Arequipa/Travel to Chivay

We woke up early after only a few hours sleep for breakfast and boarded the bus on our way to Chivay, located in the Colca Canyon region. We made a quick pit stop to buy water/snacks as well as the coca leaves which are said to help with the affects of being at high altitude.

Along the way our guide told us about alpacas, llamas and vicuñas whose wool is used by locals for fur. Llamas are essentially larger alpacas and are able to carry up to 40kg when fully grown. Vicuñas are a smaller llama-type animal which are nearing extinction and as such are protected by the government. Their wool sells for over US $900 per kg which has contributed to their near extinction - it is considered one of the best wool fibres in the world along side baby alpaca wool (baby alpaca wool is the first wool off an alpaca only).

We stopped at a restaurant in the mountains to try the Andean tea that contains the coca leaves as well as local herbs (which taste like mint and oregano) which is also another means of helping with altitude sickness.

We then stopped for photos with llamas and alpacas on the side of the road - very cool and they were surprisingly very calm!

Following this, we made our way to the highest point on our bus trip which was just under 5000m. We could definitely feel the thinner air walking around at the lookout. There were a number of stores at the lookout and Gab bought a very cute llama scarf :)

We then got to the town of Chivay where we had a very delicious buffet lunch and even got to try alpaca! Safe to say we didn’t need dinner!

We then checked into our hotel and went for a walk around the town (approx 3600m elevation) to a few different viewpoints which were spectacular! There are quite a number of active volcanoes around the area and we learnt that it was because of the lava on the ground which helps the fertility of land which is why agriculture is such a big industry in Peru. The main agriculture in this area is potatoes, broad beans and quinoa.

The lookouts also had the ruins of a few Inca structures which were built for protection at the top of the main lookout. Most of these were destroyed by the Spanish but parts of some still remain. 13 of us from the group actually managed to squeeze in one. Gab was the only one who could stand up in there!

We then went for a short stroll around the main square and got some yummy hot chocolates before having a much needed quiet night in!Read more