There are walls built up of stone everywhere, and for the ones that people want protected, they plant cacti all along the top, or they embed shards of glass lining the tops of the walls, which is really scary to me, though I'm guessing it's a pretty effective detourant. The stone walls that are built up in the middle of nowhere are a bit confusing. There are some in fields for herding the alpacas, but then there are also ones that look like remains of a broken down shack, and it's unclear as to whether someone is living there or not. I'm sure in some cases, they are. It's an interesting poverty mix- poor people working very hard, poor people just trying to scam or rob tourists, and then travelers that have chosen the life and seem nothing but happy living day to day in these small villages selling jewelry or such. A guy today put a hair wrap in my hair, and we chatted a bit. He's been traveling for years now, making jewelry and picking up little odds and ends jobs with locals. He gave me two beans that he had painted when I was leaving, and told me that they are for luck- I'm carrying them with me now, so we'll see :)
When we were in Chivay, we went to a dinner where they performed a typico dance, called peno I believe. They had on costumes, and live music, and it was pretty entertaining. They were grabbing people from the audience each song to come up and dance, and everyone was having a good time. Then towards the end of the show, one of them asked me to come up. I jumped up, and was all excited to do a little dance, however, this final routine was a skit instead. The skit involved this very small man, in a very scary colorful ski mask, pretending to feed me a poisonous fruit, so I then had to lay on the ground, shaking (as the poison seeped in), and then the man danced around me and whipped me- yup, with a whip, and kind of hard.....In front of a lot of people. Afterwards, I asked my guide what the significance of this routine was, and she said, oh it's just for fun- it's silly, for us to laugh. Awesome- glad the tourist could awkwardly squirm around on the restaurant floor, while being whipped, so the locals could have a laugh.
There is a round fruit that grows all over the cacti in the canyon, that they make juice from, or just eat plain- I ate some, and it looks like a white kiwi, and tastes just like one, except really sour. Not really appetizing, but at least not the poisonous fruit that leads to convulsions and whipping.
Colca Canyon pictures:
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