Colca Canyon

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  Arequipa, Peru
Monday, September 1, 2008

Today I woke up nice and early, at around 7am, after a really, really nice good sleep. I slept at least a good 8 or 9 hours, nice and cozy within my little cot in my little room. I'm not sure who said Arequipa was going to be cold at night... but whatever. So far so good. Now I'm in my personal room (not sure how that worked out, since we were supposed to get double rooms) and was downloading the days pics and now writing up a bit real quick before we head out to eat at a restaurant near the plaza de armas.

A note on the translation into Spanish of every entry... I'm getting really lazy and I might not keep on doing it, sorry! We'll just have to see what happens. (Una nota sobre la traduccion a espaniol de cada entrada... Me estoy volviendo bastante flojo y quizas ya no lo siga hacienda, disculpen! Vamos a ver que pasa.. pueden usar un traductor online como google translate :p)

So anyways, the day started out pretty crazy since a little yellow tico taxi ran into our bus on an intersection where we (I'm guessing) had the right of way. It barely did anything to the bus, but of course we had to wait around for about 30 or 40 minutes for the police and all that kind of stuff.

So then we headed out of Arequipa further into the Andes, going up to a maximum heigh of about 4700 meters (maybe 4900, I don't remember well). We saw lots of vicunas along the way and random other animals and the scenery was gorgeous, as usual, with huge mountains and volcanoes around us, sprinkled with snow around their peaks.

hiking...

We went hiking from a small town near Chivay for about an hour and a half which was also very nice, and I was able to get some pretty nice pictures and there was an absolutely adorable little girl with her mom in traditional Chivay clothing. Obviously used to the cameras, as she posed away, and then you're supposed to give a little bit of change in exchange for the photo-op. Usually I absolutely refuse, but I fell in love with the girl and gave her a little bit.

Then we went to the hot springs, which were really nice after the hike and riding around most of the day. Oh, for those that might want to know prices (as I usually do), the entrance fee into the Chivay area is 35 soles for foreigners, and 17.50 soles for Peruvians. Then, I paid 23 USD for the 2-day tour (which includes this (for me) really posh hotel). At the current exchange rate, that came out to about 69 Soles. Then, we also stopped before hiking at a buffet restaurant which was 20 soles, but I rolled my eyes at Cesar, our guide, and he got it down to 10 soles for me, which was nice. You're not forced to eat there, but they did have some pretty good food, including some Alpaca meatballs which were really good. What else... Oh the hot springs (totally worth it) were 10 soles. That's about it for today, other than my 7 pieces of Andean bread for 1 sol, and some water which is usually 1 sol per bottle; I refuse to pay the tourist 1.50 or(god forbid) 3 soles in the restaurants price.

Anywho, it's about that time for me to head out and meet with everyone else at the Plaza de Armas and then go to a restaurant that has some kind of folkloric show. We'll see how expensive that place is, but I'm sure it'll be nice.

Till' next time.

Note: Travelpod is being really fussy about me uploading pics to my travelpod account, so for those who haven't seen them on facebook (like my mom, etc.), you can see the pictures from my facebook account in the following link.

CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS

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adorable girl in the canyon

little girl

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