All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So Bob Knickerbocher, Peter Fegan (an American dominican student spending the year studying here with the dominicans) and I took a day off and hiked one of the three volcanoes here, Chachani. It was a beautiful, sunny day (as always), and I was the only one with a hat. A splendid sunburn was had by all.
This first picture is of the road up on the mountain. We took a cab as far as he would take us, to the edge of town, then we started walking. We probably walked eight miles up the side of the mountain on this road. At the beginning was a very strange ghost town. All of these little (10 ft x 12 ft) stone houses, fairly new but abondoned for the most part. Sign welcomed us to "Los Pioneros".
The middle picture shows the houses lined up along the road,
and the third picture is a closeup of one of them with Misti (the main volcano) in the background. The brothers in Arequipa had never heard of Los Pioneros, but couldn't decide if it was a "government reform gone wrong" or a place where poor people live who are all gone all day in the city working and don't own anything so it just looks abandoned. Given my lack of Spanish and their lack of aquantance with Los Pioneros, I thought it best to just drop the subject.
The Chili River cuts between the volcanoes and through the middle of Arequipa, opening up a wide swath of lush farmland. In the photo at te left, you can see the contrast to the surrounding area that irrigation can make.
Though it was winter in the dry dessert, Chachani yet had many flowers.
More signs of hope in a land that can be both beautiful and barren.
