Colca Canyon!

From Puno (nearest aiport Juliaca) we flew to Arequipa, Peru´s second largest city. We arrived in Arequipa early evening so didn´t really have chance to explore before heading out to dinner. The hostel we had booked into is our cheapest yet (at $18 per night for the two of us) but probably has the friendliest atmosphere for travellers and good facilities too.

The day after our arrival saw us being collected at 5.30am and taken to the bus station ready for our trip to the Colca Canyon. It has to be said that we were very sceptical about the trip (supposedly a combination of four days trekking/biking) as information had been very scarce. Nevertheless, after over a week of being typical tourists and doing the sightseeing thing we were looking forward to being ´active´ again and decided to make the best of whatever would be thrown at us. We needn´t have worried, however, the trip turned out to be one of the highlights of the of our time in Peru and we enjoyed every minute.

From Arequipa the journey to Cabanaconde took almost 6 hours and was fairly uncomfortable at times due to the number of people the bus driver let onto the bus. At one point I thought that Ian was going to have half a dozen Peruvian women sat on his lap! Once there, we were met by our guide and during lunch at his house, introduced to the other 4 people in our group - a Canadian couple and a Spanish couple. That afternoon we walked for about 4 hours down into the canyon, wondering all the time how long it was going to take us to walk back out! Our guide, Remi, did not speak particularly good English but we managed to get by - our spoken Spanish does not seem to have improved much but we are now able to understand far more than we can communicate. The ´hostel´ we stayed in on the first night was very basic - a bamboo style hut containing a simple wooden framed bed and blankets. We were all surprised to find there was a solar powered shower for us to share amd that the kitchen sold beer - though at 9 soles a bottle it was the most expensive we have come across! The next morning was spent walking through small villages in the canyon before arriving at our next stop, which even had a swimming pool. The afternoon was spent relaxing by the pool before heading to bed early as we were being woken at 2am to walk out of the canyon.

The climb out of the canyon took around 3 hours, covering almost 1200m of ascent. It was a fairly easy climb, only really made difficult by the fact that it was dark but given that we have been used to climbing at much higher altitude recently, it was quite nice to be able to go uphill at a reasonable pace and breathe at the same time! Once we reached the top we had breakfast at the guide´s house before boarding a bus to Cruz del Condor, where we spent an hour watching several condors glide through the canyon. It was quite a spectacular hour as at times they flew very close to our heads and neither of us had realised quite how big they are.

Waiting for us at the Cruz del Condor was our biking guide, Pedro. From there he took us on the 42km ride to Chivay, where we would spend the night. The ride was along a VERY bumpy track, with a mixture of up and down. Great fun but we both had sore bums by the time we reached Chivay. I think it has to be blogged that all of this (climbing out of canyon and biking to Chivay) was done BEFORE lunchtime so by this point we were feeling fairly shattered. Luckily for us, there are some hot springs 4km away from Chivay, so we were able to spend the afternoon relaxing in them which was pure bliss! The hotel arranged for us was also quite posh so it was a real afternoon and evening of luxury.

The next day was spent doing more biking before heading back to Chivay to catch the bus back to Arequipa, arriving early evening. All in all, we had an amazing trip to the canyon, really unexpected considering that before we went, I am ashamed to say we were starting to look forward to going home!