Yet another early wake up!

Our alarms went off almost as soon as we’d gone to bed and before we knew it we were in a minibus winding our way north towards Colca Canyon. The road is incredibly windy and Hoff soon wasn’t feeling too well with all the curves. Breakfast perked her up a bit but others in our group were also feeling the effects of both the altitude and the road, and a few were sick. I bet they weren’t looking forward to two days of walking! We finally made it to our drop off, via a viewpoint where we watched a couple of condors riding the thermals and purchased a couple of ‘genuine’ llama items of clothing from a roadside vendor.

The route for the first day was essentially all down hill. It sounded like a relatively easy 17km – 11 before lunch and 6 afterwards – but we were soon sweating away as we descended into the second deepest canyon in the world. The going was tough on knees and lungs, and the rocky path meant that we were constantly slipping and loosing our footing. The drops were big so it was sketchy in places, and we were pretty pleased to reach the river at the bottom after a good couple of hours of hard graft. There we ended up having to wait for an hour as one of our group was carrying an injury and was very slow. They finally arrived, just as water and snack supplies were running low, and we hastily made for our lunch spot to recharge and refuel.

Lunch was the usual quinoa vegetable soup combo followed by alpaca mince, which was actually pretty tasty. We got ripped off for a bottle of water – they had a monopoly and plenty of thirsty hikers desperate for hydration – then got on our way to the oasis that was to be our overnight stop. Our guide stopped every few minutes to show us a new plant. Most were used medicinally by the locals; some more recreationally! Apparently there is only one doctor for all the the local villages and the nearest hospital was back in La Paz so a lot of self medication goes on!

It was a relatively easy hike and we were soon at our hostel. It wasn’t the most glamorous of abodes – our room was essentially a bed in a mud shack and we ate dinner underneath a tarpaulin lean too type shelter, but we were all hungry and thirsty, and tired after the day of walking, so aided with a beer we all got an early night, as we had yet another early morning the next day.

At 0345 the next day we were dragging ourselves out of bed and into our sweaty clothes again to start the hike back up the canyon. As the saying goes when canyon hiking, what goes down must come up and we had a 7km uphill slog ahead of us. The plan was to get it done before the sun came up and made the climb unbearable, hence the early start. We were soon puffing away and the hillside was a crocodile of other groups also making their ways back up to the top. Some of our group shot off ahead of us but we decided to play the slow and steady card, and we soon caught them all further up the hill. A tough, thing burning couple of hours later and we emerged at the top, group winners (not that that matters really but the strategy paid off). The views were pretty special as the sun was just coming up, but we were too hungry for breakfast to stay for long. We grabbed a piece of banana cake from an entrepreneurial local who had set up shop at the top and who was doing a roaring trade in energy drinks and chocolate bars, then went into town to get a proper meal.

The sun was now beating down and after the usual eggs and coffee that is the staple Peruvian breakfast, it was back on the bus to Arequipa. As is the way with coach rides, pretty soon every one was nodding off, and, save for a quick stop off to take some photos at a high spot viewpoint on the way back (at 4,600m), we were soon back in the city. We checked into our hotel again and went out for a pasta supper – carb reloading – then went back to pack our bags for yet another early get up. Our bus to Cusco was leaving early the next day and we’d be up in darkness once more to continue our trip south. Cusco was to be our base for the next trekking adventure – the Salkantay trail to Machu Picchu – but I’ll hand you over to Hoff again for the first part of that.