Colca Canyon

Day 1: Flight of the Condors

A group of us, my roommate Felicity from England, two friends across the hall, Vanessa and Maricia from North Carolina, and the new guy Michael from England and myself went to the Colca Canyon this weekend. We took an uncomfortable and freezing cold 1am bus to Cruz del Condor, about 4-ish hours away on the edge of the canyon where you watch condors enjoy the drafts of wind and soar with their giant wings. We all bought stretch gloves with llama designs to look good and beat the cold.

After this we hopped a bus to Cabanaconde and began our adventure down down down one of the deepest canyons in the world, using a map our fellow friend Emily from Australia made for us from her previous adventure. After hours and hours and hours of going down gravelly slidey rock zig zag paths, and pausing for much water and the occasional picnic, we made it to the bottom with sore calves and blisters on the toes (not me, I wore my Keen sandles). Only one casualty, I fell on my left leg and scraped and bruised it, but survived. Then we crossed a bridge over Rio Colca and climbed climbed to San Juan to a delightfully ghetto hostel, Casa de Rivelo. Wonderful food, only 10 soles (a little of 3 dollars) for supper and a bed.

Day 2: The Oasis

We started day 2 with a quick breakfast and some general directions from the lovely hostel owner. 'Sube y plano' = 'go up and then straight.' So, we headed off in a general direction and guessed which way to head when paths split. We did pretty well. I am TERRIBLE at climbing up in high altitudes, and probably in general. But we made it to the flat path and passed through a couple of small villages. Pretty pleasant. We went down again to spend the night in the Oasis, an area at the bottom with several hostels that all have natural pools. Oh what joy and motivation! And we made it as quick as possible (still took several hours) and found a quaintly ramshackle hostel named Eden close to the path up (for day 3) with a beautiful pool. I swam for at least 2 hours straight. At this hostel I met two friendly Israelis, travelling after their time in the service, and a delightful 'true' English gentleman named John, who provided great conversation. He's one of my favorite acquaintances from this trip. We had dinner by candlelight (no electricity) and I adored the thousands upon thousands of stars shining down.

Day 3: Mules.

I realized that uphill is not the way for me to go, so I rented a mule for 35 soles, as did the Israeli girl. My friends began hiking at 5am to beat the heat of the day, I started at 6.30 by mule. Mules are the children of horse and donkey, the only animal sturdy enough for the zig zag path up and down the mountain. It was very helpful on my 'trek' up. Although, they enjoy walking close to the edge of the path, so I had great but frightening views of the steep canyon. My group was at the top before me, and we enjoyed the view then returned to Cabanaconde where our bus failed to show up (don't worry, we didn't pay for tickets) and we missed a local one, so we had 2 extra ours to bum so we found a tranquil spot and just relaxed. We unfortunately didn't have time for Chivay and the hot springs, though, so I was bummed. We returned to Arequipa by an even worse bus (Andalucia) but saw beautiful terrain and llamas in between. Felicity also helped me with my British English vocab, to be posted later. We celebrated homecoming with showers and pizza.