Colca Canyon

In early March a Canadian woman, Rachael, was staying at the hostel in San Ignacio, and we realized that we were planning on being in Northern Chile and Southern Peru around the same time, so we found each other on facebook to keep in touch about our plans.  It turned out that since I left Arica earlier than planned, we were able to go to Tacna and Arequipa together.  One of the things we just finished in Arequipa was a trekking excursion in the Colca Canyon.

Colca Canyon, near Arequipa, Peru, is the deepest canyon in the world.  With about 2100 meters at its lowest point, it stretches all the way up to 6400 meters or so at its highest point.  We obviously didn't hike that high, but we had a good trek starting at about 3400 meters, all the way down a 7k rocky, winding, switchback path to the river.  It was quite steep at parts, with rock steps in some places, and sandy, dusty, slippery slopes in other parts.  Then we trekked another 5k along a "Peruvian flat" path (which I would not have classified as flat) to the oasis at 2100 meters.  We slept there for the night, and the next morning woke up at 5am to climb back up to about 3300.  It took us just over 3 hours to complete the 5k path up, but keep in mind we started at a relatively high altitude, so we had to take frequent breaks.

When we first got there we looked down on some tiny villages, that looked like little more than shiny dots because of all the tin roofs.  Climbing back up the next day we walked, and walked, and walked, and finally were even with the villages.  It felt like we had come so far, but we still had a long way to go to make the villages look like tiny dots again.  And the top of the mountain was so deceptive.  We kept thinking we were getting close, but then we would realize there was yet another part to go up.  So we walked, and walked, and walked, and it didn't seem to get much closer for a long, long time.  It was really tiring, but also an awesome experience.  I left my computer in Arica so I can't post any pictures now, but I will for sure in a few weeks.

It turned out that our guide was from one of the tiny villages we could look down on from the top, and we ate lunch at his family's restuarant.  Hearing his stories about how everything had changed since he was a little boy was a really interesting bonus to the trek.  We even got to see the house he grew up in!  When he was growing up, the village was full of kids -many families had 7-10 children.  In the 80's or so there was a push by the Peruvian government for families to have no more than 3 children, and if they reached 5 they were often forced to have visectomies or tubes tied.  After that the divorce rate went up, and their traditional way of life fell apart. 

Most excursions are interesting in and of themselves, but the guide and other people in your group can make a huge difference on the overall experience.  In addition to Rachael and I, we had guy from Wales, Phillip, and a Swiss couple, Esther and Michel, in our group.  We had a fun time comparing Welsch, American, and Canadian English after Phillip mentioned that his roommates used torches when they had come in late the night before.  I've heard enough British English by now to know that a torch is a flashlight, but the first image that came to my mind was of some backpackers entering a hostel room with flaming branches.  That became a running joke for the rest of the trek.