Colca Canyon: Day 2

The first night was an experience to remember. The food that we ate actually wasn't that bad. I'd say it was almost equivalent to the food that my host mother feeds me during the week, which is pretty good. It was quite surprising, considering the fact that our guides cooked the food over a wooden stove. After eating, we all went straight to bed. There really isn't a lot to do in the deepest canyon in the world after the sun goes down.

Luckily, all of the GVI volunteers were able to sleep in the same room together the first night. There were six beds in the barn that we slept in. (Yes, we slept in a barnish type building.) Instead of using all six beds and sleeping seperately, we made a joint decision to place three beds side by side, and create one gigantic bed that all of us could sleep on together. It turned out that one of the other volunteers decided that sleeping on the crack of two beds wasn't actually all that comfortable, but the others of us slept together. It was definitely something I'll never forget. Plus, none of us were cold the next morning when we woke up to go to breakfast.

Breakfast was a real treat. Once again the guides surprised us. We ate banana filled creps with chocolate for breakfast. It was definitely the best breakfast that I've had in Peru. (I always have jelly and toast for breakfast when I'm with my host family) After breakfast, we climbed a little bit more before beginning our descent back to the bottom of the cannon. There were several times during the climb down that day that I felt a little bit queasy. I could have easily fallen off the mountain, but thankfully they gave us a hiking stick, which turned out to be very useful.

Colca was a three day trip, but the climbing only took up two days. After reaching the bottom for a second time, we climbed back up a little bit. Believe it or not there was a resort on the other side of the canyon, and we stopped there for lunch. They had a pool that used running water from the canyon, but it was still maintained a professional appearance despite the clear lack of advanced technology. The water in the pool was cold, but it was definitely a nice break after climbing. After lunch, we finished the climb, and came back to Chivay for the night. We all slept in the same room again, even though I think we paid for two rooms at the hotel.

If I had to give some advice about mountain climbing to potential hikers, I'd say that you should bring lots of water. I brought three bottles of water on the trip, and none of the other volunteers brought any. We (they actually) spent about S/.30 on water, and if they had bought water before they probably wouldn't have paid more than S/.10. Asi es la vida.