Colca Valley dancers

The evening we stayed in Chivay we had dinner which included local music and dancers. They did three different dances and I wish I knew the names of the dances and their meanings. I'm sure they had some connection to the history and legend of the area.

This is the band. I enjoyed their music. I thought the bass player on the back had more of the Amerindian look than the others.

These are pictures of Grant participating in the final dance. In the dance, the girl tempts the guy with the orange (seemed like Adam & Eve except with an orange) and then when he gets the orange, he dies.

Here she hits him with a whip. It does not revive him.

Then she dances over his head and poof, he is revived.

Colca Valley

Here's a picture of Grant at the pass, the place where we made our offerings to the mountain gods. You can see that it is quite windy. Grant doesn't have a jacket on, but it was chilly and most of us didn't want to spend much time stacking our rocks.






This woman's hat is representative of the other indigenous tribe, the Collagua. The Andes mountains loom in the background.




This is the other plant that was in the coca tea--- the one the guide called "chacha culpa". In Cusco, later in the trip, we were at a ruin, high above the town, and I was not feeling well---a little nauseous and light headed. Our guide walked over and picked a couple of plants and told me to rub them together in my hands and then breathe them deeply. That helped more than the coca leaves. They had a minty smell and seemed to clear my head.

Colca Valley

This is the pass over the mountain to Colca Valley---elevation, 16,100 feet. This was considered to be the spot closest to mountain apus (gods) and the locals stacked stones and made offerings to the apus. Our guide let us off so we could make our stacks and wishes. Our guide encouraged us to chew coca leaves to alleviate altitude sickness. I didn't like chewing the coca leaves. They made my mouth numb and I didn't like the feeling they gave me.




Along the way we stopped at vistas, or miradors. There were always children dressed in traditional costumes of the valley. This little girl's costume is "Cabana", one of the ethnic tribes of the valley. Her embroidered hat is the distinguishing feature. The two groups still speak the native languages and in many aspects still live much the same as they have for years. The town of Chivay, the largest in the valley only got electricity in the 1980s.

This view shows the Colca Valley in the background and the town of Chivay. I don't know the elevation here, but the town of Chivay is at an elevation of 12,000 feet.

Bus trip to Colca Valley

We took a tour to the Colca Valley from Arequipa. There were about 20 people on our tour bus. The Colca Valley is about 3 hours from Arequipa by bus. We made several stops along the way. The road was quite desolate and as we went over the "pass", it was not paved, about 15 miles of it. These were the restrooms on one of our stops (the only stop with restrooms). They were quite primitive. The mens urinals were in full view as you walked up to the door of the women's restroom. Thankfully, there were doors on the women's toilets. There was a little snack place at this stop and we all had "coca" tea. Peruvians seem to believe coca tea is a cure-all for everything---altitude sickness, stomach aches, headaches, etc. The coca tea was basically coca leaves steeped in hot water. They also put another plant that I didn't know. I asked our guide and he said it was "chacha chulpa". I couldn't find it on google, so I'm sure I don't have it spelled correctly.

We drove through a wildlife preserve and saw alpacas, llamas, and vicunas. I didn't know before this that they are all cameloids, members of the camel family. But, after I learned that, it was very obvious. This is part of the reason that they can survive so well in the arid climate of these mountains.

This is the sign entering the vicuna preserve. Vicunas are the smallest members of the camel family. They are a national symbol of Peru and are protected because they were almost extinct several years ago because of poaching. Trade in their fleece was banned in 1975 and just recently begun again because the numbers are now up over 150,000, but the animals are still endangered and harvesting the fiber is under government regulation. The fiber is considered to be the finest and warmest in the world---even more than cashmere. Their fleece was worn only by the highest of Inca nobility.

You can see from this picture that these vicunas have recently been shorn. The guide told us that they are captured in the old way. A group of people join hands to make a human chain and encircle the vicunas and then they are captured and shorn. Peruvians like to participate in this activity, which only happens every 4 years, because it was the way the Incas did it. They are difficult to shear and only produce about 1 pound of wool a year.

We were high in the Andes here, on what is called an altiplano, a flat plain, where not much vegetation grows and the temperatures can be quite harsh. The altitude here was somewhere around 13,000 feet.

Here's a link for more information about vicunas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicu%C3%B1a

I know it's wikipedia and it isn't always accurate, so here's another if you're really interested:

http://www.essortment.com/all/vicunawoolwhat_rhwq.htm