Canyon Del Colca

The best thing about teaching here (and the reason I chose this school in the first place) is that we only teach 18 days a month and then get 4-7 days off until the next month of classes begins. So for the break at the end of August I took 2 trips; first to Colca Canyon and then to Camana, a small coastal town. This was a much needed break after my first month of classes and the hectic and disorganized test days.

Pedestrian street in Chivay 

I went with Hannah and Preston, 2 other teachers from Extreme, to Colca. On our way, we had to go through Chivay, a small town. We went into the town for a couple hours while waiting for our next bus. After China, the market was interesting to see how similar it was to China except only selling different things. I guess there are some universal similarities between developing countries.

Alpaca is the main meat around here, so I guess it shouldn't have been surprising to see alpacas running around. But it was super cute to see little 3 and 5 year-old kids pulling baby alpaca through the market.
One thing these markets have in common with Chinese markets is the herb merchants. I feel like I've seen this table of herbs being sold out of plastic bags before in China.

And I don't know what it was about this cemetery, but I really like it. I want to be buried in a place like this. It's all personalized, and didn't feel lonely at all like all the families are still together enjoying the afterlife just like they had here on earth.

Then we took a bus to Cabanaconde, a desert village next to Colca. In the Plaza de Armas they have a condor statue on top of the fountain because Colca is known for their giant condors. We had a good alpaca soup and chicken and rice for our menu lunch.

You can almost feel what it was like to live in the desert here hundreds of years ago.

Me, Hannah and Preston

We took the road out of town and wandered our way over to the rim of the canyon and this is the view we found.


















With a view this great you can't help but sit on top of this rock to enjoy it.

It is pretty incredible how these people can farm here in the desert next to the second deepest canyon in the world. The only water they have is from a small stream of mountain runoff.