Cañon del Colca

Cañon del Colca, Peru - the second deepest canyon in the world, 3191m from top to bottom. Twice as deep as the USA´s grand canyon. Nice place for a stroll.

It´s also a good spot to see wild Andean Condors, though that doesn´t make it any easier to photograph them. These two pics are quite good I guess, but I have several hundered others that didnt make it to the blog...

One amazing thing about the canyon is that perched pracariously on the side of the slope are a few small towns... My first thought was that was a pretty stupid place to put a townsite, the first minor avalanche/landslide/rockfall will take out the whole town, but then I found out these places have been inhabited since long before the Inca - so I guess I don´t know much about Andean town planning. Even the churches the Spanish built way back in the 17th centuary remain intact.

One of the locals checks out a rather impressive display of pre-inca agricultural terracing.....

Say hello to Sideshow Bob...

An Island in the Sun

Hmmm.... not sure what to write here. I´ve spent the last few days Island hopping on Lake Titicaca. Its a pretty big lake, not sure how long exactly but you can´t see the mountains on the opposite side... and its pretty high. 3800m above sea level, arguably the highest significant lake in the world. (Bolivia seems to have the highest everything in the world).

It sits on the Peru/Bolivia border, and the locals crudely joke that the Bolivia got the Titty, and Peru got the Caca (Caca = shit in Spanish). That´s a little harsh, but it is very nice on the Bolivian side.

Anyhoot, on the Bolivian side is the Isle del Sol (Island of the Sun), which was a pretty important spot for the Inca and Tiawanaku mobs. It´s thought the Island was the birth place of the Sun and the Puma in Inca mythology. There´s a rock on the Island that looks a little like a puma eating a rabbit, or at least the Inca and Tiwanaku thought so (the rock is called Titicaca, and that´s what the lake is named after).

Can you see the Puma?

So the Tiwanaku built a bit of a temple in front of it, and after they died out the Inca added a bit more, including a still surviving sacrificial stone table where they used to sacrifice their virgins.

(What self respecting ancient civilisation didn´t sacrifice virgins?!?)

This REALLY called for a re-enactment.....

The Inca kept their virgins on the neighbouring Isle del Luna (Island of the Moon) and built a nice long road across the bigger Isle del Sol, I´m guessing so they could move their virgins around a little quicker....

What a whacky place huh?

Actually, the island is quite beautiful and very interesting, and very chilled... I´d definitely recommend anyone else visiting this part of the world go check it out.

Other random ruins are scattered around the Island....

I also spent a few days on the Peruvian side of the lake...

The main tourist attraction on this side is a small community (about 1000 people), called the Uros, who have lived on the lake on small floating islands made from reeds since the Inca times. The original reason for making the islands was to avoid the domineering Inca mob who were kinda running amok a while back... the community is completely hidden from the main land and apparently the Inca couldn´t see them living there.

Its a pretty weird place, the only community of its kind in the world. They also make their boats and houses out of reeds. The islands are kinda spongy to walk on, and you can tell they´re floating, they wobble a little. The reeds gradually rot away from the bottom, but they top them up regularly and can get around 30 years or so out of each island.

So, very interesting, but also VERY touristy. It was actually really disappointing for me in a way. It´s a incredible and unique place, but completely dominated by tourists. Its hard to see the islands for the gringos at times, and really made me feel like I was visiting a zoo or something. The sight of a bunch of fat gringo tourists sticking their huge cameras in the Uros´ faces, posing with the local children and squabbling over the price of some already dirt cheap souvenirs was pretty sickening.

Monkeying around

I have finally made it out of La Paz! (after losing my passport to Bolivian Immigration for 5 days, and then getting it back only to find the only road out of the city was blocked for another three days due to a political demonstration.) I´ve spent the last 2 weeks in the Bolivian jungle volunteering at a Bolivian wildlife park - http://www.intiwarayassi.org/ The park was set up to rehabilitate wild animals that had been domesticated or kept in poor conditions in zoos and circuses etc.

I spent most of my time in the monkey quarantine section, which allowed heaps of opportunities for monkeying around with the monkeys, in between feeding them and cleaning up monkey poo. It was great fun - no really! The monkeys were mainly capuchins, cute little brown things with heaps of energy and lots of brains. But we also had a few spider monkeys, bigger gangly black monkeys and a couple of tiny squirrel monkeys.




This is a cinnamon capuchin called Miel (Honey in Spanish). She had been trained in her former life to work as a pick pocket for her owner. Which meant you needed to be really cautious around her, she was constantly diving into you pockets looking for things to run away with. If she got something, she wasn't so friendly if you tried to get it back. She was also really good at untieing knots and loved to undo shoelaces for some reason.







This is Choco (a.k.a ¨Loco¨) He really had a chip on his shoulder, he hated people and monkeys too (I think he was beaten up a bit before he made it to the park - probably by people and monkeys). Anyhoot, he liked to pretend he wasn't interested in you, and when you got within his reach he´d leap at you, try to grab you through the cage wire and pull you in to within biting distance. And those teeth are sharp! (One unfortunate fellow volunteer had the top section of his finger bitten clean in two by another Capuchin while I was there.) It was amazing how clever Choco was though, there was one time of the day where he knew he had a good chance of sinking his teeth into me, which was when I covered up the cage in the evenings. He was always waiting for me to take my eyes off him for a second, and then he´d leap at me gnashing his teeth on the wire, arms flailing in the air hoping to grab hold of me. Freakin´loco. I think it´ll be a while before he´s released...






From one extreme to the other... this is Vasca. One odd thing about Capuchins is they often don't like humans of the opposite sex. While she was very friendly with the female volunteers, she didn't like me much and often screamed and tried to bite me if i got close. Then one day everything changed.... Poor deranged Vasca was on heat and had fallen in love with me! This silly monkey spent 5 full days trying to get my attention. She was very adept at throwing rocks and bits of rotten fruit, when she pegged something on target I´d turn around and she´d have this ridiculous grin on her face, like she was the sweetest most innocent thing thing in the world... At one stage she was pretty out of control, moaning and crying constantly if I wasn't looking at her, and then drooling at the mouth when I did look at her. Luckily she lost interest in a few days though.

Well that was funny (in a weird way) but it was bloody ridiculous when it happened a second time. There was another female capuchin who developed a bit if a thing for me, her name is Mumushca. I didn't realise it until one day I opened her cage in the morning and she latched onto me and wouldn't let go. It took about 10 minutes for me to prise her loose, and I ended up with some dark bruises on the neck from her vice-like grip in doing so. Thankfully Mumushca wasn't such a crack shot with rocks and bananas as Vasca, and she didn't drool either. She also had a pretty cute way of showing her love for me, by standing up tall and holding her hands across her heart, whilst giving me the biggest monkey grin imaginable. She often lost balance and toppled over backwards she was trying so hard to stand up tall. Funny shit.

This is me with a baby spider monkey. (I´m the one on the right).









Some volunteers and some monkeys.











Some squirrel monkeys. Cute, but kinda boring to be honest. All they do is sit around and look cute and eat bananas.











There was also a bear - a baby Andean mountain bear who liked to playfight with the volunteers. Which was something they were trying to discourage, as this little bear will grow up into a very big and dangerous problem if they don't curb that habit somehow. Good luck guys!

There were also quite a few pumas at the park. Most were fairly well behaved and could be walked around like a dog. (Only dogs don´t usually weigh 90kg).

And the people? They were animals! (Only I don't know any wild animal that would dress up like this.) Only kidding, they were all very nice people who liked a bit of a drink. Sometimes too much of a drink....

We had a Pimps and Ho´s themed party, the local Bolivians didn't know what hit them. Actually the point was to hold a slave auction to raise money for some new monkey cages, which we did. Some people had sore heads and slim wallets the next day though.