Trekking Colca Canyon

The Sunday after I finished Spanish School (Alex was due back on Tuesday for one final lesson as he'd missed one due to illness) we woke up at 3am to start our 2 day tour of the Colca Canyon.

Colca Canyon is one of the deepest canyons in the world, at its deepest it is 3 400 m, about twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. One of the other big draw points of the Canyon is it's a well known spot for seeing Andean Condors - a type of vulture. After breakfast the first stop of the tour was Cruz del Condor, a look out point which is a favourite hang out for the giant birds.

A condor in action

I'm not exactly sure of the depth of the Canyon at the point that we started hiking from, but I think it was around the 1000 m mark, which, when you're hiking to the bottom is nothing to scoff at. It was a hot sunny day but at least we were going down. Getting to the lunch point in a small village required some up hill work, an omen of things to come.

The goal for the day was to get to an area known as The Oasis. This is a green area in the bottom of the Canyon where people have built a few restaurants and accommodations. We were booked in to stay at the original - Oasis.

The View from the Start of the Trek - you can see Oasis at the bottom

Getting down in the bottom of it

Our accommodations for the night. There was no electricity, you couldn't close the door properly from the inside, the shared showers were cold and there were no curtains. But the bed was really nice and warm. 

At first we were excited when we saw this swimming pool. But we soon realised it was too damn cold for anything pleasant. 

Everyone was extremely tired and hungry after their cold showers and swims. We hadn't been fed very much for breakfast causing a bit of a food deficit throughout the day. I was so hungry I found our main course of rice and diced veggies extremely exciting. After dinner it was straight to bed to try and get as much sleep as possibly before the 5 am wake-up the next day. 

We started hiking back up the canyon in the dark, this time with absolutely no breakfast. It was quite pleasant watching the canyon slowly be revealed as the sun rose, but there was the added pressure of getting to the top before it got too hot. The group split up with the fastest of us taking about 2 hours and the slowest taking about 3 hours to hike roughly one vertical kilometer. I ended up taking about 2 hours 45 minutes and boy was I feeling it. 

A race against the sun to the top - I just lost

Finally made it to the top

At the top we got a few minutes to rest and smashed some snacks before we had to walk to the near by village for breakfast. On the drive back to Arequipa we stopped at many different sights including Incan Terraces, a nice church, hot springs that weren't that hot, a volcano lookout and of course a field of llamas and alpacas. 

Incan Terraces were used for farming. 

I liked this church, I thought it was quite different to a lot of the other ones we've seen, and we've seen a lot on this trip. In this area we also tried a Colca Sour. It's like a Pisco Sour but uses a local sour fruit from the canyon. It was really really sour.

Snowy volcanoes still have steam escaping them

The mirador for the volcanoes was 4 910 m above sea level. It was stupidly cold up there. 

We drove through a protected area for alpacas and llamas. From the bus window we were also lucky to see some vicunas - the wild ancestor of the domesticated llama. 

To finish off a hard trek when we got back to town a group of us went out for delicious Mexican food.