Peru - Lonely Planet Publications [141]
Bicycle
You can rent bikes at Peru Camping Shop (22-1658; www.perucampingshop.com; Jerusalén 410) for S9 per hour or S60 per day including helmet, gloves and a map of the area.
Bus
Combis and minibuses go south along Bolívar to the terminal terrestre (S2, 20 minutes), next door to the Terrapuerto bus terminal, but it’s a slow trip via the market area.
Taxi
You can often hire a taxi with a driver for less than renting a car from a travel agency. Local taxi companies include Tourismo Arequipa (45-8888) and Taxitel (45-2020). A short ride around town costs around S3, while a trip from the Plaza de Armas out to the bus terminals costs about S4. Whenever possible, try to call a recommended company to ask for a pickup as there have been numerous reports of travelers being scammed or assaulted by taxi drivers. If you must hail a taxi off the street, pick a regular size sedan or station wagon over a compact yellow cab.
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CANYON COUNTRY
A tour of the Cañón del Colca is the most popular excursion from Arequipa, but climbing the city’s guardian volcano El Misti, rafting in the Majes canyon and visiting the petroglyphs at Toro Muerto, exploring El Valle de los Volcanes, and trekking down into the world’s deepest canyon at Cotahuasi are more adventurous. Most of these places can be visited by a combination of public bus and hiking. Alternatively, friends can split the cost of hiring a taxi or 4WD vehicle and driver; a two-day trip will set you back more than US$100.
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RESERVA NACIONAL SALINAS Y AGUADA BLANCA
The paved road from Arequipa climbs northeast past El Misti and Chachani to this national reserve (054-25-7461; www.inrena.gob.pe/areasprotegidas/rnsalinas/main.html; admission free; 24hr), which covers 367,000 hectares at an average elevation of 4300m. Here, vicuñas are often sighted. Later in the trip, domesticated alpacas and llamas are frequently seen, so it is possible to see three of the four members of the South American camelid family in one day. Seeing the fourth member, the guanaco, is very hard, as they have almost disappeared from this area.
Past the reserve, the increasingly bumpy road continues through bleak altiplano and over the highest point of 4800m, from where the snowcaps of Nevado Ampato can be seen. Flamingos may also be seen around here between January and April. From there, you’ll drop spectacularly into the Cañón del Colca as the road switchbacks down to the dust-choked village of Chivay.
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CAÑÓN DEL COLCA
The 100km-long Cañón del Colca is set among high volcanoes (6613m-high Coropuna and 6310m-high Ampato are the tallest) and ranges from 1000m to more than 3000m in depth. For years there was raging controversy over whether or not this was the world’s deepest canyon at 3191m, but recently it ranked a close second to neighboring Cañón del Cotahuasi, which is just over 150m deeper. Amazingly, both canyons are more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the USA (see boxed text, Click here).
Despite its depth, the Cañón del Colca is geologically young. The Río Colca has cut into beds of mainly volcanic rocks, which were deposited less than 100 million years ago along the line of a major fault in the earth’s crust. Though cool and dry in the hills above, the deep valley and generally sunny weather produce frequent updrafts on which soaring condors often float by at close range. Viscachas (burrowing rodents closely related to chinchillas) are also common around the canyon rim, darting furtively among the rocks. Cacti dot many slopes and, if they’re in flower, you may be lucky enough to see tiny nectar-eating birds braving the spines to feed. In the depths of the canyon it can be almost tropical, with palm trees, ferns and even orchids in some isolated