Madrigal: Crossing the Canyon

The trip the picarones were going to pay for was to the village of Madrigal, located on the other side of Colca Canyon between Huambo and Chivay.  Paula, my comadre, is from Madrigal and wanted to return home to celebrate the festival of the Virgin of Candelaria on the 26th and 27th.  (The festival is usually celebrated on February 2nd, but Madrigal, a town known for its musical talent, celebrates the week before so the musicians can play at bigger cities' celebrations the following week.)

Paula and the rest of the knitters who were coming along decided we'd meet at the bus terminal at 6:00 Thursday morning, but -- no surprise -- they hadn't actually checked the bus schedule to find out that the bus leaves at 5:30, and then didn't arrive until 6:30.  Once they confirmed that there were no more buses to Madrigal that day, they managed to find a private van driven by our new best friend Leo, who was accompanied by his two teenagers.  Everyone piled into the van, the ladies donned their Colca hats, and we were off.

 

First stop: breakfast.  While Leo took his time sitting down to dine at the Arequipeñan equivalent of a truck stop diner, we wandered off in search of the kiwi-like fruit of the sancallo cactus plant.  Kati, Victoria's daughter, poses above next to the spiky giant.  Below, Sebastiana uses a stick to carefully scrape the spines off the peel of the fruit.

 

The cactus also boasts these gorgeous white flowers:

Once everyone was back on the bus we headed on towards Chivay to stop at the thermal baths.  After last year's episode I decided to sit this one out, but I did get close enough to take the photo below of the stand where Lexi and I had bought our one-size-fits-all swimsuits.

After the baths, we wandered into town to eat lunch and take some photos next to the famous wititi statues.  

At this point we'd already managed to convince our driver to stick around several hours longer than he'd initially planned, and by the time we finished lunch the ladies had cajoled him into taking us the rest of the way to Madrigal as well.  

Feeling quite lucky, we made our way over the river from Chivay to the other side of the canyon.  The bridge above was Incan or pre-Incan, depending on who you asked, and I was happy to admire it from a distance as we crossed on a more modern version.