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Published: November 10th 2010
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Arequipa is a very beautiful city, colonial style. And, the weather is good!
Our first night we stayed at "The Point", not recommended if you wanna see something of the city, and not just party. It lies quite a distance from the center.
We moved out immediately the next morning and found a cosy place called "Hostal Santa Catalina", and paid only 40 soles for a "matrimonial" with bathroom and tv!!
Wow, was this heaven after some of the dorms we've slept in.. They even had a rooftop terrace.
Anyways, the guys at the reception are also really eager to help you with booking tours.
We've had some bad experiences with some of our agencies, so we wanted to do our own research this time.
We decided to do the 3 day Colca Canyon trekking with a company called "Andina tours" on Jerusalem street, highly recommended!!
For 130 soles, you get a bilingual guide, food, sleeping arrangements and transportation.
Our guide "Pepe" was a really nice guy, and a super-fit mountain "goat"!
Thomas asked him why he was wearing knee support, and he replied: I fell down 20m at the volcano "Chachani". So, then we knew he was normally climbing that
one (6057m)..
Our Colca tour started 3 A.M, that's right!
It takes about 7 hours to get to the city of Chivay, which is at the top of the canyon.
On our way there we had also stopped at "Cruz del Condor", the view point for the mighty condors.
The Colca Canyon is a mighty sight, it is actually the next deepest in the world, twice as deep as the Gran Canyon and descends from Chivay at 3.500m to 2.200m at Cabanaconde which we were heading. You do the math..
It is a hard trek indeed, but really doable!
In our group we had a lovely German couple at the end of their fifties, could they could we!
They were really fit though..
So, we headed off.. us, another English couple and "tze germans".
As the hillside is really steep, the paths are zig-zaggy all the way in the valley. The descend is really hard for ankles knees and toes, as you walk downhill for about 4 hours.
On our way down we "lost" our guide, he was nowhere to be found..
This happened a couple of times, but we figured he was taking a no. 1 or 2.
Coutyard of the monastery
There's a fantastic monastery in Arequipa, worth paying a visit! He always caught up with us.
We asked him how many times he was doing treks like this, and he said he had about two or three treks a week. Depending on the duration of the tour, and he had done it for 8 years.
When we finally arrived at our first nights hostel, we were sooooo tired! We fell asleep right away, but Pepe woke us up for dinner. After eating we went straight back to bed, at 8 p.m!
The second day of trekking we walked further into the valley, where Pepe told us about the kind of work people down there had. At lot were into fruits, which they "exported" up the narrow roads of the canyon (carried by mules), to the town of Chivay.
Here they traded it for other necessities.
Pepe also showed us the weird parasite that lives on a special cactus, it's blood is used in coloring fabrics and are therefore collected and exported in huge numbers to other cities in Peru.
So, a lot of people work 12 hours shifts peeling these off the cactus.
And, as the funny man that he was he painted our face with the squeezed bugs
Old fashion stove
And a childish 30 year old! he had in his hand. Our tribe was borne - "Bug-Brothers"!
He showed us a lot of other neat plants as well.
We got to taste one cactus, a real bugger! It smelled like chicken, but the taste oh the taste.. It was hooorible!!
It's supposed to be good for fertility, flue and some other female monthly stuff.
Another beautiful flower growing around, was actually very dangerous. Drinking this as tea could make you similar to people with downs syndrome he said. I understand this to mean that you'll have problems with speech and facial expression.. Well, who knows..
Another devil, was the "Cojon del Diablo" let's put it this way - the "noble" parts of the devil.
There are small seeds inside this plant, which you are supposed to soak in hot water for a couple of hours. When you drink this "remedy" you'll have the visions of a shaman..
Ritch, the English boy, stuffed his whole pocket full of them!
As you see, we learned a lot about the people down the valley about their living and the surrounding flora and fauna as well.
This day wasn't all play, we walked for quite a while, both up and
still childish...
This was the kitchen to a widow and her daughters back in the days. Yes, you heard me right!
She joined the monastery after the death of her husband.
Some of the housings here were actually really NICE! downhill.
Up, you had the problem of catching your breath. High altitude and steep hills aren't all that good of a combination.
Down, it was the aching of knees,toes and ankles! But, it was all forgotten when we arrived at the final destination for the day - The Oasis!
Oh my, I can't describe how good it felt. We came there early in the afternoon, so we had the rest of the day to just lie next to, or in the pool.
In the evening we all sat together and drank some wine, exchanging stories from our travels and so on.
That night we went to bed at 8 again, because we had to start our ascend to the top at 5 a.m. Our bus was gonna pick us up in Chivay at 10 a.m.
I really was dreading the way up, knowing that it was 1300m of heavy trekking uphill and in high altitude!
But, I must admit when looking back I prefer the uphill.
Even if you're short of breath all the time, you only need to stop for a little while and you're back to normal.
We used 3 hours on our way up, only stopping three
We still have these at the hospitals..
Not a bad invention! But prefer the ones made of plastic! times. Which in my book is awesome!
It felt soooo good when we arrived, exhausted like never before nonetheless.
On our way back we also stopped at a hot-spring, soaking our soar bodies in a water holding 40C.
We had an amazing experience, but we also think we were lucky with our company.
There are a lot of tourists doing this trek, and some of the companies do things a little bit different.
I heard some people saying that they would've liked to spent the night at the oasis. Instead they had to walk up the hillside on the second day, which means that the second day you walk all day! Just to get up to Chicay and sleep?!..
You can also do the trek on your own, but you still have to pay for sleeping arrangements in the colca and transportation.
I don't think you can get it much cheaper doing it by yourself.
The only thing we would've had different, is staying longer in the Oasis..
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