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Published: July 30th 2009
Colca Canyon
Condor viewpointA long time coming but here's our final entry for South America!
After a whirl-wind few weeks in Bolivia we made our last border crossing to meet Andrew & Megs in Arequipa. They had booked the 4 of us on a 2 day hike into the Colca Canyon which seemed like a good idea at time... until we found out about our 3am start the following morning & learnt that it was a 3hr hike (1,100m depth) into the canyon & another 3hrs back out next day!
Leaving Arequipa we caught an overnight cama bus to Cusco. Cama is the "business class" of buses - until that point we had only traveled semi cama or cattle class so it was a real luxury & exciting to finally try it out!
We went white water rafting down the Urubamba river & spent a few days relaxing (i.e. doing as little as possible!) before our trip to Machu Picchu. There were no places available on the traditional Inka trail so we took the suggested alternative (the Salkantay Pass), which involved a 4 day trek to get to Aguas Calientes & then 1 day at Machu Picchu itself. It felt surreal
standing at the top of Huayna Picchu looking down at Machu Picchu, one of the biggest highlights of our trip. It was an amazing place (an unbelievable engineering feat by the Incas dating back to 1430AD) with stunning views… after 5 days of hard work & early mornings we weren’t disappointed at all 😊
From Cusco we headed to a sandune oasis just outside Ica called Huacachina. We’d heard rave reviews from all who had been there before us & were really looking forward to some fun in the dunes 😉 We booked a dune-buggy ride late in the day so we could be up there for sunset & had an absolute blast sandboarding on our stomachs (too dangerous to stand!) down the giant dunes & racing around at high speed in a 4 seater buggy!
Leaving Huacachina we travelled back to Lima stopping in Paracus for a 2 hour whirl-wind tour of the Ballestas Islands… more commonly known as “the poor man’s Gallapagos” for those of that don’t have the time or a spare few grand (US$) to see the real thing!
Lima was the end of our trip and whilst it was sad to come
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The beginning of our gruelling hike into (& back out of) Colca Canyon... over 1km in depth!! to the end of our South America adventure we still had stopovers in Vegas, Houston, London & Ireland on the way home to look forward to...
Next stop VEGAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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