Colca Canyon

  Arequipa, Peru
Monday, August 11, 2008

So, for those that I have already emailed with, you know that I had an absolutely fantastic weekend hiking Colca Canyon Aug 1 - 3.  Colca is the deepest canyon in the world (not the largest) and is known particularly for the ability to easily view condor, which are the largest flying bird in the Western Hemisphere (aren´t I just full of fun facts?).  Colca is about 5 hours driving from Arequipa, which I visited for recently for about 2 weeks at the end of July & early August.  

5-1st day trekking Colca

Heading out to Colca is one of the main áctive´ to-dos near Arequipa, and since people know I am always craving some good active to-dos to offset my chocolate cake and general postres intake here in Peru, it was definitely on my list.

Entry note:  forgive me as the photos are out of order starting with the last night´s party first & the first day of hiking last.  They got uploaded backwards & it is really too tiring on slow computers to try to make any changes.

hiking 2nd day after Oasis

Per my Arequipa entry, I decided to do 1 more week of Spanish lessons in Arequipa and was able to meet some fabulous ladies there.  They had already planned to head off to Colca for 3 days and 2 nights of hiking and merriment, so I joined in with them.  The crew was Jody and Francesca from London, Sangeetha and Melanie from Sydney and then Karin and Veronica from Canada, who we had not met previously, but rounded us out to a great group of seven ladies.  Our two young male Peruvian guides were very pleased with this arrangement of an all female group.

4-day 2 hiking Colca Canyon

The canyon was beautiful, as the photos suggest.  As with much of Peru, particularly because it is the dry season, the higher altitudes of the canyon were very dry; as we hiked down into the canyon it became more lush and at the base of course, a river ran through it.  The scenary was not as awe-inspiring as the Lares trek that we did en route Machu Picchu, but the structure of the hike was more enjoyable, but still very challenging.

The first day we took the 5 hour public bus (versus little private tourist bus) to Cabanaconde, which is the one of the bigger towns on the rim of the canyon.  Maybe 1.5 hours into the ride the bus got a flat tire in the middle of nowhere (which looked sort of like we would imagine a moon with some vegetation); we were very impressed by how efficiently the tire was switched & we were on our way.

2-flat tire to start the Colca trek trip

After a lunch in Cabanaconde, we headed out for about 3.5-4 hours all down hill into the canyon.  Often I find that heading downhill is tougher than heading uphill because it is really tough on the knees, so this was a good challenging afternoon.  Just about dusk, we landed for our first night at a family home that had an extra building/room with 7 beds - perfecto for our group. 

Our evening started with a pre-dinner dance party with our host family children of ages about 6 and 1.5.  It was fantastic!  One of those really precious moments that just make you smile -- check out the little action video.

dance party with our host kids night 1 Colca

Dancing & clapping with little beautiful Peruvian kids - awesome!  The evening continued and calmed from there, with our guides making us some lovely dinner & treating us to a box of not so bad Peruvian wine.

2-post-dinner box wine party

The second day started with about 2 hours of hiking up and down along the river in the base of the canyon headed for a mid-day stop at the Oasis.  And the most glorious thing happened, the Oasis was actually an Oasis!  

4-the sign didn´t lie -- it was a real Oasis!

It was this great hostel development owned by 3 families that added multiple pools to the hostel about 5 years ago.  It was beautiful!  Palm trees, warm sun, cool water -- just really great.  So we swam, ate lunch per our guides/chefs, played cards and just relaxed.

6-day 2 hiking Colca Canyon

The really challenging part of day 2 was post Oasis, when we got to do our hike out of the canyon.  We had come down about 1100 meters (mas o menos 3300 feet), and therefore needed to head up that much to get back to Cabanaconde for that evening.  The tours give you an option of hiking out at 3 pm-ish (past the main heat of the day) on the 2nd day (like we did) or spending the night at the Oasis & getting up and hiking at 2 or 3 am in the dark to reach the rim at sunrise.  All the groups go to the condor overlook on the 3rd day, which is best in the morning, so you need to be at the rim ready to go by 6:30/7ish.  We were pretty excited about our strategy because we were looking forward to a night in a dive bar in a small Peruvian town & because the Oasis loses the fun of the sun by 4 pm since it is in a canyon.

11-day 2 hiking Colca Canyon

The hike up was a bit challenging you could say, but not as bad as I expected (I think I had been prepped to expect very challenging by the previous Lares trek).  I am a bit pleased to say that we did this trek without mules or porters to carry our stuff, so we each got to carry all that we needed (not food besides snacks - which the guides carried nor tents, but still somewhat impressive I thought).

1-sunset on hike out of Canyon

It was dark by the time we finished & unfortunately there was a new moon, so we were definitely hiking by the light of our headlamps --- which made the cliffs look a bit scarier of course.  We had some excitement when we reached the top, as we go lost in the dark for awhile -- maybe 15 minutes -- but it starts to feel like a long time when you start to contemplate how cold the night will be & how many snacks you have.  One of the guides and a couple of the ladies got a bit ahead of the crew & the rest of us were with the guide that had only been out on the trail 2 times before.  Fortunately we saw the flashlight of some locals crossing the fields, yelled out to them, got to their light & got back on the trail to get to town.

1-hiking at night in Colca

5-Colca party night, since we made it back up!

Clearly after such accomplishment, we needed a festive night out on the town.  And so, we enjoyed a few Pisco sours, some beers & lots of dancing -- salsa, reggatone, etc!  There was some helping behind the bar, playing DJ and dancing on tables.  Good, clean, Peruvian drinking fun!  The crew got along so well, we later repeated a night out in Arequipa (those pics are in my Arequipa entry).

13-Colca party night, since we made it back up!

The next morning came a bit early, but we needed to close out the circuit with a visit to the condor viewpoint.  I think we saw probably about 10 condors in an hour or so, which was really great.  I didn´t even try to capture any of them on pictures, because that never works, but imagine some really big birds in the beautiful canyon.  From the viewpoint, we hopped on the bus for a couple of hours to where we took our lunch break at some hot springs.  It was lovely again to have a mid-day break for splashing around.  And then back on the public bus, tourists, locals, lambs and all & we made our way back to Arequipa.

co-passengers

Can you tell I loved it!?