Like I said before, I am totally losing track of days... Thankfully, my watch shows days of the week, which is sort of helping. It's great though. Really great. Weekends and weekdays are no different. Sometimes we notice that a town is busier, and then we realize it's Saturday, but that's about it.
Early in the morning last Thursday, we headed out on a two day-one night trek in Colca Canyon, arguably the deepest canyon in the world. Our guide said it was, but The Book said another nearby canyon in Peru was, and their numbers were so different we really aren't sure who to believe.
We were picked up from our hostel in Arequipa around 3:15 AM and rode in a small bus for about 3 hours before we reached Chivay, where we had breakfast. Then we rode about another hour and a half over a really bumpy road to Cruz del Condor, a viewpoint over the canyon where it's common to see condors. Unfortunately, they weren't very social that day, and we only caught a passing glimpse of two low in the canyon and weren't able to get any pictures.
We drove a while further up the road to the starting point of our trek. There were about 10 of us in the group, and we were a bit more diverse group than our Inka Trail posse. There was a young couple from Poland (and I really regretted no learning more/any Polish from my friend Magda), three 20 somethings from Ireland who had started out solo but started traveling together sometime in Ecuador, an older Sweedish guy, a French guy who smoked like a French guy, another American who was 24 and traveling all over the world "on business," and a very quiet British guy who learned during our decent into the canyon that he had really bad knees and ended up a few hours behind the rest of us and then rented a donkey to carry him up the next day.
Which is also to say that an trek into a canyon is just as it sounds: one day down, one day up. We actually thought this trek was harder in some ways than the Inka Trail. Certainly, if it lasted four days, it would be. Part of the difficulty was the all up and all down nature of it (the Inca Trail undulates a bit more), but a lot of it was that the trails just weren't as good. Almost all of it was loose gravel on faily narrow paths looking right over the steep drop of the canyon wall. (But look, Mom, I'm alive so it's OK!) Like with the Inka Trail, the first day was hardest for me because everyone else starts out fast and I felt like I had to kill myself to keep up. On the second day, especially going up, everyone chilled out a bit more and I had an easier time keeping pace.
On day one we hiked down for about three hours and then about another hour along the bottom to our lunch spot, where we had Lomo Saltado, which is a popular alpaca dish, served with rice, potatoes, onions and bell peppers. Alpaca is a lot like beef but a bit tougher. I think it's ok. I'm not big on tough meat. From there we walked about another hour along the canyon to our "guesthouse" in "paradise."
It looked like rain with some threatening bangs of thunder, so our guide, Ivan, took us along a shortcut that followed a mountain stream. Fortunately we were only hit with a few random sprinkles. "Paradise" is an oais area in the canyon where several guesthouses with freshwater pools are built. We arrived less than an hour before sunset, so Eric and I opted not to swim. Since we're a couple, we got a "matrimonial hut"--a concrete building with a sand floor and thatched roof (thankfully it didn't rain), and a really firm full-sized mattress on some concrete blocks.
We sat around and had some beers with the other American and the Irish kids. The Irish bunch was heading the opposite direction as us--they had come from Ecaudor and down the Peruvian coast and were heading to Cusco--so they gave us some pointers for Huacha China and Ecuador and we told them about our time in Cusco, Puno and on the Trail. We all had dinner together and headed promptly to bed, probably around 9PM. We were due to set out hiking again at 5AM the next morning. ET and I set our alarms for quarter to 5 and promised the Polish kids we would knock on their hut to wake them up too.
The next morning we hiked up rocky switchbacks for about 3 hours and were rewarded with breakfast in the town at the top. We brought along some snacks to we could eat a bit before climbing up the canyon. Leaving early in the morning always sounds rough, but it's great to beat the heat of the day and to realized that I hauled my butt up a huge canyon earlier in the day than I used to get to work.
After breakfast we stopped at the Cruz del Condor lookout again because there were some flying around and we got some pictures. Eric really wanted to get pictures of condors, so I was really happy that worked out. Then we drove for an hour and a half to a hot spring and paid 10 soles ($3) a piece to soak in the hot spring-fed pool for about and hour. Heaven. Pure and simple.
After that we had a lunch buffet in Chivay, drove for a while, stopped at a lookout at the highest point in the area where you can see about 10 volcanoes, and then drove for 3 hrs or so back to Arequipa. Along the way, we passed several llama and sheep farms, which are for some reason really amusing.
We arrived back at our hostel in Arequipa around 6, showered, and caught a bus to Ica at 10PM. We arrived in Ica around 9AM -- I'm getting better at sleeping on busses -- and took a 15 minute cab ride to the neighboring town of Huaca China. Ica/Huaca China are closer to the coast (about 70km inland), south of Lima. They are surrounded by giant sand dunes that stretch all the way to the coast. Huaca China is sort of a tiny oasis built around a small lagoon as a resort town for Peruvian elite once upon a time. The tourists are still a mix of Peruvians and gringos, and the town is basically two streets: an inner ring right around the lagoon and an outer ring around that, though the outer ring is pretty sparse.
We decided to stay at a nicer hotel with a pool for about $12 each per night. On the first day we laid around the pool during the day. In the evening we took a dune buggy and sand boarding tour, and then climbed the closest dune to watch the sunset.
We were only going to stay one day in Huaca China and had even thought about skipping it altogether, but wanted to break up the bus rides from Arequipa to Ecuador. After a fun and relaxing first day, we decided to stay a second night. Certainly, we've been on vacation this whole time, but it's been a lot of treking and museums and being sick... so we decided we deserved to enjoy some relaxing times.
On day two we chilled around the pool again, and this time made good friends with our bartender, Yosip. He invited us out that evening to have some beers with his friends and him at another bar. We asked what the bar was called so we could meet him there, and he pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down "Pub Bar" with all the seriousness in the world. We went out for dinner and then found Yosip and his crew around 8:30 at Pub Bar on the outer loop. We had a fabulous time, which involved trying to help them pick up some German girls in the bar, teaching them funny English phrases, a late night challenge to race up the sand dunes, and a lot of Yosip trying to teach me how to dance with a Latin flare. We invited them all to visit us in the U.S. and promised our couch for as long as they'd like it. It was one of the most fun nights I've had in Peru.
We had talked of waking up early to catch an early bus from Ica to Lima in order to catch a 1PM bus from Lima to Tumbes. Ica to Lima is about 6 hrs. Lima to Tumbes is around 20+. I'm thankful that we didn't wake up early enough for that because I don't think I could do that sort of bus marathon. We caught an 11:30 bus out of Ica on a mid-level bus line and arrived in Lima around dinner time. We headed straight back to the Red Psycho Llama Hostel in the Miraflores neighborhood and found our friend Elias working the desk again. He smiled and welcomed us by name as soon as we poked our heads in the door.
Our bus to Tumbes is at 1PM tomorrow, so we've got a bit of time to kill in Lima. Tumbes is basically the boarder crossing between Peru and Ecuador. Our goal is to be in Salasaka, Ecuador, to volunteer for two weeks by the weekend, which will bring the end to the whirlwind and will begin the settling-into-somewhere section of our trip.
Hopefully internet will be as accessible in Ecuador so I can continue to keep you all updated. We may get some pictures uploaded while we're here in Lima.
Love to all,
Meghan and Eric
PS - I hear there's snow in Wisconsin. I am not jealous.
