I Predict A Riot

I Predict A Riot
Arequipa, Peru

Arequipa, Peru

After yet another delightful journey on a Cruz del Sur bus we arrived in Arequipa and made our way to our hostel. We were pretty sure that the driver was scamming us by driving in circles around the city, but as we had agreed a price we knew that we just had to stand firm and not take any nonsense when he asked for more money. Much to our surprise after several detours around the city streets we were delivered at the hostel door and there was not a single mention of more money…. Odd.

We had heard so many great things about Arequipa, it was small, quaint, warm, not at altitude and we were sold. We booked a week at our hostel and made plans to stay put and play blog catch up for the week. Obviously we had to explore the city a little bit first and it turned out that everything we had been told was true, this little town was absolutely perfect for us to chill out for a week. Spiderman was walking the town selling mini spidey suits, Winnie the Pooh was selling balloons and there was just a nice relaxed calm feel in the air. Our hostel was fantastic, we had a hostel cat who loved tum rubs and the courtyard was a great place to hang out and have a beer after a long days blogging.

After a day or two holed up in the hostel we headed down to the main square to treat ourselves to the city open top bus tour as a break from blogging. Something just didn’t seem quite right, suddenly the long taxi ride that we had when we arrived made sense as there seemed to be a protest taking place on one corner of the square and all around the rest of the plaza the streets were lined with riot police armed with their giant plastic shields. We didn’t really take this too seriously (and spent a good 10 minutes getting selfies with the riot police)as we just assumed it was for show, however the previously quiet streets suddenly began to get a bit more hectic. Groups were marching around the square and congregating at the corner where the protest was based. Most of the groups just walked quietly with their babies on their backs and signs above their heads buying ice cream, cakes and snacks from the many vendors cashing in on the influx of people, we stood and watched for a while trying to work out what the protests were but before long the peaceful groups with babies were replaced with large groups of men with flags, whistles, drum and wooden sticks which they proceeded to use to hit the shop windows around the square. With the tensions heightening we made our escape and returned to the hostel.

We had a chat with the staff who informed us that the protests have been going on for weeks, but this was the start of the a 72 hour strike in protest to the proposed extension to the Tia Maria Copper mine in southern Peru. Tia Maria represents one of the largest copper deposits in Peru, it is owned and operated by a Mexican mining company, but the main source of income for the people living around the mine is agriculture. In 2011 protests against the mine and its impact on the surrounding agricultural land let to the deaths of 3 people. Fresh protests began in March 2015 which quickly lead to the death of a protestor and a police officer, these deaths were the catalyst which lead to the strike in which we unknowingly found ourselves at the centre. Arequipa very quickly became locked down, any buses that were due to be coming from or going to Lima were either turned around or cancelled as this one straight ocean lined road was a perfect place for buses to be attacked. The newspapers were adorned with a picture of a burned out bus and reports were circulating about one older Peruvian who had a heart attack when his bus was attacked at a check point.

Luckily we had no intentions of going anywhere, we had food, water and our hostel was safe and far enough from the centre that we were not affected at all. However as the 72 hours progressed the strike soon erupted into a riot. The riot police who were all stood peacefully in the square were now fighting off protestors who had started to dig up the paving stones around the city to block the roads. The police started to use tear gas and the protestors started to burn tyres to counter the tear gas. On the third day it got to the stage that the riots had spread to the street outside out hostel and from the roof of our hostel we needed to cover our faces to protect us from the tear gas as we watched on as the protestors continued to dig up the pavements. We left the hostel to see what was happening and were just greeted by protestors wearing bandanas over their faces telling you to turn back, we retreated and took to twitter to get a full run down of what was happening as it seemed that things had got pretty serious.

Amazingly the following day Arequipa was like a different city. The riot police were gone, traffic was moving as normal, the protestors were back to just a handful of people standing peacefully in the corner of the square and the road workers were hard at work rebuilding all the cobbled streets. Whilst things seemed to be fine there were still a few groups of rogue protestors who were still protesting hard and left us locked in Starbucks with a giant Mr Whippy protecting the doorway!

Whilst all the madness had been going on outside, Tim & I had been hard at work in the hostel blogging, blogging and blogging some more. With an unstable wifi network our mission had proved harder than we thought but at least we made a dent in the 6 months of blogs that we had pending.

After the madness was calm and we had done enough blogs to justify a break we finally managed to take the city tour, it probably would have looked much better on a clear and sunny day, but still we did get the see the three volcanoes that surround the city, Misti, Chachani and Pikchu Pikchu. We also had a seriously funny moment on this tour when for safetys sake we had both put on our seatbelts and when we got to the first hop off location Tim realised that his didn’t undo. It took a good five minutes of pulling and panicking before it thankfully popped out of its socket, just as the tour guide came to find out what was taking us so long!

From Arequipa we took an overnight tour to see the magnificent Colca Canyon, things didn’t quite go to plan when we were picked up over and hour late and rather than the mini bus with no more than 12 people that we had booked we were bundled into a huge coach with 40 others. There was not much we could do about it so we rolled with the punches and thankfully it was not too bad. We made various stops along the way to see the view, watch the vicuna and to stop at every market stall enroute to buy more layers, from socks to scarfs to hats. We actually stopped at one market stall which not only had a great view but also happened to be the highest market stall on the route at an altitude of 4800 meters. Quite frankly at this point the altitude wasn’t a problem, but the absolute freezing cold temperatures were so we quickly got back into the cozy bus. After a days driving we arrived in Chivay, the main town from which you access Colca Canyon, there is not much in Chivay but we managed to escape the overpriced restaurant that the bus dropped us at and we found a cute little café on the square for a cheap lunch. The tour had prebooked accommodation for us and it was nice and clean but absolutely freezing, it was actually a close contest as to whether it was warmer inside or out. Thankfully we had a late afternoon trip to a hot spring to warm our bones up, which was great, but the effect was short lived and before we knew it we were back at the hostel negotiating in our poor Spanish the price of a heater for the night. It may have cost more than the price of the room but it was £5 very well spent as even with the heater and all our clothes on our breath was freezing in the cold air. Brrrrr.

Early the next morning we were all at breakfast wearing our hats, scarfs gloves and coats whilst drinking bad coffee and eating stale bread and jam, the standard Peruvian breakfast. The highlight of the whole tour was due
to be the next stop, off we were headed to Colca Caynon, or were we? In true bus trip fashion we were dragged to ever town with ever market between Chivay and Colca Canyon. Given that we had left the hotel late because the guide was late, then stopped at at least 4 more destinations we were fast approaching the time that the guide had told us was the best to see the Condors flying. Pretty much the only reason that any of us were on the tour.

We finally arrived at Colca Canyon and in itself it was a spectactular sight, but our focus was on the condors so we set off down the walkways to what looked like the best vantage point over the canyon.

With a depth of 3,270 meters Colca Canyon is the second deepest in the world after the nearby Cotahusi Canyon and is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US. Colca Canyon was initially declared the deepest in the world by the guiness world records in 1986 and it is now Peru’s third most visited attraction.

For us the main attraction to visit Colca Canyon is that it is the home to the Andean Condor. This amazing bird related to the vulture has one of the largest wingspans in the world with measurements of 3.2 meters or 10.6 feet and weights between 8kg and 15kg. The condors are easily viewed from Colca Canyon as they glide along the top of the canyon walls.

Typically at the canyon we all stood with our cameras poised and thanks to a distinct lack of wind there was nothing, not even a sniff of a condor. But thankfully we had an hour to sit and wait and before it was time to leave we had had several of these magnificent birds swooping past and over the canyon. It is not even possible to explain how big these birds are, they are HUGE, it is any wonder that they can fly at all, it actually felt more like an airshow with planes going past than an actual real life animal.

The time at the canyon was up before we knew it, but thankfully our guide took us on a walk further up the canyon away from the crowds to get some more views and thankfully to see a few more condors.

It had been a long couple of days of driving, walking around markets and keeping warm but it was absolutely worth it so have seen condors up close, such a magnificent creature.

Back in Arequipa, we just had time for another couple of days blogging before we were headed to our next destination. There were so many places that we could have added to our list in Peru but we decided to move onto Bolivia. We had planned on returning to Puno to get a bus and boat across Lake Titicaca to Copacobana in Bolivia but when we actually calculated how much it was going to cost we realised that we could actually fly to Bolivia cheaper and avoid 2 days of travel. So we hopped on a plane and headed across the border to another apparently quaint and small town called Sucre.

Boom, Peru Done!