Colca Canyon Ascent

We woke at 4am to the sound of Cocks crowing, we did our best to ignore them and got up for breakfast at 6:30 feeling fairly well refreshed. We set off treking along the base of the canyon, passing through several villages with spectacular views all the way.

 

3 hours later we arrived at "The Oasis" - a collection of hostels each with small swimming pools. We had some lunch here and lazed around in the pool for a while before starting off on the uphill climb out of the canyon.

We had heard differing stories about how long this takes, anywhere between 2 and 4 hours. We made good progress for the first 2 hours, but in the last quarter of the hike I ran completely out of energy. It was at this point I learned that Colca Canyon is in fact the deepest canyon in the word, deeper than the Grand Canyon! Combine that with a soaring midday sun and the high altitude and the result was possibly the most difficult physical challenge I´ve ever undertaken. We crawled our way upwards for another 2 hours, stopping every few minutes and eventually reached the top nearly 3.5 hours after we started.

We hit the road back to Arequipa and arrived back about 5 hours later after some interesting dirt roads and night time Peru driving.