Our original plan was to visit Manchu Picchu together, but the rainstorms and mudslides changed our plans. Instead we flew an hour south of Lima to Arequipa. Arequipa is nicknamed the “White City” as it is surrounded by mountains; however if you visit in the summer (like we did) the mountains are not full of snow, and it doesn’t look like a white city. It was a beautiful city. When we got in we talked to the hostel about different options we had on visiting the Cañón del Colca. The Cañón del Colca is the world’s deepest canyon. Our hostel explained that there were two options on seeing the canyon; one was to take a bus tour and sit in the bus all day just getting out at picture taking viewpoints. The other option was to trek the canyon. The hostel people said that this was the best option, because you get to go down into the canyon and see how the locals live there. That sounded fun, but hiking down the world’s deepest canyon seemed a little difficult. After chatting some more with the hostel workers they told us that it was just a 4 hour hike down then we would be staying in bungalows and able to hangout at the swimming pools and enjoy the scenery. Since we knew we were getting picked up at 4 am we figured that was so that we wouldn’t be hiking in the heat of the day and get to spend the afternoon at the pool.
Boy, were we wrong. We got picked up at 4 am and loaded a bus to drive 4 hours to the canyon. Once we were there we stopped at Cruz del Cóndor, this is the highest point in the canyon and the best spot to see the enormous 3 meter condors flying overhead. After a bit of bird watching, we drove farther down the road to meet our canyon guide. For our 2-day trek, Angie and I trekked with girls from Ireland, Belgium, Italy and our Peruvian guide. Once we were at the top of the canyon looking down and l was listening as our guided explained where we would be hiking to I noticed she said it was a 4 hour hike to the 1st town. In this town we will be having lunch then continuing for another 3 hours where we will spend the night. The next day it would be a 3 hour hike straight up the mountain to catch the bus back to the city. Whoa! What happened to the short 4 hour hike to the pools? This tour is the Peruvian version of Gilligan’s Island. We thought we signed up for a 4 hour hike and it was really a 11 hours hiking in total and 9 miles over two days of walking up and down the world’s deepest canyon.
All in all it was an amazing trip and I loved it, once I was safely at the top on the 2nd day. I would not recommend just decided to hike a canyon one day with out training at least a little bit. Next time I will also get hiking boots, Angie and I learned really fast the tennis shoes are not quite appropriate for hiking steep gravel paths, as we fell a few times on the way down. Thankfully we were with a group of girls who had just about as much hiking experience as we did, next to nothing.
Now that I have hiked the Cañón del Colca, I guess the Grand Canyon should be nothing in comparison. Maybe that will be Angie and my next adventure…. we will see once the soreness of this trek wears off.
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