The Colca Canyon
PERU | Sunday, 22 June 2008 | Views [214] | Comments [1]
Our trip to Colca started bright and early at 5AM from Arequipa, where we boarded a public bus to reach our destination. Public buses, while cheap, can be pretty rough. The shocks on the bus are usually shot, which makes for a bumpy ride on the unpaved roads, and there is a good chance that there will be about 20 Peruvians standing in the aisles with bundles of bread and fruit. At least none of us had to hold a chicken. The bus aside, the ride from Arequipa to Cabanaconde was beautiful, and we were able to see llamas, alpacas and the rare vicunas in the wild.
The trek to Colca would not have been nearly as entertaining without our guides and group. Our guide from Land Adventures was Vladimir, who when quizzed about the origin of his non-Latin name, said his father was part of the communist party but that he himself was not one. His assistant was his uncle, David, who just happened to be going on the trek for the first time. While that may be cause for concern, David held his own. He literally was running up and down the canyon in jeans and Keds tennis shoes. I don't think I ever saw him sweating, and more than once I think I saw him laughing to himself as we huffed and puffed on our way up. The other travellers were a French couple, a Quebecois couple, Barbara, our South African friend from school, Sebastian from Austria (he had never heard or seen the Sound of Music!) and Emil from Israel. Plus us, the 4 loud Americans, who made 11 in total plus Vladi and David. I was worried at first about being in such a big group, but everyone was pretty fun and interesting.
We rolled into Cabanaconde (gateway town to the canyon) mid-day and had just enough time to have lunch and gear up for the 1100 meter (3600 ft.) hike down to the bottom of the canyon where the Colca River flows. Colca, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, is twice as deep as our Grand Canyon, but it looks deceivingly less. And even with all of the literature and numerous questions posed to Vladi, we never figured out the deepest point of the canyon. Nevertheless, the trek down was pretty decent. We had started in dry, desert terrain, but by the time we reached the other side, we were in lush green vegetation.
It was dusk when we reached the bottom and near dark during our 45 min steep ascent back up to reach our camp for the first night. By the time we rolled into Cosnirpata, we were hiking by moonlight. Cosnirpata was just a tiny little village and our lodging was basic but cozy. The four of us shared a tin room with dirt floor and awoke to the sound of roosters crowing. We then trekked three hours laterally and to the bottom of the canyon again to reach the oasis, which was just as it sounds. There were swimming pools, hammocks, palm trees and sunshine. After a spaghetti lunch that I am still raving about, we hyped ourselves up for the three hour climb back up. It's tough to hike up a steep canyon on a belly full of pasta with the sun beating right down on you, but with a few water breaks and a good pace, we reached the top without killing ourselves. It felt good to know we had gone up and down all within a day or so, and that time at the gym certainly paid off.
We spent that night in Cabanaconde and celebrated with some pisco shots and sours. Some of members of the group may have had more shots than others but I am going on record to say that all of the foreigners were in bed by midnight, while our guide Vladi stayed out until 2 AM and had to wake people up to let him back into the hostel. Classic.
We were up early on the final morning to catch the first bus to Cruz del Condor, where we had hoped to catch a glimpse of the condors as they ascended the canyon for breakfast. After a pretty hopeless 45 min of nothing but sparrows, we finally saw about 5 condors as they soared up through the canyon. Jackpot. We wrapped up the day with a soak at the hot springs in Chivay and headed back to Arequipa to catch an early plane the next morning to Cuzco.
Tags: the great outdoors
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