Canyon de Colca

No, that´s not the glow of happiness on my face, that´s the gleam of sweat.  We´re starting this post with us finishing our trek.

The Place
Not quite as exciting as 6 days, 7 nights and without the lesbian lead masquerading as a full-fledged hetero, but unbelievable, regardless. We've finally done it: our boots are deflowered, our packs more rugged and our legs made of pure, unadulterated muscle. We are officially trekkers.

It's taken us six and a half months to get on-board anything longer than a day hike, but I have a feeling we've caught ourselves a liking to this walking business. Luckily we started in style. Our first trek began with our first abstinence policy: no guides, DIY. It also started with the worlds second deepest canyon, meaning the worlds second longest ascent out of a canyon. A daunting prospect, but one easily shoved idly to the background when walking downhill.

Colca canyon is officially the world's second deepest canyon (Coatahuasi, right around the corner, measures in at 160+ feet deeper). It is a few hours outside of Peru's second largest city, Arequipa. It is also 2nd to the grand canyon of America in looks and in the overwhelming sense of largeness that enormous canyons evoke. It is beautiful, with steep, sheer cliffs dotting its ravine borders. And unlike the grand canyon with its flat arroyo bottom (in places) Colca canyon seems to have far less accessibility to open grazing area near its riverside, hence the reason our destination at the bottom, Sengali, is populated by no less than three hostals advertising their relations to "oasis'" (oasisis?). But we'll get to that. First DIY trekking.



This picture has nothing to do with ´the plan´, except that without the plan, we wouldn´t have seen the beautiful bottom of this canyon.



The Plan
Part of our hesitation regarding trekking was "the backpack(s)". Two 20 kilos packs (x2.2 for pounds) for three straight days sounded miserable, sweaty (for me), body-destroying, soul-wrenching and possibly relationship regressing. Not to mention we would be adding three days of water and food, maybe another 5 kilos each, who knows what that could incur. Instead we formed an alternate plan: one backpack, only necessities, well, mainly necessities, as follows:

- lights, head
- a change of clothes each
- swimwear (yes, oasis comes with pools)
- about 8 liters of water
- tent
- sleeping bags
- 2 books (God Delusion and something by Hesse, if you are the curious type)
- basic hygiene products, including sun block.
- and food: lightest, energy-filled as possible. Peanut butter, 6 homemade jerky sticks, jam in a plastic bag, a can of tuna salad, 4 tangerines (not light, but worth it), 6 pieces of cheese, 3 avocadoes and 13 pieces of bread (8 small-medium and tasty egg/sesame rolls; 4 large, hearty pieces; 1 baggete, of which half was eaten while the other half crumbled away.

We unloaded my bag, dumped it all into our recently purchased Bolivian souvenir pack and refilled it with the above goods. The result wasn't quite titanium bike frame light, but it wasn't a Maury Pauvich baby any longer either. Somewhere around 25 pounds sounds about right, maybe a bit more. Manageable.

Our last unplanned detail was navigation. We had no map, no idea where to go outside of the starting village. So, we asked questions to the tour agency at our hostel, who in fact was not a tour agent, but knew enough to give us info: "Colca canyon is easy, just follow the trail, the big one. The small are dangerous." Beth snapped a photo of a map she found on the Internet, for precautionary reasons, and we headed out the following morning.

Walking down this started our trek off right, with blisters.

The Execution, or how we brutalized our poor feet
After a short bus delay, 6 hours in a bus terminal and the resulting midnight stopover in a middling town, (1) we arrived a half day late to my favoritely coined city in SA, Cabanaconde.

We took advantage of a few bars handing out maps with directions in hopes of wooing post-hike drink purchases, we asked half the town where the trail head was located and eventually we guessed the correct direction to find our way to the beginning of the next three days.

You would expect the downhill portion, our descent into the canyon, to be simple, relaxing and even tranquil, not a difficult, harrowing journey, taxing not only on your body, but on your mind as well. Perhaps not as dramatic as that, the steepness, the added 25 pounds and the mid-day heat collectively joined together to make this the hardest portion of our journey.

We descended what, from the bottom, looked almost to be a sheer cliff. Though not explicitly fearful of heights, I don't love them. What is enchanting about this hike is that the fear helps to create a more surreal experience. 4 hours plunging away at the cliff, multiple blisters and an achey body was well worth the reward of landing at the bottom and having the pleasure of leering up at the massive peak (is it a peak, if you've went down a giant hole?), the unforgiving wall, beautiful in its austerity.

We camped that night under the cliff, devouring peanut butter sandwiches and a Coca Cola and relishing in our days work. Beauty incarnate.

The following day was a relative breeze. Another 4 hour hike, one initial climb with a following downhill, both about an hour or so. The highlight was arriving at Sengali, a quaint little oasis found at a widening of the riverbed. About three little camping/hospedajes habitate the base, with at least two shepherding us in with pools. Not just any pools, but waterfall pools found only in the playground of the rich...here, however, was free to camp. Not for the rich of heart, for the poor backpacker it beckons. We lounged, swam, indulged in a veggie dinner served by the campground and rested our feet for the last, and mist intimidating portion if our journey: the ascent.

Paraiso.  Paradise. 

As the canyon is at lower altitude and located in an arid, desert environment, the days can be painfully hot. The camp advised a group of older travelers to get up at 3am to start the 4 hour climb out. We took heed, waking up at 4am to pack up the tent, dawn or headlamps and get the hell outta dodge, or paradise.

Hiking in the dark is, I have decided, the best way to hike, in particular uphill. There is no way to judge your progress, there is no looking up nor down, there is simply one foot in front of another. It lulls you, like a mobile or a kid in a car seat, into something of what I'd imagine a medatative state to be. Your focus is drawn to your movement and breath, and in my case to sweat, as well (even in the predawn temperatures, sweat). By the time the sun began cresting over the surrounding "peaks"--a mess of oranges and reds shimmering across the normally colorless (colorless being brown) rock--we realized we were more than half way up the beast.

The rest of the hike, with the suns reception of perspective, was tough going. Steep and arduous and unrelenting compared to our first hour and a half, we reached the summit about an hour after daybreak. Two and a half hours of near non-stop, lack-of-switchback, climbing was exhausting. But the top was made all the more welcoming as a result. Triumph was trumped by our sense of accomplishment and then trumped again by the knowledge that we did it ourselves. With our pocketbooks thanking us, our legs hating us and our hearts content we walked out the last 30 minutes to our waiting bus and headed back to dorm beds and lockers that would once again take over our duties of caring for those burdensome packs.

The newest craze in the backpacking world, Gangsta-in-a-Hipster´s-outfit Hiking

(1) Beware, our con game is getting good. This town, Chivay, is known by Colca goers as a tariff trap. Once you stop there, you are almost sure to pay a "visitors" tax. The town is dusty, meager, touristy if touristy simply entailed lots of miserable lodgings and a few overpriced pizza places and NOTHING else. Essentially a place that reeks of death of the soul, seemingly the last place on earth that should try to charge you a fee to visit. Yet, it does. We were harangued, perpetually hounded and eventually pleaded with to pay. We claimed ignorance, feigned stupidity (much easier to do in broken Spanish than you might think) and stood our frugal ground...and won. No tax without representation for these two travelers.

Side note: We learned the tax goes only to the city, not the park, not other cities along the way. Just this soul bender. Hence our rationale--not to forget cheapness--for not paying. We encountered a guard on our exiting as well, but went with the tried and true "we can't find our ticket" method. He waved us on, we left 35 soles happier.