Dave Ford Does Earth

Posted by Dave Ford

This is a mature Andean Eagle. It was rescued by a local man as a baby and now stars in many Colca Canyon Pictures.

Dave, Ben, and I caught a 18 hour bus from San Pedro to Arequipa last Sunday night. After traveling in Bolivia for so long, it was a “glorious” experience to be riding on a Chilean bus.

To give some perspective on the matter, on a previous bus ride in Bolivia a guy decided to bring along his cat. His cat, was not very happy about the decision and decided to MEOW at the top of its’ lungs for the duration of the 6 hour Bolivian journey. In response, the cats owner decided to smack the cat in the top of the head with considerable force every time it made a sound. In response to the pounding, the cat decided that it did not like being banged in the head and therefore MEOWED louder. This pattern repeated itself for six hours.

So when we got on our regular bus in Chile, it felt as if we were back to some sort of normalcy.

We landed at “the Point” in Arequipa sometime around midday, ate some Chinese food, and promptly booked our tour to Colca Canyon. We had to get up to catch the bus at 4:45am the next morning due to some planned Peruvian protests that would have blocked the roads leaving Arequipa.

Sidenote: Although its wonderful to see the democratic process work in South America, I am getting really irritated with protests. Its seems like there are protests every day in every country we visit.

So BANG, we get on the bus and we find out that we are in the middle of the typical tour that we strive so much to avoid. The bus, was tiny. Somehow I got two seats (thank you sweet Jesus). The BV Show and the Weapon were not so lucky.

Fortunately, we did have some cool people on the bus with us. We had a couple from California, some girls right out of school from Wisconsin, and an assortment of other interesting people.

Sidenote: The name of one of the major water companies in Peru is “SOGAY”.

The BV show in front of our Colca Canyon accommodations. The facility was nestled in the middle of steep cliffs.

Colca Canyon is the deepest canyon in the world (The BV Show repeatedly pointed out that it was deeper than the Grand Canyon). Our experience at the canyon was truly beautiful. This is just another situation where pictures can not even come close to describing the true essence of what we saw.

In front of the Canyon

The major draw to Colca Canyon is the chance to see the Andean Condor. These birds have a wing span of over 9 feet and are absolutely amazing. When we got to the primary lookout point we saw 8 condors at the same time flying right by our heads. These things fly without effort, and do not seem to notice the scores of tourists all over the place. A mature Andean condor has a wingspan of 9 feet.

This is a mature male condor. You tell because they are black.

This is a younger condor.

THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE TRIP:

No, it was not the beautiful condors. It was not the deepest canyon in the world either. Actually, it was a middle aged white trash American.

We noticed early on that one of the passengers on the bus was especially miserable. She probably was weighing in at about 200 lbs. In her defense, the size of the bus must have been especially uncomfortable.

Right after the condor viewing, everyone was on a natural high. It was really amazing. We were all talking about our experience and looking at each others photos, when the unspeakable happened.

White Trash Lady starts screaming at the top of her lungs out of nowhere. Apparently the “very nice” South African Women sitting in front of her rocked her chair back a bit and out of nowhere the entire 20 person bus was exposed to a complete mental breakdown.

I might paraphrase a bit, but this is the gist of what she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“BITCH, YOU STUPID BITCH” ” IF YOU TRY TO MOVE YOUR CHAIR BACK ONE MORE TIME I’M GOING TO SLAP YOU!” “DO YOU THINK WE DON’T HAVE LEGS BACK HERE! I CAN’T CUT OFF MY LEGS!”

Ahhh, one of these moments when you are so proud to be an American! I was compelled to apologize on behalf of my country.

Thats all she said. After that nothing. Just that same familiar scowl that the rest of us had become accustomed to from the rest of the trip.

It became the conversation piece for the remainder of the trip. Actually we had quite a bit of fun talking about it.
————————————————————————————————-

Notes:

> We saw more llamas and alpacas on this tour than I care to describe. Its sort of like seeing cows in the country side. The first time you see one you are like “Ohhh, there’s a cow”. Nonetheless, after you see the next 500 it stops being so cool. There were a few older tourists on the bus could not seem to get enough of the llamas and alpacas. One of the guys must have taken at least 200 llama photo shots.

Me, an Alpaca, and a little Peruvian Girl

> At lunch on our last day we saw a pet alpaca spit directly in the face of one of the workers who was trying to move it. This…. was pretty cool. Alpacas are very good at spitting.

> The next day after we got back to Arequipa, we again left the town immediately heading straight to Cusco for a reunion with a bunch of friends we had met along the way. The plan after two weeks of doing stuff and rapidly moving, was to party our asses off in the city that was once the center of the Inca world. I did not think I would be going back but was really excited to see everyone.

> We had more problems with the French in Colca Canyon. This time the problems had a lot to do with incessant staring. A group of 60 something Frenchman literally would not stop staring at our Californian friends. A fight almost ensued. As I have previously mentioned, the French are weird. That is except for my best buddy Regis from Antarctica and Florianapolis, Brazil who kindly reminded me after my last French bashing post of his nationality. I therefore revise my opinion of the French to omit French Brazilians who are very cool and sell massive amounts of meat on international markets.

> Also I have decided that I like the French leaps and bounds more than the majority of white trash America. Maybe it has something to do with the public schools in the US….. hmmmm. :)

> I just had my fifth cafe con leche and am beginning to shake. But I am wide awake.

> Dave Mallet gets the photo credits for the condor pix above.

> I will eventually upload video to this post when I figure out how to do it.

Share This