We take a short nap, then go out to explore. The main plaza (Plaza des Armes) is extremely nice. There's a big cathedral on one side, and low colonial buildings on the other 3 sides. The square in the middle had a lovely fountain, nice trees and flowers, park benches, multitudes of pigeons... Charmaine was delighted to see that there was a protest going on. Many people were holding up banners... Didn't bring the dictionary, so don't know what the banners were saying... something about the judiciary(?) The protesters were also delighted to see us. When C went forward to take a picture of them, they shouted 'Chino!', and waved.
After lunch, we went 'shopping' for a Colca Canyon tour. The Colca canyon, which reaches depths of 3400 ft, is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon (1600ft)! We choose a 2D/1N trek from a cute tour operator named Lady. She assured us that it would be an easy-moderate hike: the guide will pick us up at 1am, we'll take a 6hr bus ride to Cabanaconde (town on canyon rim), get breakfast. Hike down to the canyon floor takes 3hrs. After lunch, we'll meander ard the canyon floor, passing several villages. 3hrs later, we shd arrive at our final village, where we relax, have dinner, then sleep. Next morning we'll wake up at 3am, hike up the canyon (3-4hr) back to Cabanaconde.
At 1am, we wait expectantly for the guide.
At 2am, we give up waiting and go back to sleep
At 2.10am, we hear a knock on the door. It's Lady, our travel agent! Apparently the guide could not find the hostel, gave up, and left for Colca without us. Lady hustles us into a taxi, and gets us tickets for the next bus to Colca.
10am, we arrive at Cabanaconde. The guide (Anhil) is there with the rest of our group-- 2 Israeli girls (Maya and her sister A--). We start hiking down the Canyon. 2hrs later, we're still hiking down. Man... this canyon goes on Forever! We can see the bottom, but it's taking a heck of a long time to get there. Also, the path is often sandy and gravelly. And Bert and Char have bad knees. This is harder than we'd thought... Conversation became as thin as the air.
1pm, we reach the bottom! Yay. Now for a short but extremely steep section up to the lunch spot. But finally! Lunch! We are so tired. Lunch was a great onion-quinoa soup, followed by tofu with rice (apparently one of the Israelis is vegetarian and had requested a veg-menu). Quinoa is an important Andean grain, regarded as the "Mother of all grains" by the Incas. An extremely interesting page about quinoa can be found on wikipedia.
After lunch, we start hiking again. The canyon is pretty green and lush this time of year, and we see random vegetation, as well as fruit trees and maize. The trail gets pretty interesting-- we were hopping over streams, and walking through a field... Oops. In front of us was a massive gully. Er. The guide mutters something, then instructs us to wait in the field. Apparently we had missed a right turn, followed a cow-route, and were now in prime grazing property.
*sigh*
we retrace our steps, and were once again on the right path. we hit the gully again, but this time there was a steep trail leading down, and a dauntingly long n steep trail leading back up. wow. this trek is turning out to be a journey of epic proportions.
suffice to say we finally make it up, and walk for roughly another hour (downhill again!?! why can't these !$^#&* people make trails on level ground?) to the final village of the day. To top things off, it was rapidly getting dark, there were storm clouds above, and it started raining towards the end.
At the village we gratefully sank onto the beds provided, in little huts with dirt floors. Although the showers were COLD, I was just so grateful to be 1) clean and 2) not walking.
The next morning, we wake up at 2am to begin our ascent back into civilization. It is a steep trail with never ending switchbacks. Charmaine was really suffering through this. Her knees had taken a beating throughout the 3 hr descent the day before, she had flat feet so her arches were just dying with every step, she was tired, and we forgot to bring food for the way up (our luggage was being carried up by a mule that would start the ascent an hour later). Our superhuman guide must have been part mountain-goat, because he showed zero signs of fatigue.
When the mules started to overtake us, one of the guys offered us a ride up for 25 soles. Char gratefully accepted, and trouped off ahead. The rest of us trudged determinedly onwards. I'm not sure how all of us survived and made it up, but finally, one of the summits ahead was indeed the true summit (and not yet another evil imposter). As I emerged onto the plain above, the sun lighting the mountains in the distance with its magical alpen glow, the town where breakfast would be served clearly in sight... emotion welled in my chest.
Unfortunately, our guide managed to get us lost again on the way to breakfast. It was another 20mins to the Most Amazing hot tea, eggs, bread and jam that I have ever had the privilege of consuming.
The rest of the day was mostly uneventful. We went to the Cruz del Condor, but couldn't see any condors because of the heavy mist, then returned to Arequipa via the town of Chivay (pronounced 'chee-vai'-- this has disturbing similarities to a swear word in hokkien). But that day was also the day of our most amazing Peruvian shower, and our most delicious dinner (3kg of fried pork: chicharrón de chancho with our tour operator Lady).
We left Arequipa the next morning for the town of Puno, at Lake Titicaca.
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