Arequipa, Peru

Volcano Misti (5822m) 

Well, as I told you, I will make my way to Peru and so I did. I am here in Arequipa in the south Peruvian Andes highlands since almost a week. I left Pucón on the first of April with the bus to Santiago. There I spent two days enjoying the city and its cultural and culinary offer. Unfortunately Inés could not accompany me because she became ill but nevertheless I spent two nice days over there in pleasant anticipation of the journey to come. Finally I left Santiago by plane on the early morning of April 4th. The plane made stopovers   in Antofagasta as well as in Arica, two Chilean cities in the Atacama Desert. That gave me impressive overhead views of this dryest desert on earth which offers awesome but somehow depressing in its aridity landscapes. In Arica which is just 20 km off the Peruvian border we had to leave the plane for customs formalities before we took off again and entered Peruvian Airspace. Soon we landed on Arequipa airport. I took a taxi to the city centre and immediately realized the big difference to Chile. Traffic here is as crazy as you would expect it from any Southamerican country not as organized as in Chile. While individual traffic almost does not exist, streets are full of small yellow taxi cabs and an uncountable variety of minibuses. Apart from this you see motorised three-wheelers, small motorbikes, bicycles, donkeys and various other partly quiet weird vehicles. They all  follow what seems to be the only valid law on Peruvian roads: Might is right!

They permanently sound their horns. Either while standing in the all-time traffic jam where it means: "Whats going on here? Why don´t you move on?" or while horribly fast moving  towards a crossroads when it means: "I for sure WON´T slow down now!" Apart from this sounding the horn is used to greet friends on the other side of the road, to call your fellow passenger´s attention to a beatiful woman standing on the corner, contact the newspaper vendor at the traffic lights (which rarely exist) and many occasions more.

Well, the taxi brought me safely to the city centre where I could change my Chilean Pesos in Peruvian currency because on the airport they just changed US-dollars. Finally he dropped me off at the office of "Expediciones y Aventuras" the tourist agency for which I am going to work the next two months. I was heartly welcomed by Gustavo the owner. He told me that I can stay in his hostel sharing a room with Christian another rafting guide from Chile who is here for the season. So I went there with all my luggage to refresh myself and get rid of my rucksack. That was, when I realised another fact about Arequipa: the city is situated in the Andes on an altitude of more than 2300m above sea level although it is just 75 km off the coast. This means air is already thin and reaching at the hostel I had to catch my breath although it just is  a few blocks away from the agency. But again I was positively surprised by the pleasantness of the place. The hostel is an old colonial building (in which Gustavo himself grew up) made of sillar, the typical white volcanic rock which builduings here are built of. It has a nice courtyard with lawn, cactuses, small bushes and flowers in pots on the walls and a roof top terrace with a great view over the city and its surrounding volcanoes. It was here up on that rooftop when I realized for the first time the impressive massive volcanoes or rather volcanic massifs surrounding the town in their entire gorgeousness. The town is surrounded by the volcanic massifs of Chachani, Misti and Pichu Pichu the first of which reaches 6000 m of altitude and the other two only being a little lower. Although you are at more than 2300 m in the city already those volcanic giants still reach more than 3500m further up towards the permanent blue sky.

The last days I discovered the town and the river. Arequipa´s old town is a lovely ordered, clean colonial city with an awesome main square and full of hotels, hostels, restaurants, bars, tourist agencies and small shops. There´s a permanent traffic jam because the small roads are overloaded with vehicles but that is just part of the flair. Only when you leave the centre you realize that you are in an emerging nation. I am doing this daily going to the rafting base of the company. To get there I have to take a so called "Combi", small minibuses with about fifteen seats but an endless capacity for passengers. They drive around town on fixed routes with a conductor shouting out of the window the direction it goes and people just hop on and off where they have to. For me it is a little torture to take them because their height in the interior is about 1,6m only. Because you rarely get a seat in them I have to stay, not only my head totally ducked but also my knees slightly bent. If I am lucky I reach the grab handles with both hands but always ending up hitting the other passengers with my now totally bended ellbows right in their faces. Otherwise I have to jam my definitely much too tall body, my head pressing to the roof maintaining my feet somehow on the ground. Sometimes I get a seat but this is not that much better either. My legs just do not fit in between the rows of seats so I always have to sit diagonally using at least two seats. On this rides you see the real face of Arequipa. People begging on the streets, children working, herds of cattle being chased through the streets as well as men in suits calling busily on their cellphone, school children in uniforms, mobile vendors of almost everything and surprisingly few street dogs. Somehow so far I managed to survive this rides unharmed but always am quite happy when I can deboard the "combi".

From our base we have a lovely view over the river Chili which we raft at, the town and the volcanoes. There start all our rafting trips. From there we drive up the river with an amazing old huge Chevrolet Pickup for 6 km where we start the descent. The river Chili is great for rafting. It is quite small, narrow, steep and with lots of rocks forming very technical rapids of grade III to IV. Sometimes the only possible line goes in between two rocks only leaving 10 cm of space in between the boat and the rocks on either side. Right at the moment I am still practicing accompanying other guides on their trips but in a few days more I will be ready to guide myself. This is how my Peruvian adventure started. Could be much worse, so once more I can´t complain. I am happy and looking forward to everything the two next months here will bring.