Touring South America with dad

I have taken some crappy tours in my day. The sand dune tour of Mui Ne Vietnam comes to mind immediately, but there have been more. Many more. I am not saying this was the worst…but it was up there. Just for the record, if you go to Arequipa Peru and are short on time DO NOT take the full day trip to Colca Canyon. Just sleep in and enjoy the town for what it is. Have a coffee and do some souvenier shopping. From what I hear those with a more leisurely schedule have a much better time at the Colca Canyon. I can´t speak for them.

Arequipa itself is a pleasant town. It is full of old big white buildings that have a mediterranean look to them. On our first day in town we visited a 400 year old convent. The nuns there live in poverty and silence completely isolated from the rest of the world. There are currently 21 nuns, but our tour guide said that at its height there were over 400 nuns and female servants. That sounds simultaneously really boring and the perfect back story for a adult movie. Anyway, I digress.

 The full day Colca Canyon tour. It really was a full day tour. The whole idea was to see the Peruvian condors flying majestically above the breath taking canyon. They picked us up at 2:30 in the morning. The tour started before I usually get to bed on the weekends. Strike one. We spent the next hour and a half driving around town picking up other passengers. An hour and a half that I could have been sleeping. Strike two. Finally the bus got underway. I put in my earplugs, pulled my sleeping mask over my eyes and tried to make myself comfortable. Three hours later we were dropped off for our ´included´breakfast. Hard rolls with jam and tea. Yummy. Now I am just plain grumpy. Explictives are muttered under my breath. The other tour group sharing our bus finally returns from breakfast and we reboard to go see some condors. Yeah. Only, they had garlic rolls from breakfast. I know because when I ask the guy in the seat next to me I could smell it on his breath. He promptly sneezed into his hand. His upper lip glistened with snot. Fucking great. A snotty sneezy garlicy fucking German next to me. Let´s not get chatty pal. I pulled open the window and pressed my face towards the slot of fresh air. An hour passes. I remind myself that I am paying for this. I paid ten beers for this. Is it too late to trade back? We arrive at the condor viewing area. There are loads of tourists. No condors. An hour passes. Fewer tourists and still no condors. Our bus is due to pick us up at 10:30. At 5 minuts to 11 the condors come out. Look at that. Pretty. I could be well into my fourth beer watching this on youtube. I snap some photos. OK. I saw a huge beautiful bird of prey in the wild. Now for the four hour bus ride back to the hotel. Not so fast champ. There are still a bevy of uninteresting stops to make including hotsprings (which the Israelis on the bus boycott and inspires everyone else to follow suit. Politics aside, I love the Israelis) and an overpriced lunch. Again the Israelis boycott. I hate being dropped off in a tourist trap restaurant on a tour. I am paying for the tour. Don´t try to mooch extra from me. We watch to the town center and have a very good authentic Peruvian lunch for a third of the tourist buffet price. Enough with the cheesy tours. On to Ecuador.

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