Colca Canyon

This past weekend I took a trip with other students to the Colca Canyon. This canyon is the 2nd deepest canyon in the world, second to another here in Peru. I came away with many stories from this weekend. I’ll start with the bus ride:

This was my first time traveling by bus in Peru, which was definitely a new experience. After about an hour of the 3-4 hour trip, the pavement evolved into a road of dirt and rock. I think it was about another hour or so later that we had pavement again. I wouldn’t be surprised if I lost some brain cells in this part!!!!! The view of this part of Peru was good though: a lot of desert, mountains, and alpacas and llamas.

We had the ¨hook-up¨ from one of our teachers who has family from Yanque, the village we stayed at. The whole weekend only costed $40. We slept in a hostal, and I was pretty comfortable, other than applying almost all of my clothes as PJ’s and sleeping under 4 wool blankets. The coolest part was because of the dry air and blankets there was a mini fireworks show inside the sheets from the static electricity!

Here is our group that went: (2 students from Germany, 3 from Denmark, 2 from ALABAMA!!!!) And here is our teacher and personal tour guide trying to be a condor (that´s Edgar for ya!)

We got up really early to catch the bus out to Colca Canyon, we went early because there are condors who fly around the canyon up until about 8 or so in the morning. We got to the frigid lookout and hung around. It was beautiful, it was steep, and it was cold!!

We saw some condors flying about every 5 minutes or so, but far far away.

After a while (to get our frozen blood moving again) we went for a hike. We saw vizcachas (which look like rabbits with short ears and long tails). (Cute little guys!!! I´m sure they are a nice Peruvian meal as well!)

When we climbed back up to the lookout, it was amazing how many condors were flying around! By this time a lot of vendors were out selling their crafts, and hundreds of tourists were looking at the condors. It was neat in this picture to compare the size of the condors and the people!

There were at least 20 flying at one point, which I hear is rare—many people have gone 2 days in a row and haven’t even seen one! They are so huge and beautiful!

We returned to Yanque and did a few other things. We hiked around, and got a tour of the old Yanque, which the ruins were at least 500 years old. It was so neat to check out! My imagination went crazy wondering what life was like for these people. The irrigation ditches made of stone were still intact, the walls of their houses still standing, some showing evidence that they had 2 floors.

Our teacher, Edgar took us over the river Colca, and we saw some ancient Incan tombs, once again my imagination went crazy again.

We also went to 2 different hot springs. The first one we went to was more for tourists, where the hot spring water was pumped into a pool. The second was my favorite, all natural, clear hot water which was only about 20 yards away from a frigid river. (This definetly made up for some of the cold showers I have had here.) This also was where it was helpful having an inside guide, there were absolutely no tourists here, and there were many Peruvians staring at us like we didn´t belong there (granted there may have not been too many of us ¨gringos¨ there before, and some of the Peruvians were bathing).

Other fun things as pictured was learning a Peruvian dance (it may not seem like it in the picture, but I was really dancing with the girl), and talking a bit to some women with their alpacas.

It was a great weekend: a little escape from what has become normal to me, and a trip to some beautiful parts of Peru with a glimpse into current customs and into ancient Peru.