Cañon de Colca: Hiking Day 3

After a good night´s sleep in our cozy bungalow (which had three beds for us...) we got up bright and early to start off on our hike at 5:45 am. Even though it was only a 3 or 3 1/2 hour hike, once the sun came up it got hotter in the canyon and the trail was pretty dry and rocky, so there was not a lot of shade.  We also knew that we would not have breakfast until we hiked back out of the canyon, so we left prepared with lots of water, soda crackers, and m&ms.

Here is JP ready to start our hike in the cool morning before the sun came up:

We were excited for our last day of hiking, but I at least was a little apprehensive as we had seen the trail from the other side of the canyon when we were hiking the day before.  It looked steep and dusty, but it was the only way out of the canyon.  In this photo, below, you can see the trail heading up toward the left from the green trees of Sangalle, where we stayed the night:

As we expected, the trail got steep quickly and we just focused on putting one foot in front of the other.  Before we knew it, we had already gained quite a bit of altitude.

The photo above simply shows what this part of the canyon looked like--lots of cactuses to remind us of Arizona, rocks, and not much else.

Luckily, it was warm enough to hike in shorts and long sleeves--we took our fleeces off after about ten minutes, and we were able to take plenty of rest breaks for water and snacks, and to catch our breath. Here is JP on one of our breaks:

Overall, we did pretty well, slow and steady knocking out zig after zag, and because the trail was so steep we could literally see the altitude gain as it happened--check out this photo:

The only slightly scary part came when JP told me, ¨I think I am feeling the altitude a little bit--I keep telling my feet where to go but they don´t quite make it there¨.  We stopped and gave him some more m&ms, the magic solution, and shortly thereafter he felt better and we were able to continue our slow hike.

We definitely weren´t the slowest people, as we passed several groups on our way up, but we weren´t the fastest either. The fastest ones were on mules, which we saw going down the canyon to pick up hikers when we were starting out, and then passed us after we were about 70% of the way up. When you are hiking and the mules are coming up behind you, your job is to get out of the way, and as our guide instructed us, get to the side close to the cliff, not on the edge, because the mules are focused on getting to their destination, and could accidentally knock you off the trail without noticing. We did not have any exciting brushes like this with the mules, but we did keep to the cliff side when we saw (and smelled!) them coming.  The hikers who ended up on the mules included a couple from Switzerland with diarrhea, a couple of French girls who were not in shape to do the hike by their own admission, and several other groups whose stories we never figured out. 

We continued climbing and climbing, and eventually reached the crest of our hill, where we returned to a flat surface, a blessed relief, and could appreciate the canyon from above one last time:

With the hardest part of the day over with, we strolled back through some farms to the town of Cabanaconde. Here we are, dusty and sweaty but happy to be back on flat land:

Here is the town of Cabanaconde, where we had started from two days earlier.  We returned to the same restaurant, had a big, filling breakfast, and stretched our legs in the town square before getting back on our big tourist bus with several other groups. It was only 10 am and we had already hiked out of a gigantic canyon!

The bus took us back over the same winding, unpaved road through the Colca Valley to the town of Chivay. We went to the ¨optional¨ thermal baths in Chivay, which were not that thermal but were a refreshing dip in clean water after three days with no showers.  Then we were invited to the ¨optional¨ lunch buffet that seemed expensive and overdone, so we skipped that and found a little place to have chicken sandwiches and then got some ice cream for dessert.

The bus then took us back over the high mountains separating Chivay and Arequipa. We got to see several groups of grazing llama and alpaca, but none close enough to the bus to get a good picture.  We returned to Arequipa just in time for rush hour traffic, and made our way back to our hostel by 6:30 or 7.

We treated ourselves to a nice dinner out to celebrate both our hike and our anniversary.  Then I went to sleep early while JP watched most of the second half of Monday Night Football--cable and globalization are amazing.  We wandered around a bit more the next morning, and then caught the bus back to good old Tacna.

We had a great time in Arequipa and the Canyon and we hoped you enjoyed all our photos and stories!