Mini expedition to Colca Canyon

The city of Arequipa is not just beautiful and ancient – actually, all tourists come here because it is surrounded by a huge number of volcanoes, mountains and canyons. Not that there are few cities in Peru surrounded by such natural structures, but exactly near this city the deepest canyon on Earth, very popular among tourists, Colca Canyon, is located. Being born on a plain, I had little idea what a canyon was. I had in my head only the image of the American Grand Canyon from the movies about the Indians. Well then, I thought I should, so to speak, get acquainted personally with this miracle of nature.

The canyon is not your typical visit to a museum – you have to get a specialist’s help. At least for me with my current travel experience. Moreover, in addition to the canyon, the list of attractions in the area includes an immeasurable number of mountains and volcanoes, a couple of which can be seen directly from the roof of my hostel. Time is short and places to must see are plentiful. Where do we go from here? Yes (shame on me), I gave up and went the easy way: I bought a tour from a local tour desk. Fortunately, they are here at every turn. I didn’t even doubt that there were some on payroll in my hotel. I turned to them. Everything that followed seems like slumber.

Since the morning, although I’m sorry, this is a lie. At 2.45 AM (!), the time I usually think about whether I should go to bed “early” today, I was already boarding a tour bus heading straight for Colca Canyon.

After about three hours, we finally made our first stop. As a rule, all tours starting this early include breakfast. That is why we came to a very tiny town Chivay, where we were had a whopping two whole buns and coffee. Well, according to them. Although in fact it was just some coffee-like beverage, or even rather water with a coffee-like beverage.

A pro tip: On long excursion tours, always take a thermos with your normal strong coffee. The odds that your breakfast, lunch, and dinner-tour includes strong and tasty coffee are damned close to zero.

In the early cold morning without strong coffee, my owlish mood was already not so great, but it was messed up even more by the hour-long waiting for the co-driver. To be honest, I was furious and was already thinking about how to get to civilization from this provincial city. But the situation changed dramatically when I met other people on the tour.

Besides me, two more women and about a dozen men signed up for this mini-expedition. The ladies were Peruvian from Lima, and one of them was telling very interesting things, and she was doing it so emotionally and energetically that I slowly began to recharge from her even without coffee. The young men, as it turned out coming from the Amazonia, were also incredibly alluring. I was amazed at their appearance: instead of squat, thin and half-naked Amazonian Indians in feathers and leaves, large and hefty men appeared before my eyes. Just like our steelworkers.

Soon, our cheerful and not quite, company loaded onto the bus and went to see the fantastically beautiful condors in Colca Canyon. As our sweet guide, by the way, a very beautiful and talkative girl, said, we were very lucky to see these winged creatures, because now it’s their no-fly season. Whatever that means.

And here we are! Like the other ten buses and crowds of tourists. Mostly local – from Peru. A huge number of children, noise, ruckus – everything is like you, a connoisseur of nature, majestic mountains and silence, love…

All guides (yes, my knowledge of Spanish was already at the level to catch the general meaning) tell one and only story about this wonderful canyon. Of course, it’s about love. Latinos love this. I believe it is this heartbreaking tale, and not some geographical records, attracts Peruvian tourists to this place.

Its essence is simple. Romeo and Juliet but in the mountains. She was forced to marry another man, she ran away, either fell, or jumped off a cliff, he followed her, as a result – both vanished in the abyss. They were searched for a long, long time, but nothing was found. Or something was found. It’s unclear. Here my linguistic powers hit a wall. One thing is clear – everyone died. An end was put and cross was erected (of course, there is a huge line to take a picture with it) and everyone agreed not to interfere with great love anymore. I believe, they mentioned that his ghost still wanders and looks for her. Or she’s crying in the canyon. This is either my fantasy, or ignorance of the language, which is actually the same thing. Well, just mountains like mountains.

All in all, Colca Canyon didn’t impress me – I was hoping to see something breathtaking, but it is just beautiful and monumental. Though, the valleys and the road itself, fringed from the other side with a mountain wall of even, as if they were pattern-carved, stones, made an impression.

Just like that valleys and mountains, condors and sunny weather, warm air, and friendly company of our bus, where the guys from the jungle woke up and finally began to have fun, raised my spirits to the heights. To the heights! Haha, got it?

What especially excited my eyes were the wild alpacas – very beautiful and completely free. Still, most of all I liked hugging a llama! One of the stops was the city of Maca, where, as usual, on the central square, in front of the main temple of the city, a market was unfolded, naturally, especially for tourists. That’s exactly where this attraction is: take a picture with an eagle and a llama. They even put on a hat on the lucky one to let the proud bird sit on the skull, like on a perch. It’s not a bird – it’s a ton-weighing boar! Yikes! My neck sure remembered this feathered one. But the lama was just awww. Its softness is overwhelming – pure fluff. One more minute, and I would fall asleep keeping it in my embrace!

Then there were purely commercial stops. We arrived at the Banos Termales de Chacapi with paid basin entrance. How unexpected. Then there was a stop for lunch and some other one. In a nutshell, fatigue has already kicked in, interest gradually faded away and everyone got demoralized. That’s why on the way back straight to Arequipa, at the last stop, no one even got off the bus. Except me, obviously. Although most likely, the main reason for these southern people was the snow. I, on the contrary, jumped out of sheer joy like I adore winter. The homesickness must somehow make a breakthrough!

It was snowing because we climbed the Chachani volcano, to a height more than 5,000 meters. It was hard to breathe, but dreams should come true, no matter what. Besides, the place was chosen for a reason. At that peak, all the visitors stack stones one on top of another – at least four stones per stack, like in photos of yoga gurus about harmony or super-duper balance. Sadly, my phone’s battery already died, and my stone creation was left for the sight of only a strong wind and sprinkling snow. The main thing is that the wish came true!