The dizzying highs and lows of the crippling Colca Canyon

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May 7th 2010

Published: June 7th 2010

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Lisa getting all arty in a cafe

We arrived at Arequipa at 9am, after a pleasant 10 hour journey and met a couple of French girls, Chemmy and Charlene, who we took a taxi into town with. They immediately made it clear they were hagglers as they bartered over one peso with the friendly and good natured taxi driver. When we arrived at Los Andes Inn, Koen was sat there checking his cherished footie results on the Internet and both he and Carissa made us a much needed breakfast of egg sandwiches, which we ate in the sunshine on the roof terrace, after which we wandered into town for coffee.

The streets in Arequipa are crazy - super busy with a million little taxis and crossing the road means taking your life in your hands. It was sunny and hot with clear, blue skies and beautiful views as the city is surrounded by volcanoes. Arequipa is at 2400metres above sea level and is Peru’s 2nd city, quite charming with colonial style buildings. We went in search of tours for the Colca Canyon whilst walking around the pretty main square that was plagued with thousands of evil, dirty flying rats aka pigeons. We then headed back to the

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Our hostal in Arequipa

hostel for lunch on the terrace before the boys joined Victor, the hostel guy for a game of footie. Ian and Koen were excited to be playing but returned slightly frustrated by the strange local style of play, which involved a huge lack of passing or positioning. Carissa and Lisa meanwhile, chatted, practiced Spanish and drank wine - a weird white porty tasting wine followed by a much better bottle of red. We decided in the end to take the hostel tour as we bargained for a lower price and congratulated ourselves with dinner that consisted of potatoes that took 4 hours to cook. So, we ended up eating at stupid o’clock (10.30pm), Koen drank too much rum and had a funny half hour in the room by himself before going to bed.

3 hours later we were up again for our 3am pick up - brutal!!! We managed to get seats at the front of the minibus though so had a little more room. A little extra space goes a long way especially in a country of shorties (OK for Lisa, not so comfortable for Ian). We slept until Chivay where we had to pay for the park

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Plaza de Armas

entrance (there are always these sneaky hidden costs). We were given a crappy packed breakfast consisting of a baloney roll, fruit + crackers, while others, we found out later, had eggs and bread in a restaurant!

Our next stop was Mirador Cruz del Condor where we were lucky enough to see 4 huge condors, which are grey when young, have white tipped wings when growing and are black or brown when fully grown. They are immense as they have a 2-3metre wingspan and glide effortlessly through the skies.
Veronica, our guide was very sweet and we met our group - Frenchies Flo (managed to talk all day while hiking, a nice, funny guy), Chemmy (tight, took photos of everything she saw including the most normal looking avocado, obsessed by plants), Charlene (quiet, spoke little English or Spanish, got veeerrrrrry sunburnt) and Pierre (born in South Korea, slightly odd, sucked up to Veronica constantly), Spanish Marie (a true linguist, nice) and Yannic (Belgian, skinny, speed walker).

So, once gathered we proceeded with the 1000metre straight down drop into the canyon (one of the world’s deepest) and we continued walking for about 3 hours down in the blazing sun with

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17th century Cathedral

no shade or respite. Old ladies with mules scooted past us, no doubt with feet made of leather and calves of steel, but as it’s the only way in or out of the canyon, they must have done this walk a million times. It was a killer walk, with blisters to boot for Ian (slightly self-inflicted as he forgot to wear 2 pairs of socks) and sun stroke for Marie. The scenery was pretty amazing if you dared take your eyes off your feet for 2 seconds, with cacti everywhere but also a lot of dust and rock. Carissa and Lisa decided it was badly planned and of course came up with their own, much better version of the tour. When the downward descent from hell was over, we crossed a bridge to the other side where the terrain became more varied with ups, downs and flats, so better all round (apart from the ups which were struggle for the unfit especially with the altitude). There was a lot more shade though and it was more scenic, although Ian felt as if he was walking on needles or hot coals - he couldn’t quite decide!). We stopped for lunch at

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Clean clothes...yay!!!

a little restaurant and had the obligatory soup with rice and lomo saltados (stir-fried beef), and also bought some chocolate to keep up our spirits. The irrigation system in the canyon was reminiscent of the system we saw in the mountains of Marrakech, very clever and efficient. We carried on for the afternoon, and in parts it did become slightly relentless as we had no real time to take in our surroundings and there were some tough uphill parts (why, oh, why, didn’t they make the paths flat??) The views were amazing when you did stop to take it all in, and we walked a total of 16kms that day down to the bottom of the canyon to Sangalle, our oasis and place of rest for the night.

The accommodation was back to basics, a bed in a cane hut, no electricity, no hot water, but a swimming pool! So, just after we arrived, it became pitch black, Lisa had no flip-flops and so walked around in the dark in her socks all night and everything was done by candlelight or torch. The beers were 10soles but much needed although Carissa and Lisa both had headaches, probably from dehydration

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Condor spotting from Mirador del Condor

and sun exhaustion, so after a quick dinner of, you guessed it, soup! and pasta followed by mate de coca, we limped off to bed. Not before, a guy came round though, with the offer of a mule ride out of the canyon the next morning instead of the 3 hour hike, vertically straight up 1000metres. It didn’t take Lisa long to decide that this was the only mode of transport out of here for her. So Lisa went to bed happy in the knowledge she would be riding out of the canyon the following morning whilst Ian went to bed bursting blisters, applying plasters and preparing for the ascent of pain (pride being the totally overriding factor in his decision, sense being the overriding decision for Lisa!) That night we slept at 2300meters, a 1000metres lower than we had been that morning.

Morning came quickly (for the walkers especially) as they were up at 5am ready to leave at 5.30. The early rise was not so bad, seeing as we all went to bed at the same time as most ten year olds back in Britain do, and also considering the daunting and painstaking climb ahead of us.

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Just walking for 10 minutes away from the hostel was gruelling and there was a distinct lack of smiling or talking with the prospective climb ahead. Off we all set to climb 1000metres in 2 and a half to three hours. The climb was fierce and relentless but thankfully without the sun beating down on us. The air was extremely thin and of course made climbing during the ascent incredibly difficult, but in effect meant that each person had to find their own pace and stick to it, no racing. In saying that, our group seemed to overtake many groups that had set off earlier, which lifted spirits if only because others were suffering even more! The terrain was always uphill with no flat areas to relieve the muscles but concentrating was easy, as a mistake would likely lead to a fall to your death! For the first hour or so the top never seemed to get any closer, which only added to the pain, but of course it eventually did. After being pushed to one side by some marauding mules with lazy women laughing on them the summit was insight. The relief and excitement of reaching the top was

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Tradition and modernity come together

quickly forgotten when stomachs started rumbling, seeing as everyone had done the climb on an empty tank (probably for the best as breakfast would have likely come back up early into the climb). Everyone one was all smiles after looking down at what had been accomplished in just a few hours, (Ian - 2hr 18mins with shocking feet - oh yeah), job done!

Lisa had to be up for 6am and so she casually wandered around in the dusk light, taking photos, praying that the mule man would show. He did turn up, late of course, but he also had 3 other girls with him from other tours who couldn’t cope with the climb out (made Lisa feel much less guilty!) Even just walking out of camp to the mules was tough so we knew we’d made the right decision! Paulito, the mule man, walked up behind the mules, keeping an impressive pace as we made it up in 1 and a half hours. It was a sketchy climb though, with fighting mules trying to race each other on narrow one track paths, slippery wet steps and we had absolutely no control as these mules are trained just to

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climb up and down regardless of what’s going on around them (other walkers, other mules or donkeys, steep drops down the side of the cliffs!) Lisa did feel sorry for the poor mules but so grateful at the same time. It was definitely 50soles (£12.50) well spent! All the walkers looked pretty healthy as the mules passed - it’s obviously a hundred times better in the shade - and Yannic was the first to the top (even before the mules!) But he was carrying no extra weight on his skinny frame, so when Ian came up second it was pretty impressive (although possibly the pain pushed him onwards and upwards) The others followed not long after, and Lisa became the official photographer for each one passing the summit.

It was then another 30minutes more to Cabanaconde (back up to 3300metres) and a breakfast of eggs and bread - no surprises there then! We did have a good fresh juice though, and then it was back on the bus to Banos Termales, which we didn’t go into as they were simply manmade pools and not really worth the 10soles entrance fee. We sat and had a beer instead, people watching!

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We found a little gnome perched on the cliff edge

Then it was back to Chivay for lunch, where we were supposed to go to a buffet organised by the tour, but our group rebelled as it was 20soles and no one was that hungry. We walked to the square instead, and due to crappy collective action, and the fact that Lisa had a headache again, it was just a yoghurt and fruit for her while Ian chowed down on a cheap chicken burger. Our militant bus driver then threatened to leave without people, which we thought was nice seeing as we’d paid for the tour and there were no time constraints laid on us when we booked. This preceded a crappy journey back to Arequipa which was uncomfy and bumpy, with hot flushes and breathing problems for Lisa. And to top it all, we got dropped off in the middle of town somewhere to find our one way home (again not mentioned when we booked the tour). When we got back to the hostel, we found that the guides had been dropped off there!! Cheeky buggers! But it had been a trek to remember and so we showered and went out for a pizza, Koen, Carissa and Ian feeling

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...oh no, it's just Carissa!

proud of their accomplishments...and Lisa with a slight case of saddle rash!

The next morning we were up earlyish but treated ourselves to a lie in and just chilled in bed for a few hours with achy legs and then checked out at 12, took a taxi to the terminal to get bus tickets to Cusco, and then went back into town for some food at Suri Cafe on Plaza de Armas - it served good, reasonably priced food and coffee. We then wandered to the Monasterio but it was too expensive to go in (30soles) and so we did some shopping instead (postcards and the like) and then stumbled upon a cool street with lots of bars and cafes, roof top seating and clear view of Volcan Misti. There was also a parrot squawking away and there were doing a 3 drinks for 10 soles happy hour (all day apparently) so we thought it’d be rude not to and Mojito-ed and cerveza-ed the afternoon away and it turned into a boozy afternoon. We decided to eat there too rather than cooking...a bad decision. They completely cocked up the order, ours was ok apart from the weird version of

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mani (peanut) sauce they created, there was no ham on the burger for Koen and no burger at all for Carissa! And of course no apologies -so typical! We left so she could get food back at Suri and whilst she ate we found a cable for the video camera Leigh had given me 2 years ago so we can finally take some footage! Headed back to the hostel to pick up the bags and Victor kindly booked us a hostel in Cusco. We got to the terminal, and had another cock up, as we were on the wrong side but had already paid the tax and so had to leg it to the other side and pay the tax again. So after a not particularly good day, we got on the bus, ready to relax, and lo and behold, what DVD was showing...Fireproof! - a god-squad production from hell preaching to us the greatness of god in marriage and how without him we will not survive. It was the 3rd time we’d seen it on this continent and was getting past a joke for Ian (he did watch it again though!) And there were no blankets this time so

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we were cold all night. We did get a crappy sandwich instead (not quite so good for keeping you warm) and again the obligatory bumpy, potholed, windy roads and crazy fast driving, equalling a bad night. Hopefully tomorrow will bring better luck...

Lots of love from high altitude,

Lisa and Ian xxxxxxxxxxxx

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