Holiday idea: Touring The Highs of Peru
Teresa Levonian Cole experiences the highs of Peru, as she heads south from Lima to visit Arequipa, Colca Canyon and Lake Titicaca
A sudden thunderstorm unstoppered nature's essence: a distillation of damp earth, the mountain mint muña and the fragrant chachacoma plant. The alpacas - who, like their cousins the llamas and vicuñas, inhabit the Salinas y Aguada Blanca reserve - were happy. But, at 4,900 metres, the highest point in our journey, it was bitterly cold. The rarefied air and olfactory assault combined to make me giddy. The barren landscape, ringed by volcanoes, felt surreal. Or maybe it was the effect of the mate de coca herbal tea I drank at an isolated café owned by a former shepherd who had once been struck by lightning. 'Try it,' my guide Miguel had said. 'It helps oxygenate the blood.'
Strange to think that, only 48 hours earlier, I had been in the stifling heat of Lima, breakfasting on the terrace of the Belmond Miraflores Park hotel, watching the Pacific surf break against the shore. From there, I flew south to Arequipa, stronghold of Spanish colonists and UNESCO World Heritage-listed for its sleepy charm and magnificent sixteenth-century mansions and monasteries. Chief among the latter is Santa Catalina - more walled city than convent, and unique for containing streets, plazas and houses - to which daughters of noble families were sent with lavish 'dowries'. The nuns of Santa Catalina lacked nothing, living in their own houses with a full complement of slaves. All that changed in 1871, after the reforms of the First Vatican Council. The nuns had to move into communal accommodation, 70 of them sharing a dormitory and kitchen. 'It was a difficult time for them,' comments Miguel, wryly. From 175 during the convent's heyday, today only 14 cloistered nuns remain - to be glimpsed, in their white robes, at daily Mass. Now we are driving to the Colca Canyon - a 60-mile gash in the earth that is deeper in some parts than the Grand Canyon. In the villages hereabouts, women go about their daily chores wearing festive, highly embroidered costumes inspired by the dress of the Spanish Golden Age. Markets abound with unfamiliar produce grown on the valley's fertile, pre-Inca terraces. I taste one of six species of cactus, expertly peeled by a Quechua woman. As I grimace at its toe-curling sourness, she breaks into a grin. 'Very good for hangovers,' she assures me.
We rise at dawn for the main attraction: watching condors soar above the canyon. But there are better places in the Andes to see these majestic creatures than among a jam of tour buses. We leave the hopeful bird-watchers to hike along the spectacular canyon rim, until we reach a small wooden cross. 'A man's wife was suspected of having an affair with the priest from nearby Cabanaconde,' explains Miguel. 'So the local people brought the pair here in his car and pushed it over the cliff.' I was surprised less by this act of justice than by how recently it had occurred: in 1979.
This is a land where shamanism lives on in symbiotic harmony with Catholicism. The churches in the 14 pueblos of Colca - small towns formed in the 1570s when the Spaniards relocated the indigenous Collagua and Cabana people from their isolated settlements - are a unique expression of colonial architecture: massive single-aisled structures with open chapels and enclosures. 'It's not unusual for local people to ask a priest if they can borrow a statue of the Virgin and take her to attend a sacrifice to their apu - or holy mountain,' says Miguel.
From Colca Lodge, situated on the banks of the eponymous river, I could see the remains of one of these pre-Hispanic settlements. And from the steaming pool of its spa, which is fed by the river's lithium-rich hot-spring water, I watched yet more alpacas graze as the sun set behind the valley, the only sound that of the rushing river below.
With the return of clear skies, luminous greens and yellows accompanied our journey - visual preparation for the dazzling colours of Lake Titicaca. From my base at the fabulous Titilaka lodge, perched on the lake's shore, my guide Julián took me canoeing through the totora reeds, the eerie silence broken by the plaintive cry of a Titicaca grebe, the lake's only indigenous bird species, which is unable to walk on land or fly. This one dived deep to escape our intrusion, leaving only ripples in its wake.
Totora is a mainstay of the lake. Exchanging manual propulsion for the hotel's motorboat, we sped off to one of 100 or so floating islands, which the Uros people construct from its roots: the totora is cut into blocks, joined, anchored, then overlaid with the reeds. In these remote islands, inaccessible to conquistadores and tourists alike, men fish and bowler-hatted Aymara women sit weaving and cooking at fires, while teenagers complain of boredom. But for the odd solar panel - the gift of former president Fujimori - little has changed since the sixteenth century.
The moon was already trespassing on the sun's domain as we headed back to Titilaka for pisco sours around the firepit. Julián looked up at the twin orbs. 'It's good,' he said, with a smile. 'Our father and mother, together in the sky. All is as should be'.
Ways and means
Teresa Levonian Cole travelled as a guest of Abercrombie & Kent (01242-547 701; abercrombiekent.co.uk). A seven-day private tour of Peru, visiting Lima, Arequipa, Colca and Titicaca, costs from £2,395, including international flights with KLM. British Airways now flies direct to Lima.
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The Road Less Travelled
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