Canyon de Colca

Sorry, no internet access last night, so I was unable to update you on our travels.

Friday:

Woke up to catch a 3:45 a.m. tour bus with our guide, Miguel. We took a roughly 5 hr bus ride from Arequipa to Cruz del Condors, where there are two awesome observation points to see condors flying around. We saw 7 there, and a couple later in the day. They were incredibly graceful, riding the thermals within 15 ft of our heads. We grabbed some amazing breakfast - rice, spaghetti with alpaca meat, and salsa picante, which is this amazing salsa that seems to be strangely made mostly of chopped onion.

At around 10:30 a.m., we were dropped off on the side of the road near Cobanaconde to begin our hike. The beginning part of the trail was an 8 km descent down the South face of the canyon that ended at a bridge crossing the Colca river. Evan and Everett basically flew down the mountain, and I ended up reaching the bridge 20 minutes after them. 2 minutes later, Miguel said ¨¡Vamanos!¨ and I had to exhaustedly trudge after them uphill to hike past some farmland on the way to lunch, which was at a hostel. Lunch was some noodle soup with corn, and a plate of rice with a pepper stuffed with alpaca meat and tomato. At this point, I was already quite tired, and it was only later that we realized that on the 3 day trek, people stayed at this hostel. However, since we were pressed for time in Arequipa, we had to do a 2 day trek, which meant an additioal 3 km of hiking.

The first 20 minutes of this next phase were steep uphill switchbacks, followed by roughly 2 km of more flat walking. There were a number of times that, as we balanced on an aqueduct wall with nothing to our left, that a slight misstep could result in horrible injury, or even death. We passed by a couple pueblitos, and stopped at a little museum where we learned about local traditions and ways of life of the natives, and got to try some chicha, an alcoholic beverage made from corn. They also showed us some taxodermy of animals that live nearby. We passed by an ancient crater that was caused by a volcanic explosion - it is now a very wide area used for farmland. The final descent was about 0.5 km, and we were spurred on by the view of Paraiso, the group of hostels where we were staying for the night. From the top, you could see the tall palm trees, beautiful blue lagoon-like pools, and small huts.

I am not sure which particular hostel we stayed at.. Paraiso, Oasis... but it was such a relief to finally stop walking. It is a shame that it was around 5:30 when we finally arrived, and too cold to enjoy the pool. Dinner was some kind of chicken soup with noodles and cheese. We ate with a very nice Australian woman who was in her late 40s. Her kids had just grown up, she just finished her Bachelor´s in English, and was fulfilling a lifelong dream to travel South America, which she was doing largely by herself. Her independence and wandering spirit were very inspiring.

Later, I will have post pictures of where we slept for the night - a tiny bungalo with three beds, bamboo walls (that you could see quite well through), and a palm leaf roof. As I was falling asleep in the super warm blankets that they gave us, all I could think of was, ¨what were those parasites that we learned about that fall from palm leaf roofs?¨I woke up in the middle of the night and walked outside in the courtyard for a bit. It was such a breath-taking sight to see the constellations burning brightly and the full moon filling the entire canyon with a blue glow.

I must make a note about poor Miguelangel.. his job already entailed hiking with us all that way and teaching us along the way, and at every meal stop, he was supposed to serve us the food, even though he was just as tired as the rest of us. That night, he snagged us the last bungalo in the valley, and I still don´t know if he ever managed to find a place to sleep last night.

Saturday:

We started hiking out of the canyon at 6:45 a.m. The return trip was 7 km back up the South side of the canyon, uphill switchbacks the entire way. I fell a little farther behind this morning than the previous day - I had pulled a leg muscle and had a sore throat (which is almost gone, thankfully), but I think Everett and Evan would have still blown past me even if I had been 100%. They made it up the top in about 2 hrs, and it took me about 2 hrs and 50 minutes. There was a point where I was sitting in the shade, eating one of my remaining oranges, and staring at how little water I had left, that I am definitely the hobbit of the group - slow, small, and always hungry. After the summit, we had about 10 minutes of flat walking to the breakfast location, where we had fried eggs and bread buns. As we sat waiting for the bus, I discovered a pretty ugly blister on my fourth right toe - hopefully it will be fully healed by the time we start the Inca Trail.

The rest of the trip was mostly sitting in a bus, with some stops at notable places on the way back to Arequipa. We stopped for an hour at a hot spring bathhouse, where the pools are heated with water from the Mt. Misty volcano... it was very refreshing, and it was nice to get a shower in, too.

We are now finally back at the hostel Koala, where Evan had been worried that he had lost this absolutely ridiculous orange alpaca hat that he bought on Thursday. The guy at the desk pulled it from their lost and found, and thought that the hat was so hilarious that he took a picture of Evan wearing it with his phone.

Ok, time for a quick dinner, and then tomorrow we are going to catch a 5 a.m. bus to Puno, to see Lake Titicaca.