We left Puno behind us and headed by bus to Arequipa. We'd heard that there might be some big volcanos to climb close to the city, and adventures to be had slightly further a field at Colca Canyon.
Annoyingly, we soon found out that we could (should) have travelled directly to Colca Canyon from Puno, and from there on to Arequipa [sigh].
It wasn't all bad though, Arequipa is Peru's second largest city and very nice with it too. We relaxed, enjoyed the sights, treated ourselves to a few nice meals and generally enjoyed the vastly improving climate that steadily moving south was affording us.
We eyed up the aforementioned volcanos dominating the northern skyline, but price enquiries at a few agencies soon knocked us back a bit. We decided to head to Colca Canyon and resolved to look into the volcanos again on our return.
Colca Canyon is vast and very, very, deep, 3270m in fact. The second deepest in the world by only 84m to sister canyon, Cotahuasi (3354m) only a little further on in the region. For perspective, that's over two times the depth of the Grand Canyon in the USA...
There is a network of walking trails criss-crossing it and hostels, of a sort, lying within its depths. We planned and packed (lightly) for 3 nights traversing the many trails and enjoying the scenery.
Lonely Planet marked this as little travelled, but a must do, for hiking enthusiasts. A Danish gent we'd met in our final hostel in Cusco concurred with this description and urged us to visit. I was really looking forward to this!
The first day was a hike from the village of Cabanaconde down to the base of the canyon (~1250m decent), with bigger treks over the following days. Well, it should have been. The bus schedule and travel times were way off. We left an hour and a half later than expected and the journey time ate into the rest of the day.
Arriving late afternoon, we spent 5 times the cost we had budgeted for a room at the top of the canyon in Cabanaconde. The room and hostel were, however, lovely. We happily blew even more cash on woodfired pizza and wheat beer! Even better, our host was an ex-guide; he supplied us with a map and accurate trail and accommodation information... It turns out we'd have possibly walked a huge distance to a now abandoned village, phew!
New plans were set. Onward and... Erm downward!
In order to visit a waterfall beyond the abandoned village, and make up for lost time, we were advised to take a local bus down and across the valley. This was very unexpected. We had no idea there would be roads. As it happened, "road" would be a very loose term indeed...
The bus ride was crazy. It was steep, insanely loose under wheel, and barely suitable for a person on foot, let alone an ancient 30ish seater bus.
Bex had the canyonside window seat and was, for the most part, genuinely terrified. I was feeling only slightly better myself. At one point we traversed a huge section straight along the nearside of the canyon - simply 1000m of loose scree and sand above us, and exactly the same below... the entire section scarred by clear, and recent, landslides.
2 harrowing hours later we alighted half way up the far side and gladly began the adventure on foot. It was hot down there though, really, really hot.
A section of the "interesting" road we'd just travelled
Off we trot...
Andean Condors and small lizards were the only life to be seen
The skies were clear and blue, the landscape all dust and cacti; not much to look at to be honest, but we were on our way and had a little dip in a waterfall in our sights... I've neglected to mention the hot springs too, we'd also be able to dip in those at any of the hostels at the canyon's bottom!
But there was also, unfortunately, the heat I mentioned.
We plundered all our water in the first hour, and were plying on suncream like makeup on 'My big fat gypsy wedding'. A few hours in we filtered, drank and re-supplied water up near the abandoned village.
We were running a little late. The bus was a little late and took longer than expected (de ja vu?), but we still wanted to make it up to the falls; this was, after all, why we were on this particular walk. Estimates from all sources had the trip as 20-30 one way, so with a bite to eat and a dip we'd make it back to the abandoned village, and then down to a central canyon hostel before nightfall (at 6ish).
30mins along the river valley and we could neither see nor even hear the falls. GPS only showed us the trail end and not the location of the falls themselves. We were also out of water again. The heat was incessant, oppressive and exhausting and there wasn't a square inch of shade.
We considered turning around more than once until, after nearly an hour, we finally saw the falls in the distance. We had come too far and were way to stubborn to turn around now; besides we could drink and stock up on water again at the falls.
As we got closer, however, the terrain became much rougher. Nothing that would really cause a huge problem, but the extra time already taken, and now extra required to traverse it was now a problem. And frankly, the heat was taking its toll.
We'd both just had enough. It was no longer any fun. At all.
We cursed the falls and, moreover, the misinformation on timings - we should have turned around an hour before. Now, when we were finally forced to, we were way off schedule - we had to consider the real possibility of hiking past sunset. Ironic I suppose, as all we wanted at that moment was to find a way out of the sun's ravaging intensity.
I took some photos of the falls just a few hundred meters away and we turned around and started trudging back.
Waterfall of woe
Returning past the abandoned village, and now following the river down, water was not to be a problem - but we were wiped out and thoroughly unhappy; tiredness causing us to repeatedly trip, stumble and stub our toes.
The waning sun brought shade, but with it the spectre of night - not something we looked forward to with a steep a long descent to the hostel at the trails end.
Somehow, in foul mood and no small amount of discomfort, we stumbled into the hostel before dusk.
9 hours on the trail was killer. An addition 5min walk down to the hotsprings seemed cruel, but I hardly cared if I made I up again. Best bath ever.
Add to that a cheap and hearty dinner and cold lager and I was complete. Almost...
We had a chat and decided to sack off next day's hiking! We both slept, deep and long, with no alarm to wake us. When we did wake, we sat in and around the hot springs getting sunburnt.
A hard life.
Better still (for losers like me) a pair of rare torrent ducks swam, dove, and fed in the rapids and rocks in the river raging through the canyon's base beside us. I watched, filmed and photographed them for ages, perfectly content.
Duck joy
We slept through the stifling heat of the middle day (how had we walked in it previously?!) and chatted to other exhausted visitors when they arrived throughout the afternoon.
Oddly some visitors would arrive down in the canyon with dogs that were not theirs...
A scruffy looking, collie-ish, fellow had failed to leave with the human he'd chaperoned in that morning. He was odd, but likable for some reason, and possessed an odd tick where he would snap his mouth shut like he was catching flies.
He now adopted us.
He followed us around all day and then slept, soundly and without "snapping", in our room that night (we didn't have much choice, the rooms weren't actually secured against man or beast).
We woke on the final morning and, in an combined effort to avoid the worst of the heat and also catch an earlyish bus, started the 1250m ascent to the canyon top at 5am.
"Croc-a-dog" appeared totally cool with this schedule and bounded along just ahead of us. Completing our ragged band was another dog - sporting odd dog dreadlocks, he looked a lot like captain Jack Sparrow.
Dog buddies
Cap'n left us after the first hour or so but the dog chaperone phenomenon seemed to be spreading. We only passed a few groups of hikers coming the other way, but two of these had still managed to unwittingly collect their own dog friends. Brilliant!
Our plan to avoid the worst of the heat pretty much worked. We made it up to Cabanaconde by 11am, and therefore, in time for the bus we had hoped to catch.
Croc, who had climbed with us and kept us amused all the way, disappeared as we reached town... We searched the streets before finally boarding our bus and then, while pulling away, looked back despairingly from the bus windows in search of our travel companion. We never caught sight of him again and were never able to say our goodbyes.
Farewell Croc-o-dog, may you someday complete your calling and star in Punch and Judy shows.
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