Colca

We headed up to Colca, a valley about 2.5 hours northeast of Arequipa, on Monday, June 23 in the evening. We rode in the same truck, but with a different employee named Modesto. He works in the Colca agency, which is located in Chivay. We stayed in Chivay most of the week, travelling to the cities each day where we carried out our focus groups. The 4 days that we worked here were very similar to the 4 that we worked in Tambo the previous week. On Tuesday we held our discussion in a large communal building of Chivay. Wednesday, we travelled 2 hours to a small city named Callalli, holding our discussion and then heading back to Chivay. On Thursday we drove to a town called Cabanaconde, two hours along a steep canyon road, with beautiful scenery on the valley hills. About 30 minutes before arriving at Cabanaconde, we stopped and took pictures at the Cañón del Colca, claimed to be the deepest canyon in the world. It certainly was deep and steep. We stayed that night in Cabanaconde, and then drove the next day to Huambo, our last city for doing focus groups.

Aren't we good looking?
Terraced farmland.
Looking down into the Cañón.
Pretty cool terraced farmland.
Highlights from Colca include two trips to two different hot springs. There are a lot of hot springs in the area because of the volcanic activity (obviously, I guess), and they were enjoyable. The first was on the evening of the day we got there, and the second trip was on Saturday morning, when Cam Nelson, Kirk Dearden, (a friend of ours, former BYU professor in charge of this very internship, and current Boston University professor doing research in Lima), and I all woke up at 4:30 am to head to the hot springs. It was early, but we got to see the stars and then watch the sky get brighter and brighter with the sunrise. Then, later that morning, we took another visit to the Cañón de Colca so that Kirk could see it. I don't know about the deepest canyon in the world, though... They say that from the top of the mountain next to it down to the bottom of the canyon is a 3,500 foot drop or so. They say it's twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.
A condor, definitely one of the symbols of the culture there.
Hey, corn!
After hiking partway down the canyon.
This week in Colca was interesting, and somewhat joyous for us in the sense of being able to finish up all the focus group discussions we had planned. I said in an earlier post that they were great tools, but required a lot of work. I stick with that! So it was a good experience to spend three weeks doing them, but it certainly was a lot of work carrying them out and then expanding our notes on them afterwards. We did 48 focus group discussions total.

After visiting the Cañón, we took an afternoon bus back to Arequipa and spent the night there with Kirk. On Sunday, June 29, we attended church, and in the evening watched a movie called "Something the Lord Made" (I think), about the first open heart surgeries to help "blue babies." It was also the story of the assistant of the doctor who became famous for the surgeries, who (the assistant) was black and not allowed to become a doctor himself. It took place in the 1950's, I believe. It was a very interesting movie.