Jankers

Last week we headed out of the city of Arequipa to go hiking in the Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world! Why would we want to hike down the second deepest canyon in the world? Well, I didnŽt think of that until we were about a third of the way down. It was a hot day and the hike was all down and very steep. Beautiful views though!

The hike down took 3 hours. A tour group had told us that there were 3 hostels at the bottom of the canyon. I was pretty excited to get there and go out for a nice dinner. Well, we found out during the hike that there was no electricity down there and there was no town, like I was anticipating. After a lot of sweat and a few tears, we made it to the bottom. We went to the first hostel (recommended by 2 different people on the way down). It was a really nice setting that almost reminded me of camping with Girl Scouts. They had small little cabins made out of I think bamboo. In the picture our cabins are in the back to the left. IŽm also in the picture sitting in the dining area/kitchen.

On the property were horses, mules, sheep, alpaca, chickens, dogs, and one cat. They kept us pretty amused. HereŽs a picture of a few out the chickens hanging out on the chopping block. WhoŽs next?!

Basically we just hung out until dinner time. They had a pool that looked lovely, but by the time we got settled in it was too cool for me to swim. Mike swam and I sat on the edge of the pool with my feet in the water. It started raining around dinnertime. We were served spaghetti and homemade tomato sauce, not too bad.

After dinner, Mike and I sat around playing cards by candlelight until about 8pm. Then we went to our cabin to find one of our pillows soaked from the leak in the roof. Nice! We just scooted the bed a little and were able to sleep, even though we stayed in our clothes because the sheets were dirty.

Next morning we woke at 5:45 so we could be at breakfast by 6am, like we arranged with the guy the night before. At about 6:50am he had breakfast ready. Not too bad. We finished and started our hike up. I had a bad cough and was really not wanting to hike so we tried to hire a mule for the way up. The neighbor of the hostel had offered it the day before, but he changed his mind. So hereŽs the mule that I hired to carry my bag up. And all it cost me was a few minutes of complaining!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 4th, 2006 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Peru Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.