Colca Canyon

As planned, my group from the Loki hostel in Cusco rolled into Arequipa on Tuesday morning and took over a little hostel near the plaza. Myself and one other in the group were on a different bus than everyone else, and so there was a little confusion initially over where I was trying to go, but by midmorning we'd found them and set up a tour for 110 soles.... amazing price thanks to Nathan's haggling.

We bummed around Arequipa for the day... I see why people fall in love with it. While activity-wise there's not an awful lot to do other than the canyon around the city, the city itself deserves some credit. It's beautiful. Most of the buildings are white-washed volcanic stone, painted all sorts of colours down the streets and in the Plaza des Armas, kept gorgeously, glowingly white. What a pretty plaza. It's a pity I didn't get to spend more time in this city, it was a treat.

Bedtime came early and then morning came earlier... remember in my last post when I declared that I would never again wake before 4 am? I lied.

I got up at 2:55.

I am not kidding.

It's a 4 hour drive to the canyon, plus breakfast at 6 or so, and the condors that nest around the deepest point only fly in the early to mid morning. Thus, we woke up at 3 and slept in the bus on the way there. We were rewarded by 3 condors soaring through the canyon - one of the deepest in the world. The birds were beautiful, hardly bothering to flap. And from that high up, they almost look small.

The first day's hike wasn't too bad... mostly down the canyon's side, which can be perilous only because of the excessive amounts of dust on the trail. A few of us slipped and fell, but never over the edge. We spent the night in a tiny village at the bottom and split two bottles of rum between 12 of us. (We'd bought them at the top because its cheaper and carted them down... we'll call this dedication. Ha.) Nicely drunk, we were still in bed by 10.

Day two was your basic Peruvian flat hike... up and down and up and down along the side of the canyon. Slippery still, but manageable. By noon we were at the canyon 'oasis,' a little resort with a swimming pool, wood huts and a bar at the bottom of the canyon. Perfect. We spent the day lounging in the sun and learning card games from each other.

At night we had a bonfire and more rum. The bartender decided to teach me how to drink like a Peruvian. You take a shot, count to 8, breath three times and THEN you get your pisco and sprite. And when you are doing this at the bottom of the world's deepest canyon, you take your shot of rum out of a bowl. Because sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

He also gave me recipes for Peruvian food and for pisco sours. Amazing.

Again, we stumbled to bed drunk before midnight, only to be woken up at 5 for the hardest part of the whole trek: a three hour up-the-mountain climb to be done before breakfast because if you wait too long, it's just too hot to even bother.

And so for the second time in a week, I climbed a mountain before breakfast. It's almost become routine, really. (Kidding... oh my god my thighs hurt...) In reality it was one of the hardest things I've done on this trip, only partly because of the mild hangover.

About half way up I banded together with one of the Aussie girls in the group and we managed to keep each other going the whole way up... although by the last third we'd essentially stopped talking and just moved to grunting and swearing because we didnt have the energy for words anymore. We did well, in the end. We set a good pace for each other and managed to power through the agony, and we made it up the canyon in two and a half hours, so better than average.

After breakfast we drove to a hot springs, where we basked for an hour and showered (VERY necessary), ate lunch at a buffet (the most full I've been in weeks...) and then drove back to Arequipa.

Instead of staying friday night, we all just hopped on a night bus. Most of the group got off in Ica this morning (If any of you see this, I miss you already!!!!) And myself, Nathan and one other went through to Lima. They went past Lima to Mancora this morning, leaving me on my own again... I'll miss you, my favourite Essex boy!

It was neat to spend so much time with one group of people. I haven't had that my whole trip and it was a welcome change, especially as this group had a fantastic dynamic. Everyone was constantly joking and playing around, keeping the atmosphere light and easy... except when food was late or skimpy, but that's just natural. Ha.

So now I'm in Lima, in the Point hostel by the ocean. I'll be here until I fly out monday night.

S.