The 2018 Blog / July 20, 2018
What is up hot dogs!
J-Buns, J-$Moneys$, Big Papa, Jonny Tsunami here. Sarah is saving up her energy to write the greatest blog ever for Ausangate apparently so y’all are stuck with me again! (Sorry, not sorry). Well lets not waste any time and hop right into it!
The day started with a 2:30am wake up call to meet the bus at 3am outside our hostel. It was a a very cold and cloudy morning. We met up with a few of the other travelers and got on the bus to prepare for our six hour bus journey to Colca Canyon. In some ways the journey from Arequipa, the white city of Peru, to Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world actually reminded me a bit of this famous quote:
You might be thinking now, Jonny are you high af? Is the altitude really getting to you that much?Well, let me explain to you. On our long early 3am journey to Colca Canyon I couldn’t sleep and got very hungry and really started to crave some juicy soft tacos. Yet, all I had in my pack was my little sleeping bag which as we all know, you cant eat a sleeping bag. Thus, my mind wandered to the historically significant quote by Bear. I mean just think about it! Bear was right. He was ahead of our times. Bear was truly an inspirational figure in the late nineteen hundreds, some would even consider Bear a war hero. And on that long cold six hour journey to Colca Canyon i could only find my mind thinking of this truly heroic figure and his great words. Sleeping bags are truly the soft tacos of the bear world. Thank you Bear. Now that we have paid our respects to the all mighty Bear, it is time to continue with our regularly scheduled programming.
Our first stop was the viewpoint to see the Andean Condors. These are debated as the largest flying bird in the world. Their wingspan is often around ten feet long. After stopping at this viewpoint, we were able to spot a few Condors flying around a few hundred feet below us in the canyon that we were about to make our way down.
While you couldn’t fully appreciate the great size of the birds from above, it was still pretty awesome to see them in person.
We then drove to the start of the trek where we got ready to embark on our three day journey into and back out of the Colca Canyon. We were introduced to our guide Marco:
This is our guide Marco, he was definitely one of our favorite guides we have had thus far.
We then were introduced to our trekking team. Our team consisted of two Germans, six Frenchman, two aussies, and yours truly. We were a little caught off guard because the majority of the time everyone spoke French, which made it pretty difficult for us to join in on conversation but we managed.
Anyways, we started the trek with an eight kilometer walk straight down the canyon. After our guide Marco told us to be careful and that it wasn’t a race, we were off and the first ones down the canyon of course. We did however make sure to stop at some of these amazing locations and take in some of the beauty that this canyon has to offer.
We made it to the bottom and waited for about forty minutes for the rest of our group to catch up with us. At the bottom we ran into Cam and his family for like the twelve billionth time on this trip. (Mentioned in previous blogs). Once we finished waiting we then made our way and hiked for about another hour to our lunch location and what we also found out was going to be where we were sleeping. We had lunch, which was our Alpaca Lomo Saltado. Lomo Saltado is a famous dish in Peru that is basically just a beef stir fry. This was our first time trying Alpaca though and we were a bit underwhelmed as it just tasted like a harder type of beef. Anyways, I just finished hey dish only leaving a half of a slice of a tomatoe left on my plate when in came Herold. Herold was one of the Frenchman who we quickly learned liked to finish whatever was left on anyone’s plate no matter how minuscule the amount. This is Herald, oh yea he also carried the most unnecessarily oversized bag on the hike with him in which our guide made fun of him for multiple times.
Anyways, we then had the rest of the day for ourselves so Sarah and I decided to walk around a bit and probably got a nice two mile walk in before heading back to our little huts to take a nap. While Sarah was sleeping I got a bit bored and decided to lace up my running shoes and get a little jog in. Sarah woke up and wanted to come with. So I think we might be the only people stupid enough to go on a run in the middle of our trek in the second deepest canyon in the world. But hey, it was a good two mile run and we got back just in time to rest up for a bit before dinner. Once we got back inside our little spider infested hut we got a knock on the door from one of the frenchies. They asked us if we wanted to play cards, so Sarah and I happily obliged knowing that we would barely be able to communicate with any of them. They taught us the card game cactus and we played until dinner. After dinner while everyone went to bed, Sarah and I took another walk for the day and shot some stars for the night. We got some pretty great pictures and here is a pretty great BTS of one of the shots I was trying to get:
The picture I was going for (6th attempt)
The attempt to get the picture (4th attempt)
Day two started with an early wake up call to start our walk across the canyon. It was an early uphill climb that we had seen three times before lol. But we made it up the hill to our first rest stop where we tried some really sour Peruvian fruit that Sarah seemed to enjoy. We were also able to discover where they store their food to make this famous Peruvian dish: Cuy
Yes these are just a bunch of guini pigs that they are going to eat....
We then made our way to where we would stay for the second night. This beautiful resort with pools and everything. Here is the shot from above of our amazing resort.
With this set up, Sarah and I were pretty stoked about what was to come. No more spider infested little huts?!! Finally! Well... not so fast. Marco showed us all to our places where we would stay for the night. With every person getting their beautiful rooms with walls, ceilings, electricity, lights, floors and then he points us to our room, down the stairs by ourselves. A bit confused we walked down the stairs to our little hut. Opened the door (if you could even call a plank of wood held down by a piece of string a door) and were welcomed to our glorified shed for the night.
Yep, those are leaves for walls that held our little shed together for the night. I remind you, this was the only one like this, all the rest had cement ceilings, walls and even tiles for floors. We were provided with dirt floors, a little table (as seen to the right) also made of dirt and bugs that were welcome to crawl in and out freely as it was completely wide open. Oh, we also didnt have a light unlike everyone else so we sat in the dark for majority of the time. Anyways we didnt let that stop us from enjoying our time in Colca Canyon. So we took a dip in the freezing cold pool and got a couple of beers before dinner. We enjoyed our dinner and had one more session of shooting stars that night before our 4:30am wake up call to climb back up to the top of the canyon.
This was the day that most people dreaded. We had the option to take a mule up the canyon for an extra twenty bucks but in that moment nothing was going to stop me from making my way throughout this whole trek. A few people opted for the mule but all i could think about was Bear and his wise words that helped me push my way up the 8k three and a half hour journey up and outside the canyon. Never give up and always remember
So with that in mind, Sarah and I made our way up the steep climb on foot. The first couple of hours we were in the complete darkness with only the infinite amount of stars above our heads. We held our phone flashlights and continued to push up the hill. Finally, the sun decided to eventually come out and we got to see how far up we had actually came.
With that, we only had about an hour left and Sarah and I made our way up and over the crest to the top of the canyon where we would await the rest of the people and the mules who carried those that did not have Bear’s inspirational words with them.
Sarah making it to the top!
From there, it was about a one kilometer walk to our breakfast spot where we would have breakfast and Marco would sadly leave us. He asked us all to write him a review so of course I obliged. I’ve really come to enjoy writing reviews and I think that it has become my calling.
After breakfast and my review writing workshop we headed back to Arequipa! Oh, and of course we had a few stops on the way back to enjoy some of these cute animals on the way home!
And just like that, we were headed back to Arequipa for the night to wake up early and head off to Cusco for our next adventure! Hope y’all enjoyed our times in Colca Canyon and remember:
Jonny Out *Mic Drop*
*Runs to spiritual leader Bear and fully embraces with BEAR hug*
GET IT?!?!? CUS BEAR? *Slaps knee* “I’m a comedic genius”
Alright see y’all next time halfie nation.✌🏼✌🏼✌🏼
Originally published July 20, 2018 / See the Arequipa gallery
