Vapor Trails: Colca Canyon

I was originally going to stay in Arequipa for three nights, but Alexandra at the hostel kindly let me push back my third night so I could do the two day tour of the Colca Canyon. It`s one of the deepest canyons in the world, and is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.

You can DIY trips, but I decided to take a tour to speed things up, and to get to meet some people - which really worked out, because there were some great people on the tour. Having now come back - it was an excellent trip, and I`d definitely recommend it. I booked with Colonial in Arequipa - and Dina the guide was excellent.

You start early in the morning, and head out to the highest point of the trip which is almost 5000 meters. Before you get there, they stop so everyone can drink Mate De Coca - Coca Tea. Basically leaves from the coca tree in hot water. Yep - the ones they make cocaine from.

It tasted good - a bit like green tea - just a bit stronger. Here`s Julian, myself, and Mark enjoying a coca tea and some sunshine.

As the area is a nature reserve, there`s plenty of wild life, including Alpaca`s, Llama`s, and we even saw a wild fox. Here`s a few pics:

And here`s one from the 4,900 high point:

I`ve never suffered from altitude sickness - and felt OK when we got to the top. Except I set off walking a bit too fast and suddenly felt dizzy and thought I was going to puke and pass out. You have to take it real slow at this height. I also got a light headache going down the other side - but it soon passed.

One of the tires of the van blew out, and I took this pic of my bag on the roof of the truck:

It`s down hill all the way to the town of Chivay, where we had lunch. A side trip to the hot springs for a soak (they`re 38 degrees Celsius) and then it was off to the "folkloric dancing evening".

We`d had a few laughs about the folkloric evening and how touristy it would be - but it was actually really great (although the food was not that good). They had traditional music and dance - with one dance about a husband who treats his wife badly, then gets malaria (falling to the ground shaking). The wife then gets her revenge, before deciding to look after him. He gets well, picks her up, and carries her across the room, before finishing with a dance.

To my horror, the lady grabbed my hand, dragged me up, and I had to take the place of the guy in the dance - including falling to the floor shaking with malaria, and then picking her up and carrying her across the room. Sadly, my camera was in my pocket - but here`s a pic of me with the lady and man, and a few of the band. I was really impressed with the band - they were actually awesome musicians - they must be they probably do this every night - but what really impressed me was that they all played every instrument - I counted about six or seven.

All danced out:

The next morning it was a stupidly early start, as we headed off to see the Condor`s. It was nesting season, and we only saw one - but still - it was an incredible sight. I managed one really bad photo before it went into the Canyon, but we also got some great pics of the canyon and the area - I took loads of photo`s so this is only a sample.

The river on this one is 1 kilometer straight down.

The terraces you can see in this next photo were built by the Inca`s - to make sure they got the water running correctly, they`d make a map on a piece of rock and try it out first - clever idea - the Inca`s must have been great Project Managers - if you fail to plan - you plan to fail :-)