Colca Canyon: Day 1

A lot of people will probably tell you that foreign countries are different, and that you should be ready for a different world. Honestly, that's some really good advice for someone whose never been out of their home country before; however, after going to Colca last weekend, I think I truly deserve to say that I've been to a different world. I know I've been saying that Arequipa is different from the United States, and it is different, but Colca was really different.

I woke up at about 2:45 in the morning last Friday to begin my trip. The night before, my family arranged a taxi to come pick me up at 3:00AM. The taxi ride wasn't actually that strange at all, even though it certainly could have been. The only bad thing about the taxi was that I got charged S/.5 (that reads 5 soles) for the trip to the Casa, which is outrageous. Not too long after that, I was in a Mercedes charter bus cruising toward Colca Canyon.

We made a few stops along the way. The first stop was a bathroom break. For some strange reason, the women's bathroom was an actual room and the men had to use a portapotty. The next stop was a viewing station for taking pictures of the Condors that fly in and around the canyon. The condors are actually quite ugly, but they're a nationaly protected bird, and everyone else seemed to love them, so I took a few pictures just for the heck of it.

Finally we arrived at Cabanaconde, the base town for the trip, and we ate lunch there. Afterwards, the trek began! (And it was quite the trek) The first day was almost entirely downhill, and I still don't think my knee has recovered from all of the work it did. We spent about five hours hiking down into the Canyon, and the whole time I was just trying to think about the bridge at the bottom of the canyon. For the first two hours, I couldn't even see it. About three hours into the hiking, I thought I was getting really close to the bottom, but for some reason that last little part of the canyon was quite deceiving. The small part that I had left to hike took me about two more hours and turned out not to be that small.

Upon reaching the bridge, I was extremely tired and ready for some food. The locals there are also aware of the typical tourist's condition when they reach the bottom of the canyon, and thus try their best to make a profit from it. There were women at the bridge selling Casinos (the best chocolate cookies in Peru) and various drinks. Naturally, I wanted to chow down on some food, and kick back with a sprite in my left hand, but that changed when I asked how much a sprite (one, not three) costs, and the lady said, S/.5. I ended up drinking my water, and eating half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that was about three days old. It was delicious. (Really it was, no sarcasm)

We had to climb back up part of the mountain in order to get to our lodgings that night, and that wasn't too bad. A mule carried our bags for us, and we had dinner around 7. I was really surprised that mules could climb these mountains because the paths are hardly walkable for a human, but animals do amazing things.

I'm typing from an English laptop... :) I'm happy.