which are still used today. They were constructed as a means of successfully farming the steep hillsides and providing good irrigation channels for the crops. The water would drain down from the snow-covered mountain tops and through all the irrigation channels to the valley below. Large boulders with ‘architectural’ carved notches have been found which display the planning involved in the design of the terraces- the notches were used to determine the flow of water down the boulder (hillside). Most of the terraces higher up the mountains are no longer used for two reasons, firstly the climate in Peru has become hotter and drier and there are less rains and therefore there is not enough melt water to irrigate the uppermost terraces (the lower terraces can be irrigated from the Colca River) and secondly the population of the Colca Valley has dramatically reduced due, in part, to the Spanish conquistadores who forced people to relocate into towns and cities so that they could control more easily their new subjects. Misha informed us that the colonists enslaved the indigenous population and caused many to die from diseases they had brought with them from Spain. They introduced eucalypts, goats and sheep, whose hard hooves in fact caused destruction to the land they grazed. What is now left of the population of the Colca Valley is a number of small settlements evidently impoverished from the basic nature of their houses. Many are descendents of the original Cabana and Collagua cultures of the 11th and 12th centuries evident from the ladies’ hats and dresses which they wear on a daily basis. They are elaborately embroidered and I can’t resist a red one for 50 soles (£10).
We take a dip in the local hot springs, which prove again to be very restorative and the following day we make an early start to view the famous Condors of the Colca Canyon. We are extremely lucky to see at least ten of the forty which inhabit the canyon. They are an endangered species and number only 2,000 across the whole of South America. They are giants of the sky with a wingspan of over three metres.
After lots of oohing and aahing and lots of photos we journey back to the city of Arequipa for the night.
NB: Colca Valley gets its name from the stone storage ’pots’ built by the Cabana and Collagua people to protect their produce from thieves. They are built into the side of the cliff faces, far from the farmlands and terraces.
Colca Canyon was formed 800,000 years ago from a geological event. It sits on a major fault line and there continues to be land shifts and earthquakes in the valley. The drop from mountain top to valley floor is 3,600m.
The Colca Valley is covered in Pre-Inca farming terraces, dating back to the 11th and 12th centuries, some of which are still used today. They were constructed as a means of successfully farming the steep hillsides and providing good irrigation channels for the crops. The water would drain down from the snow-covered mountain tops and through all the irrigation channels to the valley below. Large boulders with ‘architectural’ carved notches have been found which display the planning involved in the design of the terraces- the notches were used to determine the flow of water down the boulder (hillside). Most of the terraces higher up the mountains are no longer used for two reasons, firstly the climate in Peru has become hotter and drier and there are less rains and therefore there is not enough melt water to irrigate the uppermost terraces (the lower terraces can be irrigated from the Colca River) and secondly the population of the Colca Valley has dramatically reduced due, in part, to the Spanish conquistadores who forced people to relocate into towns and cities so that they could control more easily their new subjects. Misha informed us that the colonists enslaved the indigenous population and caused many to die from diseases they had brought with them from Spain. They introduced eucalypts, goats and sheep, whose hard hooves in fact caused destruction to the land they grazed. What is now left of the population of the Colca Valley is a number of small settlements evidently impoverished from the basic nature of their houses. Many are descendents of the original Cabana and Collagua cultures of the 11th and 12th centuries evident from the ladies’ hats and dresses which they wear on a daily basis. They are elaborately embroidered and I can’t resist a red one for 50 soles (£10).
We take a dip in the local hot springs, which prove again to be very restorative and the following day we make an early start to view the famous Condors of the Colca Canyon. We are extremely lucky to see at least ten of the forty which inhabit the canyon. They are an endangered species and number only 2,000 across the whole of South America. They are giants of the sky with a wingspan of over three metres.
After lots of oohing and aahing and lots of photos we journey back to the city of Arequipa for the night.
NB: Colca Valley gets its name from the stone storage ’pots’ built by the Cabana and Collagua people to protect their produce from thieves. They are built into the side of the cliff faces, far from the farmlands and terraces.
Colca Canyon was formed 800,000 years ago from a geological event. It sits on a major fault line and there continues to be land shifts and earthquakes in the valley. The drop from mountain top to valley floor is 3,600m.
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