Colca Canyon, Peru

Colca Canyon

Our trip to the world’s second deepest canyon began at the rather unreasonable hour of 2am. Our tourist van raced through the night, negotiating the hairpin mountain bends with more optimisim than was strictly required. The words “blind corner” simply don’t feature in the Peruvian dictionary.

The reason for all the rush was so we could arrive on time to see condors flying from a viewsite in the canyon. For some reason known only the condors, they only fly once a day, for an hour starting at 07h50 on the dot.

When we arrived, shaken and slightly stirred, we found a massive condor perched cheekily on a boulder just below the viewsite. Cameras were trained on the condor as we all waited breathlessly for it to take flight. Lets just say that as a chick, this was probably the last condor out of the nest.

After fifteen minutes spent observing the flightless wonder through our camera viewfinders, we became aware of a few awestruck gasps and pointed fingers from the people around us. The condors had started to fly.

Our hike in the canyon was going to be a little lark down some path to see some condors and stuff (this is what we thought anyway). In reality, the path down into the canyon is over a kilometer straight down. Our decent was gruelling as the downhills really take their toll on the legs and joints.

Our hostel for the night was a delightfully out of the way affair, mostly due to the precipitously long hike to get there. Some hot springs at the river revived our tortured muscles, while later our host serenaded us on his guitar as we sipped our well earned beers overlooking the river.

Our guide (Luis) assured us the next morning that the hike was “a little up, mostly flat then down again” to an oasis. He lied. It quickly became apparent that Luis did not own and has never seen a watch in all his days. “Fifteen more minutes to the top” turned into an hour of agonising switchbacks before we eventually stood over the next section of valley.

Much, much later as we made our final decent to the bottom of the canyon to the oasis we were thrown a curve ball of a 200 meter stretch of uphill that came pretty close to killing us. Dee threw herself to the ground near a spring close to tears and nearly unable to continue, for the first time in her young and innocent life considering the possibilty of throwing in the towel and taking a mule to the top of the canyon the next day (she did actually have a chest infection which never helps.)

Our oasis was just as it professed to be – a swimming pool and bed to soak and rest our weary bones. On the down side the Peruvians still continue to misjudge the astounding volume of beer that Gringos can put away when they’re thirsty – I mean seriously, who runs out of beer ?!

Dee was wracked with indecision at the oasis the night before our climb out of the canyon. She had picked up a chest infection and was seriously struggling to keep up a good head of steam on the uphill sections. Our guide Luis suggested that maybe Dee should consider hiring a mule to ride out of the canyon the next morning.

Dee agonised over the decision all night. On one hand she was bone tired, not well and worried that she would hold the rest of the group back on the way up. On the other hand, Dee never gives up. Ever.

In the end the stiff back of Dee’s will won out and we all set out to make our ascent at 5am the next morning minus the mule. This is where out new Dutch friends Bas and Marijke really came into their own. Bas discovered “The Pace”  (patent pending) – not too fast, not too slow, never pushing too hard and not stopping for breaks. We watched in amazement as groups cruised past us on the trail only to be found later totally blown. Dee was absolutely fine and we made the ascent in a pretty darn decent time.

The mental strength gained from the ascent would help us greatly in future hikes, and as it was less than a week before the Inka Trail we would be needing all the help we could get.

You can see the whole photo album by clicking on the link below.

Colca Canyon, Peru