The Colca canyon

For some reason I never consulted the bus schedule information I got when we arrived at Arequipa and so we arrived at the bus station at 9am, while the first bus to Cabanaconde was 8am - d'oh! The next bus was 11:45, so I just used the Internet while waiting. The bus left 30 minutes late, but after only 20 minutes or so we came to a halt and one of the passengers explained to us that the holdup was due to a car rally race up ahead. We ended up getting stuck for nearly 4 hours waiting for the race to finish, and for all the cars to pass our bus after their race (so much for us never having travel delays).

It meant we arrived long after dark and missed the supposedly stunning scenery along the way, but the town itself was tiny and it didn't take long to check out a couple of hostels and find a lovely cheap place, Pachamama's. The next day we just spent relaxing and trying to find out information about hikes in the area and the possibility of renting bicycles. We also strolled to the mirador (lookout point) just 10 minutes walk from the village centre. I just sat here for a couple of hours soaking up the fantastic vantage point looking directly down into the canyon with small villages scattered along the far canyon wall and a small oasis by the river at the very bottom (over 1km down), that had a couple of very appealling looking swimming pools.

The next morning we got up quite early and started trekking into the canyon itself. Our guidebook suggested that the hike would take 3 days, but one of the locals we asked said it could actually be done in one long, hard day. The best option though seemed to be hiking all the way to the oasis at the base of the canyon (via three of the villages on the far side), staying the night there and then hiking back up the canyon the following day, which is exactly what we did.

We were blessed with literally perfect weather - not so much as a wisp of cloud in the sky and a nice cool breeze to prevent us getting too hot. The first day was almost completely downhill so it wasn't too difficult, but it was a long and spectacular day. At one point I saw a huge condor glide right over Sarah's head, maybe only 20 meters from me (I was a bit behind Sarah taking photos), but she never saw it as she was watching her feet, and within a few seconds it had disappeared around a rockface. The hike offered constantly changing viewpoints of the canyon as we descended, and getting to the bottom and then the small villages we'd been looking at the day before was all a bit surreal.

But the real draw at the end of the day was the swimming pools at the oasis we'd seen, and they certainly didn't disappoint. Accommodation here was pretty basic, having no electricity, but the pool was fantastic, being fed from natural spring water and not too cold. As you can imagine the setting at the base of a canyon made for some nice relaxing and the food that night was great too (and we met a nice Danish/Norwegian couple over dinner).

The next morning we weren't in any great rush, so we had a nice lie-in to let the day heat up before having another long, leisurely swim in the pool. Then we started the hike out. I thought we had plenty of water, but we didn't have much food for breakfast. I thought the hike out would only be 2.5/3 hours and so it shouldn't have been too much of a problem. But the uphill hike turned out to be a good bit tougher than I'd expected, and I think towards the end I had a touch of the bonk (a cycling term for becoming rapidly fatigued due to lack of food). But we did manage to reach the top in 3 hours with just enough water, just feeling pretty knackered!

We could have gotten a bus straight away back to Arequipa, but I was too hungary (and I still wanted to check out renting a bike), so we headed straight to the excellent local restaurant we'd been to on our first lazy day. After another great lunch there I checked out the bikes again, but again they had already been rented. We explained that we wanted the bikes to ride the 14km to a famous condor-spotting mirador the next morning (if you get the bus the touts pounce on you for expensive tickets, so I wanted to avoid them by cycling instead). The bike guy then told us that we didn't need to go to that mirador at all, that the condors should be at the local free lookout in about half-an-hour!

So obviously we headed straight out to the local mirador again, only a 10 minute walk, but this time at 3pm. Within the next hour we spotted 3 condors (and maybe a fourth one, but it was too far away to be sure). One of them came gliding by really, really close and we had a great view of him - he even turned his head at one point to look us straight in the eye. I even managed to get a pretty decent photo too, even though our camera only has a 3x zoom, and is generally pretty rubbish for wildlife shots. Yet again on this trip I was struck by how cool a proper, close-up wildlife encounter can be.

So after that we headed back to Pachamama's for another night, eating in the pizza place there too (we meant to go to the only 'posh' place in the town, but just couldn't be bothered to walk the 5 minutes!). Next morning after breakfast we got the 9am bus back to Arequipa with no hold-ups and this time I got to see the scenery along the way - and boy was it something. The guidebook says the bus journey is an experience in itself, and I couldn't agree more. Much of the shallower parts of the canyon were terraced for agriculture hundreds of years ago and continue to be farmed today, but the extent of terracing really is just awesome, far more extensive than anything I've seen in Asia.

On the way back to Arequipa we had the option of stopping off at the town of Chivay, which has natural hot springs, and so I jumped at the chance of that. The taxi drivers in the town were being rather cheeky I felt, trying to overcharge for the 3km trip to the springs, so I just decided to ignore them and walk. It turned out to be a beautiful walk, and all on the flat (the taxi drivers had been saying they charge so much because of the 'hills', cheeky so-and-so's).

I was very surprised at how modern, clean and professional the whole setup was at the springs, but we could only spend about an hour or so there before getting the next bus back to Arequipa. I certainly could have spent longer there, but the two main pools were outside with no shade, so I probably would have ended up burning myself! So we had to get a taxi back to the bus station (ggrrr!), but we caught the bus no problem and were back in Arequipa in no time.

We didn't bother staying another night in Arequipa as the buses to Nasca were a bit awkward - it turned out to be easiest to get a nightbus later that same night. So we collected our rucksacks from the hostel (using what had been the free internet, but they charged me this time!), had a so-so dinner in Mystique and then got the overnight bus to Nasca, home to the world famous Nasca lines.