Sand boarding, surfing, and sunbathing.

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We arrived from a rainy Cuzco to a clear sunny day in Arequpia. Arequipa is one of the wealthiest cities in Peru and so has lots of beautiful buildings and one of the nicest plazas and cathedrals we have seen. One of the most striking things about the city is that the El Misit volcano sits behind it so when you are walking about you can always see it in the distance.

We went to Arequipa as it is close to the Colca Canyon where we had heard you could do a beautiful 2 day hike. We left our big bags at the hostel in Arequipa and got the bus 4 hours to the town of Chivay which is within the Colca national park. You can do an organised tour into the canyon but it is really rushed and only lasts 1 day/1night. We luckily found a blog somebody had written which tells you exactly how to do the hike on your own, it is very detailed and was so helpful for us. We have ended up passing the instructions we copied down to lots of other travellers, and we've also put the link for the blog at the bottom of this entry so that if anybody stumbles across this who wants to hike in the canyon they can do it without a tour. We did the hike over 4 days/3 nights and it was much more enjoyable doing it ourselves instead of rushing it in 1 day.

The Colca Canyon is the second largest in the world. After sleeping in Chivay for the night we got up early and got on a bus for 2 hours to a viewpoint where you can see Condors. We saw a couple which was good, but even if we hadn't seen any the view from the Condor lookout was worth it anyway. We then hopped on another bus and got the driver to drop us off at the start of the trail. We had a basic map we got from tourist information and off we went. It was a hot steep 4 hour climb down into the canyon. We stupidly hadn't bought enough water either so it was at times an unpleasantly hot walk down. The views were incredible though. Although the landscape in the centre of the canyon is dry and arid, along the tops of the canyon it is very green with small streams running through the villages dotted along the way. Luckily there were ladies selling water along the route once we got into the canyon. We walked for about 7 hours before we had another steep descent further down into the canyon. We were heading to an oasis village called Oasis de Sangalle. It literally is a green oasis right in the centre of the dry red/orange canyon. There is a waterfall and lots of trees. As we were climbing down into the canyon we could see the oasis from a distance and the best way to describe it was that it looked like a golf course, or luxury holiday home development. All you could see were green palm trees and 5 swimming pools. When we actually got down there we realised that the hostals were not luxury, they were basic concrete blocks with no windows which was fine with us, we've slept in a lot worse. There are 5 bungalow resorts, very basic but they all have fancy swimming pools which is strange. There are no restaurants you just eat at the bungalow you picked to stay at. It is a beautiful place and it felt good that people could only get to it by walking far, like you'd put in the effort to be there. The next day we got up about 7am and began the slow climb back up the canyon. It took us 3 and a half hours climbing slowly. It got very hot at one point, and so we were relieved when we reached the top. We just made the bus back to Chivay. We were sweaty and stank as we sat on the bus for 3 hours. We slept in Chivay that night. Our first time in Chivay we discovered a great meal at the market. For 1 pound we sat at this little stall and had a plate piled with rice, chips, spaghetti, salad and chicken!! It was an elderly couple who ran the stall and they seemed to put their heart and soul into it. Needless to say we returned there when we went back to Chivay. The day after we headed back to Arequpia to collect our bags.

That same day we got on an overnight bus to Huacachina. It's another oasis type town right in the middle of the desert. It's surrounded by huge sand dunes and people go there mainly for adventure sports on the dunes. You can sand board and dune buggy there. In the middle of the village is an emerald green lagoon which when contrasted with the towering white sand dunes and bright blue sky is very picturesqe. Apparently hotels began to spring up in the 1920s when rich Peruvians would come to bathe in the lagoon as they believed it had healing powers. People don't really go into the water any more, tourists seem to just come for the dunes and the beauty of the place. We hired sand boards and spent an evening attempting to board down the dunes. Ash made Tom go first and after he flew down the dunes screaming was totally scared about going down. You go really fast! She ended up sitting on the board sliding down but kept stopping herself with her feet, it was an embarrassing attempt really. Tom on the other hand was flying down like a pro. The problem then was the walk back up. With every 1 step up you slid 4 steps back, every few meters you needed to stop and take a rest. On our second day there we randomly bumped into the Scottish couple we met in Buenos Aires 2 months earlier and so spent the day sunbathing with them at their pool. The 4 of us climbed to the top of the dunes to watch the sunset that night. As you can imagine there was a beautiful sunset from the top.

After Huacachina we got a bus 4 hours North to Lima, and got straight on another bus which took us to the beach town of Mancora through the night. By this point we were getting a bit sick of cities and weren't particularly bothered about visiting Lima which is why we by passed it. Mancora is in the far North of Peru on the coast. We'd read that it was a bit of hippy place but that it had year round sunshine so we thought we'd give it a try. We'd booked a hostel for 4 nights, however once we got there lets just say we realised that the people already staying there were not our cup of tea, and so we only lasted 1 night at that hostel. It was basically an all night rave kind of hostel, where pretty much anything seemed to be allowed (illegal or legal). It was also cloudy on our first day there so our first impressions of Mancora were rubbish, in fact by the end of the first day we'd decided to head straight to Ecuador the next day! Oh what a difference a day makes, and a new hotel. The next day we woke up to sunshine, moved to a new hotel which was really chilled out and in a very pretty garden setting, and decided to give Mancora a chance. We ended up staying for 10 days!! We didn't really do anything apart from alternate between lying at our pool and lying at the beach. We had sunshine nearly every day. It was so nice being in one place for all that time, not moving about, and being able to just lie and relax. Mancora beach is famous for surfing and kite surfing and so we spent many an afternoon watching in amazement at people kite surfing whilst holding onto parachute looking things. When the wind was good there would be so many people doing it the sky was filled with the colours of all the parachutes (the official name for the things probably isn't parachutes, but that's the best description). Neither of us had ever seen people kite surfing before, it looks like it would be loads of fun. Tom hired himself a surfboard for a few hours one day. He managed to stand up once, apparently the waves were too small for him, or so he reckons. While there we easily got into a routine and ended up at the same restaurants eating off the 'economica menu' they always had. Which consisted of a starter, main course and a drink all for £1.50. Why don't they have these in England!

We were reluctant to leave Mancora as we'd gotten used to everything and were enjoying the weather, but we also wanted to spend a little bit of time in Ecuador so after our 10 days we got on to our last overnight bus of the trip and headed to our final country Ecuador................

Lots of love

T & A xx

ps. blog address for colca canyon hike is http://en.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=1710364

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Photos

Cruz del Condor
This is the look out point for the condors in the colca canyon

Chivay
We had breakfast at the first stall. Where we ate dinner was exactly the same.

Huacachina
People walking across the top of the dune

Huacachina
Tom clambering back up