Colca Canyon
Trip Start
Feb 25, 2007
1
27
72
Trip End
Aug 25, 2007
Arequipa, Peru
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Next morning we got picked up an hour late for our 2 day tour to the Colca Canyon, we are becoming used to this sort of lateness now, it's pretty much a given that everything is about half an hour later than it says. We got on a minibus with mostly old american and irish people, but 2 young dutch guys who turned out to be a right laugh. Our guide was really good and very knowledgable, but after about 5 minutes driving we had to stop. The main road to the Canyon and onwards to Puno, Cusco, Bolivia, basically anywhere east, was blocked by the locals in a large sprawling poor area on the edge of Arequipa. They aren't happy with thr price they have to pay for a bus ticket into Arequipa apparently. Anyway the road was blocked with rocks and we couldn't pass. policeman came over and our guide told him what we were doing, so he bought a big bottle of fanta (our guide had to pay) from a woman selling on the street, and said that it would work as a bribe. So he went off to the guys and offered them the bottle of fanta and they seemed pretty happy to let us through. The first day involved quite a lot of driving in the minibus but we made lots of stops, mostly with awesome views of the surrounding mountains and volcanoes and the road reaches 4,900m at one viewpoint so is really impressive to travel along. We stopped to see the wild Vecunas, like Alpachas and llamas but smaller and not farmed. We also stopped at a little llama farm, were there was a small pen made of stone walls, and 15 or so llamas in it, in a field, with a small hut at the edge where a family live. There was a tiny boy standing at the gap in the pen walls keeping the llamas in, when one escaped he ran and rounded it up. We went over to say hello and the dutch guy asked him how old he was, he was 3. After a while his brothers came running over once they realised there were tourists - some of the other people had fruit and little gifts which they gave to pretty much every kid they saw.
We spent the night in a place called Chivay, in the Colca Valley just before it becomes the canyon. Its a beautiful setting and a nice little town, us and the dutch boys were in the cheapest option hotel, which was freezing at night and we were kind of unprepared - only flip flops as footwear. We had some food and some locals played perucian music. At about 5 we went to the natural hot springs just outside the town. They were amazing and our experience was somewhat more enjoyable because one of the dutch blokes had forgotted his swimming stuff so had to go in his skimpy boxers, it was hilarious. The temperature is between 38 and 40 degrees, it was lovely and the setting was amazing, with mountains either side and the evening sunchine making the rock faces glow orange. It smelt a bit of sulphur though. We went to the 'highest irish pub in the world' at 3,6500m in Chivay for a few beers and some pool with our dutch mates.
We were woken up at 5 and had our 'continental breakfast', which included camomile tea and bread rolls.
We got to the Cruz del Condor, in the heart of the Colca Canyon itself about 8.30, the views were amazing, the pre inca and inca terracing which shapes the majority of the land around the canyon makes a really interesting site and the canyon itself is awesome, plumetting seemingly forever beneeath the 'Cruz' viewpoint. We waited for about 20 minutes and were really lucky to catch a group of about 9 condors, catching the updraft and gradually ascending out of the canyon, apprently off to look for food, as they do eveyr morning. We had condors with 3m wingspans gliding literally 10m above our heads, they fly up to heights of up to 7000m! It was an incredible sight, we spent about an hour and a half there and got some amazing pictures.
Came back here to our hostel to get our bags and chill out until our bus to Ica which leaves at 8.30. Unfortunately i have just spent about half an hour going through the 999 possible combinaitoins on my combination lock on my bag because somehow, when locking it up on friday morning, admittedly i wasn't fully awake, i must have reset it.
It's all good, i found the combination. Off for some food. x
