- Found out that my alarm clock was not working. Dared not sleep in case I could not wake up for the pick-up. Two other gals (Faye and Teresa) at my hostel were doing the Colca Canyon hike the same morning, but a 2d/1n trek with a different company. Three of us waited at the hostel´s stairs at wee-hours for our tour buses´pick up. Mine arrived at 03:30 am and Camilla was already in the tour bus. I still don´t know how she accomplished it, but she managed to pack everything in a super tiny daypack - one almost half the size of my daypack (the exploding ball).
- Slept (Or at least tried to) most of the way from Arequipa to Chivay. Bus stopped at entry of Chivay (at around 6 am) and everyone got off to pay the 35 sol entrance fee. It was mucho mucho frio. I wore a fleece jacket and brought another wind-stopper (which I will realize the next day it is useless for chilly weather) and that was it. I needed the sun. Where was the sun?
- Bus stopped at the Cruz del Condor at 9 am for 30 minutes. Condor is a sacred Andean bird, and condors are most often spotted early in the morning here at Cruz del Condor where they use
the morning upwind in the Canyon to soar into the sky before
gliding towards the coast to find food. Obviously the condors are the attraction, but it appeared that a lot of tourists were so focused on locating the condors that they missed the amazing landscape of the Cruz itself. Here our tour guide Roger handed us each a warm piece of bread. Instead of devouring it immediately, we held it tight in our palms as hand-warmers. We also got to meet our other trek-mates - a group of French amigos (2 gals and 1 guy).
- Finally arrived at a small town of Cabanaconde (3,287 m) at 10 am. Here started our descent to Colca River. Going down wasn´t bad, and by now I realized that even though the 3 Frenchmen/ladies were a bit older (probably in their 40s, 50s), they were no slouches. Their backpacks were huge and heavy, and they were fully equipped with hiking sticks, hydration bags etc. While we walked, Francios (one of the French ladies) told me they tried to meet once every month for a hike in France.
- After approximately 4 hours at 2 pm, we arrived at a village called San Juan de Chuccho (2200 m) at the bottom of the Canyon - for lunch ! All along the trek, lunch was my biggest motivation. I bought some snacks yesterday but forgot to pack them into my bag - Yikes! During lunch, Roger announced that that was it for the day, and we would be staying at the village for the night. We needed to get enough rest to prepare for the 4 hour climb tomorrow. The third day would be ´lazy day´, as Roger phrased it.
- Believe it or not, the óutdoor´shower actually had warm-ish cold water. Not bad for a village at Colca Canyon. Took a quick 5-min shower before it got chilly at night.
- By dinner time, we realized communication with our French trekmates would be interesting. Camilla speaks poco poco Spanish and French. I speak no Spanish and French. Isabelle only speaks French (and a couple English vocabularies). Francios speaks French and little English. Michael ... doesn´t really speak. Well ... Roger, our guide, speaks English, French and Spanish, but for most of the time (outside trekking), he mixed with the villagers or the other guides. With Francios and Camilla as the translaters, we managed half of our conversations (The other half was apologetic smiles). At one point (what sure what led to this), we started discussing how the different animals sound, and one went ´cow´, the other would say ´mooo ... mooo´, and ducks went 'quack quack' ... we went down a list of about 15 different animals. It was hilarous, considering we were playing this game with a bunch of 50-years old!
- It got dark by 8, and the stars were beautiful. We were pretty tired by then, and we went to bed at 8:30 pm. This was a historical moment as I could not recall the last time I slept before 9 pm.
