Colca Canyon

Having Had a few days sightseeing in Arequipa I was well and truely ready to get out of town and to do some walking. I had booked a rather pricey 3 day trek into the Colca Canyon. I had high expectations based on what I´d read in the guide book. I was picked up at the hostel early in the morning. There were 10 of us in the group. A family from France with 3 youngish children, a couple of ladies from Japan, an Austrian girl and a guy from Scotland. Who, I found out later on had been to university with my Step brother. Small world.
The trip was ok. I´m not going to spend too much time writting it up. We had quite a long drive out to the canyon, stopping on the way to enjoy some of the scenery. We did get to see some condors flying in the canyon at sunset, which was quite a spectacle.

We arrived at a pretty non descript "nice" but completly souless hotel for dinner and the night. Our guide, Ludwig, was infact part owner of the much more interesting looking Pancha mama hostel up the road, where I would have prefered to stay.

The next day we trekked down into the Canyon. It was a steep and dusty path into a spectacular canyon.



View from the top of the Canyon

  Towards the bottom, various signs pointed the way to Paradise 1,2 or 3. Take your pick of gringo heaven. Not what I was expecting. Basically, at the bottom there was an oasis of palm trees and tropical plants, a river and then very brightly painted blue swimming pools surrounded by bamboo huts for people to stay the night.



Rock forms en route to the canyon




"Paradise"

 The swimming pool was a refreshing and welcome dip after the dusty path.
We were in tents. in the garden which was nice, because over the course of the afternoon, more and more groups of tourists were turning up, for drunken and noisy games of football and thrust the banana on a piece of string tied to your waist in order to score a goal. You had to see it to believe it. Not really what I came to south America for.

 I had asked the guide if we could do a walk in the afternoon so he took us further into the canyon up the river which was nice. There were lots of "fields" of the Conchineal cacti growning up the sides of the canyon, covered with beetles, which are harvested (the beetles) to make red dye which is used in all sorts of products from glace cherries to lipstick and fetches a pretty high price when dried and powdered.

The next morning we got up at 4.30am and set off in the dark for the steep hike up out of the Canyon. Along with 60 other people. I decided to try to get to the top in the quickest possible time I could. Mainly because the dust being kicked up by people in front was suffocating and I wanted to reach the top before the sun got too hot.
Once we got to the top we had a bit of time to look around the town and Mira, the Austrian girl and I decided to buy a hat each. It seems that women in different areas have different styles of hat, and I was rather taken with these.

So, I finished up my time in Arequipa having a marvellous cerviche in a local restaurant with the Scottish guy, Phil. Possibly one of the best things I´ve eaten so far. Its raw fish that is marinated in loads of lime juice so that the texture changes so it is actually like its been cooked. It´s then mixed with lots of raw red onion, garlic, coriander, chilli, ginger and served with sweet potato and deep fried salted corn kernals. Lovely!