Arequipa to Chivay (Saturday 8 October)

I’ve signed onto a 2-day excursion to visit the Canon del Colca. The Colca canyon is set amongst high volcanoes and is considered the second deepest canyon in the world. It ranks slightly less than the Canon del Citahuasi, also in Peru, and both are more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon. The township of Chivay is at the head of the Canon del Colca and that is where we camp for the night.

The bus picks me up at 7.30 and onto a climbing road to a pass in the Andes that reaches nearly 5000 meters. The landscape is like desert and the guide explains that the climate is getting drier each year. It wasn’t always this dry and they seem to blame the mining that is going on in the region. Copper is the main commodity mined. Agriculture is also big and in places water comes out of the ground. Snow melt is another source of water. There are alpaca and llama farms on the way. It’s very cold and the air is thin. Life in the winter time must be tough on the farms and in the villages. Traditional dress is common amongst the people and differs according to there cultural background. Before the Incas and the Spanish there used to be two main conflicting cultural groups in this region and the used to try and distinguish themselves in a very bizarre way. They would physical shape the heads of babies so they would grow up with cranial differences. One group would deform the heads into a cone shape while the other, flat top heads. Not surprisingly mortality was high. Too many babies were dying from the process so they stopped! Now the use distinctively shaped hats and embroidered traditional clothing to denote the ancestry.

Then the Incas came, then the Spanish, but still the two groups maintain their separate identities. And they seem to quietly occupy different parts of the Colca Valley. Today they live together in Chivay and you can tell the difference in the ladies hats. The Collagua ladies wear white hats while the Cabanas ladies were beautifully embroidered hats.

We climb over the highest pass to take us into the catchment area for the Amazon River and down into Chivay. Chivay was a quiet little agricultural village until tourists discovered the Canon del Colca. Now Chivay supports many hostels and restaurants and is busy with bus loads of travelers.

Every town in Peru it seems has it’s town square or Plaza de Armas and La Catedral, which is the Catholic church. Chivay is no different and it is alive with locals and tourists, and dogs and llamas.

Traditional dancing in Chivay