Postcards from abroad
We arrived last night after yet another incredibly efficient and punctual flight thanks to Latam. We were in our pre-ordered taxi within fifteen minutes of touchdown and whisked through the very busy and modern streets of Cuzco before driving up the narrowest and steepest of lanes to our gorgeous hotel. (For the many reading the… Continue reading Cuzco – what a surprise
As promised, here’s more about the Colca Canyon. The story is that Francisco Pizarro’s brother, Gonzalo, was given the region in 1530s as his own private encomienda (Spanish landholding) to exploit. In the seventeenth century, the area was split into village districts which concentrated the previously dispersed population in the newly established villages. Many of… Continue reading Colca Canyon Part 2
Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa called the canyon - nearly twice the depth of the Grand Canyon - the ‘Valle de las Maravillas’ and he is quite right: in some places it’s more than 1000 metres from the clifftop to the bottom so you can’t see the valley bottom. Today, we’ll focus on views and… Continue reading Colca Canyon Part 1
We set off this morning in our taxi with Mr Julio to travel to the Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in Peru, and one of the deepest in the world. This involved travelling through the dreadful morning traffic of Arequipa and then slogging up an unappealing mountain road along with a lot of heavy… Continue reading A journey through volcanoes: and do you know your llama from your vicuna?
We began the day with a trip to an astonishing convent, an enormous (20,000 square metres) citadel within the city n which 450 nuns used to live with their servants in total seclusion. Now only sixteen remain. The Santa Catalina convent, founded by a rich widow in 1580, rather turns one’s ideas about convents upside… Continue reading Convent and camelids