Treking the Colca canyon with the Swiss brainsurgeon and the Canadian bus driver
I wasn’t too sure what I was getting myself in for with this trek, we were walking down into this canyon and back up again. Sounded not too hard but it is at 3400 meters or something. The bus on the way there goes over this road that gets to 4900m, its kind of weird being that high and you can really feel it. Anyway in our trekking group there was Oliviae (spelt something,like that) who was a Swiss brain surgeon and Carmen the bus driver from Canada and our guide, who was super cool. It took about 6 hours on the bus there but we drove through this really amazing country side with all these women dressed in traditional colourful Peruvian clothes. It was pretty cool.
We had lunch at this village and drunk coca tea. Geto, our guide was really great and explained heaps of stuff to us about the canyon and the villages. We started the trek down to this village which took about 5 hours. The canyon is huge, much deaper than the grand canyon in the states but it was caused by an earthquake rather than water errosion or something. Because the rainy season is just finishing it was really green and amazing views. There is a huge river that runs through the bottom of it which you can go rafting on when its not so high. Around the canyon are these Condor birds which are like big eagles, we had 1 fly right passed us which was pretty cool. When I work out how to do it I will put some photos up.
We spent the night at this village at the bottom of the canyon. It was cool just hanging out in the middle of all this mountains, eating good food and talking about dating in Peru! We set off the next day and stopped at the next village where a guy there grows oranges, avocados, and had honey bees. We had some really nice cactus fruit, and had a bit of a tour around the garden. The track is around 1000 years old and has all these mules and donkeys going up it all the time. The only way to get to these villages is to walk in and out and everyone who lives there can actually walk it in 1/2 the time it takes us. After a couple of hours walking we stopped at the ¨oasis¨ which has these amazing fresh water swimming pools. After spending a few hours eating lunch and swimming it was time to trek out of the canyon, this is a 3 hour straight up hill walk which I wasn’t looking forward to too much. Carmen rode a mule up instead of walking but with the Inca trail coming up next week I thought I better walk it. It actually wasn’t too bad, the first 2 hours were sweet but then getting up in higher altitude and it started to get dark….but I did it in 3 hours and 15 mins so I was pretty stoked. Still have a few blisters and sunburnt shoulders but it was an amazing few days.
We had dinner and spent the night in the village at the top of the canyon. The next day we stopped at condor point to see bird. To be honest I don’t get super excited about birds and there were heaps of tourists around. Before catching the bus to Arequipa we went for a quick swim in the hot pools there, then back on the bus that goes to crazy altitudes. When we were up really high it was snowing and hailing and I was feeling a bit strange. This is becoming very long! anyway had dinner that night with our group in Arequipa then caught a night bus to Cusco to where I am now. On the bus I found a group of 4 backpackers from England so we are staying at a hostel here together. The bus ride was 10 hours and was actually awful. Did get any sleep and then almost passed out when we arrived.
Tags: Adventure, blogsherpa, Peru, trekking
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Wow sounds like good times, well at least far better times then still being over here.
Keep safe
Smithy