Colca Canyon

Cabanaconde is a small dusty town with few tourists.  While many tourists visit the canyon most do so via tour and stay in other towns.  Wanting to be a little adventurous we decided to trek the canyon on our own and leave the expensive tours behind.  We decided on a day trip down to the bottom of the canyon to an Oasis and back up the same day.

Leaving early in the morning to beat the heat we started our decent.  As we continued on, the Oasis did not seem to be getting much closer and what we thought would be a easy hike down turned into a 2.5 hour knee buster (a steep 1200m vertical decent, deeper than the Grand Canyon).  At the bottom of the canyon was a small Oasis with the most vegetation we’d seen in weeks and was littered with tiny campgrounds and lodges.  We picked a spot and immediately took a plunge in its crystal clear pool  which had magical powers , as I entered tired, cranky, filthy and thinking there was no way in hell i was climbing back up that Canyon and exited feeling refreshed, clean and full of hope that the trek up would not be that bad. 

We spent the next three hours lounging in the shade regaining our strength and enjoying Alpaca Stew for lunch before mustering up the courage to head back up the canyon.  The first part of the trek up is pure dessert with no trees or rocks to provide any source of shade.  The sun was hot and about a fifth of the way up i was seriously questioning our sanity in choosing to do the trip on one day.  A local with a couple of donkey’s passed us and offered us a lift and it crossed both of our minds but being as stubborn as those mules we declined and kept trekking on.

As we went up the sun lost its heat, but we gained elevation meaning the air got extremely thin and it only took a few minutes to be completely out of breath. We had a added stress that we had to get to the top before the sun went down as we did not want to hike in the dark and as we reached the summit the sun slipped behind the mountains, perfect timing.  4 hours straight up!  While it was gruelling hard work, we are glad we did it and celebrated with a big meal and an early night sleep before heading to Cusco.

R