This morning my alarm was set for 230am but I was awake from around 130am anyway. I got up, got dressed and waited for the pick up bus to come. It arrived around 330am and we set off to the Colca Canyon. There were around 12 of us on the bus but two couples were doing different tours. The rest of us were all doing the 2 day trek into and out of the canyon.

We drove for around 3 hours, during which everyone tried to sleep but the minibus wasn’t that comfy, to a place called Chivay where we had to pay our entrance fee to the park. We then drove a little bit further to a place just outside of Achoma where we stopped for breakfast. It was a nice place with a baby pet llama and a cute white kitten.

After breakfast we drove a short distance to the Cruz del Condor, basically the lookout point to see the famous condor birds which can have a wingspan of around 3m. We were not disappointed and we saw quite a few of the condors flying around including the younger brown ones as well as the black and white adults. We were really lucky as a couple of them actually flew over our heads so you could see them up close. They are very majestic birds. I have quite a few photos of them, mainly at a distance, but here are just a few.

It was then back on the bus for a short trip to the start of the hike. Here I rented some bamboo walking sticks as recommended by our guide, Raquel. There were 7 of us doing the trek; Karsten and Jahn from Germany, Mara from Holland, Alex from USA, Marlene from Peru, Mina from Swizterland originally but now living in Indonesia and me.

This was our first view of the part of the canyon we would be trekking.

The Colca Canyon is the deepest canyon in the world, it has a depth of 4,160m. It is not as long or wide as the Grand Canyon. But it is impressive all the same and the views are beautiful.

So we started trekking. The trek was mainly downhill but there were some uphill bits and occasionally a nice flat bit too. The terrain was mainly rocky, stoney and sandy which actually made it quite easy to slip. We trekked down from 3,300m to around 2,100m to a small place called San Juan de Chuccho where we stopped for lunch.

The lunch was good home made food. The tree in the picture is very poisonous and some people have taken it as a drug but it makes people do crazy things like kill themselves or kill other people. The puppy was at the lunch venue and he was so cute. He had grass burs all over his fur so I spent some time trying to pull them out.

After lunch we had been told it was downhill all the way but that wasn’t quite true. We walked uphill for about an hour before we started the trek downhill to Sangalle where we would be spending the night.

On the way down we stopped off at a guinea pig farm to buy some extra water. It was quite sad to see all the guinea pigs, but as I’ve eaten one before I can’t really say anything.

Sangalle Oasis is at around 1,900m and has a range of rooms and swimming pools. We did try the pool and although it wasn’t freezing it was pretty cold. But as the shower was roughly the same temperature it was ok.

After the sun went down it got pretty cold. All us girls just stayed in the room chatting and chilling until it was time for dinner which was soup and spaghetti bolognese. It was filling as there was plenty of it. After dinner we were so tired and after buying water for the next day, we all went to bed. The rooms were very basic but at least the beds were warm and pretty comfortable.