Chivay is a small town that we stayed in so that we could visit the Colca Canyon. Most women seem to wear traditional dress and the children wander the streets with a small lamb, goat or Alpaca wanting money for you to take a photo of them. We visited the Colca Canyon which has some spectacular scenery and saw a few condors. There are also Thermal Baths in Chivay so we spent an hour or so lazing in the hot water. One night in a resturant we tried guinea-pig and llama.

Our next stop was supposed to be in Raqchi where we were to stay in the home of a local family but that all changed!! We heard from another overland truck that there were farmers protesting about 30kms before Raqchi with a road blockade, but as it is the only main road we decided that would try to get through and hope it was all over by the time we got there. Unfortunately it was not, we caught up with a large queue of trucks that were unable to turn around but there were rumours that it was going to finish so we turned around and pulled over in a convenient place to get the kettle out and make a brew. An hour later the trucks had moved on and we made our way through a number of broken down blockades (piles of rocks) spread over a few miles. Again we caught up with the queue of trucks so we waited in line, nothing moved for ages so we got out the cooking equipment and had some spaggetti while we waited. Martin was outside and felt some tear gas that got blown up by the wind. What had been a peaceful protest then started to turn a little ugly, possibly as a result of the riot police using tear gas on the protesters. Shortly, an army of riot police came through escorting the vehicles from the other side, we were instructed to wait until they returned. A good number of the vehicles had smashed windscreens from the protesters hurling rocks at them. Our tour leaders were resigned to the fact that the truck was going to get a bit smashed so we hung blankets at some of the windows and got prepared to duck under tables or into the middle to get away from the windows. What we didn´t realise was that in the absence of the police the farmers had got reinforcements and rebuilt the blockade a little furthur back, while the women hid in the ditches (all in traditional dress!) rocks in hand. After the police returned we advanced slowly to the point of the trouble until we could hear shouting and breaking glass from vehicles in front. The large vehicles couldn´t turn around and were like sitting ducks as they couldn´t get through the blockade, but we were able to turn around and get out of there.

We returned to the place we had stopped at earlier and set up camp in the dark at 10pm. The altitude was 4200m and there was frost on our tents the next morning. We left at 6am after hearing the road was open again but just as we reached the main blockade over 50 farmers had re-gathered and started to rebuild it. There were many blockades over about 30 miles and the main danger was getting stuck between them and being unable to escape. They were standing there rocks in hand and one did aim at us but it missed. Luckily there was one road open that wasn´t blocked so we quickly took it, we were able to get through to Cusco on dirt roads through the mountains and on the way met loads of riot police heading back to the trouble.