In Guayaquil Nadia and I booked our bus to Lima. We knew it was going to be epic. At least 24hours, possibly 26hours. You can imagine our joy when our bus broke down twice, stopping each time to wait for mechanics to come out to fix it and then eventually giving up all together in Trujillo where we changed onto a replacement bus. In the end it took us 34 hours to get to Lima. Add to that the journey we had already made at 5am from Montanita to Guayaquil to get on the bus in the first place and that makes it a crazy amount of travel time. Needless to say we were tired and a bit crazy(hysterical?) by the time we got off. We did meet a nice Canadian guy on the bus and obviously we all bonded as a result of the trauma so when we arrived we shared a cab and booked into the same hostel where we promptly got ourselves beers to blur the memory of the ride from hell. I actually was lucky enough to sleep for most of it after having caught Nadia´s cold but she assured me that the quality of films that she saw to pass the time were something I should be glad to have missed!
Lima itself was a lot nicer than I expected, we wandered around a bit to get our bearings and strolled down to the beach (average) and treated ourselves to icecream sundaes in an old fashioned icecream parlour - you have to see the pics on facebook as they were some of the most creative deserts I have ever seen.
We did not spend long in Lima, just long enough to research and book our Lares Valley trek to Machu Picchu. We headed from Lima to Arequipa on a night bus to check out the Colca Canyon and do a 3 day hike. Arequipa is beautiful, you drive in out of the desert to this lovely little city set against the backdrop of massive (6000m) snow capped mountains. It has a fantastic vibe to it and is a wonderful place to just walk around exploring. Wasting no time we booked ourselves onto a tour for the next day and then went to take photos and visit the old convent which has a prime location covering a whole block and great views of the mountains. That evening we treated ourselves to dinner on a rooftop around the main square and both had Alpaca steaks in different styles. It was delicious and we watched the sunset across the square with a beer in hand, couldn´t have been more perfect.
Up at 3.30am in the morning we headed out by bus to the start point of our trek and stopped on the way to try and spot some condors at a viewing platform over the canyon. The landscape itself was amazing enough with snowy peaks on one side of the canyon and cactus plants and red dirt on the other. The canyon is supposedly twice as deep as the grand canyon but it is much more narrow so very different in appearance. We had the fortune of seeing about 7 or 8 condors that day with 2 of them flying quite low directly overhead so we got a really good look at them. I have to say that up in the air they look awesome, huge and graceful. Up close however, they look quite strange, they have very small heads for their size and just do not look very aerodynamic at all. From the viewing area we continued on to our breakfast stop before starting our hike.
Having said that we were going down into the Colca Canyon may be a little misleading as it is still at a ridiculous altitude (around 3000m) so hiking even downhill as we did for the first day was still quite tough work. On the way down our guide Alex quizzed Nadia as to why at her age (she is only 25!) she was not married with many children! I kept as far away from that conversation as I could. If she is leaving it too late at 25 then he would have been appalled by me :-) We spent the first night in a little village where we stayed in cute huts made of river stones and straw thatched roof which was a nice experience and the stars at night were ridiculously bright as there is no electricity in the canyon. Up early and away the next morning we hiked up for about 20mins and then much to our enjoyment flat for the rest of the day! We visited another little village where they gave us chicha to drink. It is made from ground fermented corn and I can´t say I was a fan but Nadia enjoyed it. Highlights from the second village would have to be the guinea pig farm out the back. Mmmmmmmm tasty! And the ladle made from a bulls testicle that I got to hold! Again, sorry but you will have to check facebook for these pictures. In the afternoon we walked down to the deepest part of the canyon and arrived at the oasis. It was brilliant. Very surreal with palm trees and clear blue swimming pools everywhere. We had a swim, rested in the sun, explored the riverbed and made jokes about some of the more dilapidated huts being our room for the night. Needless to say, karma is a bitch and we did in fact end up in something similar to what we were joking about. It had weaved bamboo walls with about an inch and a half between each piece, a flimsy roof and mules outside the door for company. We were able to see our neighbours in the next room having an afternoon nap too. Despite this we had plenty of blankets and it was actually quite a good nights sleep.
The final day was definitely the hardest as they have you up and away by 5am to start the trudge up and out of the canyon on the dark. At the bottom in the oasis it is about 2000m and at the top about 3400m I think. Nadia and I were pretty pleased with ourselves for making it up and out in 2 and a half hours (even if one guy on our group did manage it in 1 hour 40 mins!) and we did not succumb to all the offers and suggestions of hiring a mule either!
I kind of viewed the Colca Canyon as a warm up for our trek to Machu Picchu and it was good for our confidence to know that we were fit enough to make it down and back up. It also taught us the value of coca tea in easing altitude sickness and the necessity to take it at your own pace and not allow others to rush you at all. After all, we are all on the same path to the same destination on these treks.
Next stop was Nazca as Nadia really wanted to check out the Nazca Lines and had worked out that it was fairly affordable to fly over them. I was not too fussed about going on the flight so instead I enjoyed being on the rooftop terrace of our hostel in the sun for a day after the cold temps in the Colca Canyon. We also arrived in Nazca on the Peruvian Independence Day so there were celebrations afoot in the evening which involved me drinking a few too many of the beverages on offer on the rooftop of a nearby hostel. Having not flown over the Nazca Lines for me the highlight of Nazca was the Nazca Hotel where we paid a small amount to use the swimming pool for a day and to lay on the sun lounges soaking up the desert heat.
Next up - Cuzco!
