27 May 2006....Cañon de Palca

The triple peaked Illimani tops out at 6439 metres

Lynne says...

The Cordillera Real (Royal Range) is a range of mountains in the Bolivian Altiplano. Every now and again, between the high rise buildings of La Paz, we could catch a glimpse of its snow-capped peaks. The highest is Nevado Illimani at 6439m and as we began our hike to the Cañon de Palca we were treated to a fantastic view of this huge mountain.


This track took us down into the Cañon with Nevado Illimani dominating the skyline

As we continued down an old Inca track we passed several small communities of rural farmers eeking out a living from the mountainside. For a while we followed two young boys guiding a sheep with a rope and stick; a couple of tiny girls sat huddled in the doorway of an adobe dwelling and were full of shy smiles as we waved at them.

After an hour or so we descended into the Cañon itself. Its red sandstone pillars towered on either side and a small river meandered between the rocks and boulders. We are in the dry season at the moment so the river was a mere trickle. Ridges along the walls indicated just how much the water level rises during the rainy months - walking along the Cañon at this time would be completely impossible.

I´ve always wanted to go the the Grand Canyon in the States and I can only imagine this is a much smaller version of what it would be like. At points the walls towered at least 100 metres above us. We walked at a leisurely pace for around an hour before the walls of the canyon grew smaller and we took a track to the left.


The dry river bed lead us between the walls of the Cañon for about 2km

After a small climb we were rewarded with a view across farmland in a neighbouring valley. Far below a much bigger river flowed and we could just about make out a man panning for gold. A lovely local lady carrying freshly cut flowers in the customary colourful cloth smiled at us in greeting as we passed her.

Our hike finished in a tiny village called Palca. We sat down on a bench in the main plaza and watched the locals going about their daily business. A mini-bus to La Paz pulled in just as we arrived but we made the fateful decision to have some lunch and wait for the next one - a decision that we would come to regret as we ended up waiting nearly four hours for the next bus.

Lesson number one: Always catch the first bus out of a tiny village in Bolivia or you could be stuck there for hours.

The women in the village were all wearing significantly more colourful versions of their usual traditional dress. Men, women and children kept disappearing into a doorway in front of us. I asked a couple of local men what was going on and they replied by saying "El Dia de Madre" - the Bolivian equivalent of Mothering Sunday (even though it was a Saturday).

My curiosity got the better of me and I walked through the doorway to take a look. It turned out to be a school playground and a few hundred adults were sitting watching a small group of girls in traditional dress performing a dance - a teacher in a white coat was encouraging them to stay in time. The celebrations continued all afternoon with various groups of adults and children performing traditional dances in colourful costumes accompanied by the inevitable out of tune brass band.


Ladies in traditional Bolivian dress watch the El dia de Madre celebrations in Palca (Bowler hat salesman just out of shot)

We´d arrived in the village at 12.30pm but we didn´t leave until after 4pm. I´d enjoyed watching the village celebrations so perhaps it wasn´t such a bad thing that we´d decided to wait for the next bus.


Local children in Palca