The Colca Canyon

The bus ride from the actual city of Arequipa to the Colca Canyon is over six hours long, but Arequipa is still the big city that people go to in order to see it because that’s just how the geography and the roads work. It’s the same with Machu Picchu, people go to Cusco in order to get there, and Cusco is seven hours away from the base of the mountain. Something that I learned while researching before my trip was that in order to enter the Canyon, you have to buy a tourism ticket for 70 soles, which is about 25 dollars. Most of the money goes to Arequipa and the preservation of the Canyon, so if I was on a shorter trip with some money to blow then I wouldn’t have a problem with paying up, but neither of those things describe my situation so I decided I would do my best to get around it.

When I was looking into it I found that most people explore the Canyon with a guided group, and they leave Arequipa on tourist buses headed for the canyon. These buses stop in the first town inside the canyon and everyone gets off and buys their tickets. After reading this I simply bought a ticket on a local bus where I was literally the only non native and the only one that wasn’t taking the bus to one of the many cities in the canyon that the bus would drive through before hitting it’s end point in Cabana Conde, which is where I started my trek.

I arrived in the evening, found a bed, and went to sleep early so I could wake up and have plenty of time to fool around finding my way and making sure I was doing what I wanted to. My trekking plans were given to me by friends from Colorado who had done the same unguided adventure about a month prior. They had a great time with it so I decided to go about it the same way. I woke up before dawn on the first day to a rooster who was doing his thing well before sunrise, but I suppose it was for the best because I don’t have a watch or any type of alarm clock to get me going. I bought some bread and candy bars and what not at a store, and headed out of town asking every local I passed if I was heading the right way. After some noodling around I was able to follow a sheepherder, and her sheep, out of town in the direction of my trailhead.

One reason I read it’s a good idea to get a guide for the Colca is that they can take you to the best look out points at the right time of the morning to see Condors. Condors are huge birds famous in the Colca Canyon for their 3-5 meter wingspans. A guide will get you up really early and put you into a van, drive you an hour away, all on your tab, and if you’re lucky you’ll get to see them and snap a few pictures. About one hour into my bandit trek, at probably a little after 7am, I saw three of them swooping around as I was making my decent down the canyon. I laughed to myself as I had them in plain site for several minutes, not too far away to appreciate their size. I had paid almost nothing at that point to get where I was standing.

Day 1 included four hours of steep, zigzagging, down hill walking. I don’t like steep down hills all that much. They hurt my knees after hours of using every leg muscle you had to control yourself from toppling forward every step you take. Later on in the trek I found steep downhill’s to be much easier at a faster pace following a zig zag pattern, where you use your momentum to sort of trot, rather then putting the effort into every step to control it, but it took me two more days to develop that technique. The end of the first hike brought me to a place with hot springs, huts, hot dinner, and a fine place to camp.

There I met a Peruvian mother and son who were on a guided tour of the canyon, two American girls and their guide, and finally a group of four guys that were doing it on their own, two Germans, and two French guys. What was cool about their situation is that they had a stray dog following them from the town they started in for the entire 3 days of their trek. Now this alone is really cool, but where it gets cooler is when I realized it was the same dog from pictures, that had followed my friends from Colorado on their trek a month earlier! He sat under their table at dinner, slept outside their hut at night, and followed them through the canyon right up until they got onto their bus back in Cabana Conde. He went through the same routine with the guys doing the trek when I did. What a dog’s life.

On day two my destination was, “The Oasis.” I was pretty exited to see what it would look like. This day consisted of a long uphill out of the canyon, and then a steep decent back down to the river. About an hour into walking I caught up with the Peruvian mother and son, and their guide. They had a mule carrying their things and their guide was doing a fair amount of talking. They were friendly and I stuck with them for a while to get what information I could understand and make sure I was heading the right way. I was reassured of my path and I learned about a plant with toxic milk inside, which was good knowledge to have because they were plentiful on the trail. On my way back down to the river, with my new zig-zag technique, I caught up with the Americans and their guide. I didn’t stick around with them for too long but said hello, and continued down to the oasis.

The oasis was one of the most magical little places I’ve ever been. Surrounded by water, greenery, and towering, colorful canyon walls, I pitched my tent in the soft green grass of a flowering garden, in front of a swimming pool with a waterfall flowing into it. After I had taken my boots off, and was busy shuffling through my pack for a towel, I felt a tugging on my pant leg. I turned around to a little puppy dog trying to play. It was a black lab mutt, and reminded me entirely of my dog at home when she was a puppy.

We played for a little while but then she found my stinky sock and jumped on it. Next thing I knew I was chasing her out of the yard and down a path. This is how I explored the Oasis, by chasing a puppy through green grass, cobble stone trails, flower beds, past tikki huts, and swimming pools, and finally into an open area where the tired pup laid down. Basically put, I had found myself chasing a cute little dog through the gardens of what could have been heaven. I retrieved my sock and we headed back to my campsite for a little while and shared some crackers.

After jumping into the pool and taking a super hot solar powered shower in a hut, I went down to the kitchen to have dinner with the owners. I was the only one staying with them at the time so it was just us at dinner. They spoke no English, so believe it or not this was one of the first times on my whole trip where I didn’t have much of a choice but to carry on a conversation entirely in Spanish, and it went great! I talked about my trip and where I’ve been. I talked about my brother and why he left, and what it’s like to travel alone. I told them about my whole family. When I didn’t know a word I explained myself and learned new words. The guy wanted to buy my rain jacket but I wouldn’t let him. I answered questions about what it’s like to be a twin. I asked questions about what it’s like living in such a beautiful place, meeting tourists all the time.

It was wonderful. Forty minutes of speaking, listening, understanding, and learning from people that I wouldn’t have been able to get one word out of if I only spoke English. My speaking was in no way perfect but that wasn’t the point. We understood each other. It was a huge milestone in my trip so far. It made me more aware of how much more I can really get out of these next three months if I really buckle down and practice everyday.

It took getting away from the school setting to really realize how valuable a skill it is to know another language. It gives you the opportunity to speak to literally millions of people that you couldn’t talk to before. They all have something to tell you, something to learn from you, and something to teach you.

Now I’d like to take a minute here to thank my dad for an awesome Christmas present last year, my half dome 2 tent from REI! Although the days were perfect, both nights I spent in the Colca were rainy and cold, but I was dry and warm! I think one of my favorite parts about camping is when you're in your tent, or camper, and you’re just listening to the rain pound down right above you while you lay there completely safe and sound. It makes me feel accomplished, even though I don’t have to do much.

The next morning I only had what was supposed to be a three-hour hike back to Cabana Conde. The only problem was that I would basically be zig zaging up a wall, over 2000meters was the ascent from where I was to where I had to get. It didn’t help either that most people did the hike with a daypack, or mules to carry their things. I had 35 pounds on my back. About twenty minutes into the climb I stopped for a drink, but I fumbled my water putting it back and lost it down the mountain. I was thirsty, and already pretty sweaty despite the hot sun still being behind the mountain, but I opted not to hike back down. I’m very big on water but I decided three hours without it wasn’t going to kill me.

My game plan was to go fast so that I could be in the sun for as little time as possible; water was my prize up top. I worked hard and tried not to think too much, stopping only a couple times to snap pictures of the amazing view that only got better as I climbed. I got to the top soaking wet to find a bunch of people getting ready to do the morning climb down, and more importantly, just what I was hoping for, a local woman with her blanket out on a rock selling Gatorade and cookies. I chugged the bottle and felt good again. I had done it! To make it all even better, when I asked the women what time it was, I realized that I had just done the climb in a little less than two hours. There was a guide there that seemed to be about my age getting ready to go down with a group. He seemed kind of bitter hearing about my time, especially after I answered his question about the weight of my pack. I thought that was funny. I later wondered if he ever ran into the Americans that I later met on the bus, who had both been to the summit of Everest and came up just about 15 minutes after me with a time just under an hour and a half.

With my first solo trek under my belt, I was very happy with what I paid. It was a small fraction of what I would have paid a guide and it was extremely doable. My advice to anyone who is interested in visiting to the Colca Canyon is just to go. Even if all you have is a day bag with some snacks and water, and you have no idea where you’re going, it would be pretty hard not to find yourself ending your day in a hut along the river with a hot meal. The first day I walked about 4 hours, the second day 5, and the third day 2. A large portion of each day was done with my destination in site and I always got there with hours and hours to spare before sun down. And in my situation, even if I had no sense of direction whatsoever and couldn’t find a place to stay, I had a tent, and enough water to survive for over a week. The Colca Canyon is great, and it’s safe to do on your own. I’ll warn you now that the pictures for this blog from here on out, wont be as great as they were in the past because Joe took his fancy camera home with him. I still have a go pro however, which allows my to view the pictures once I get them onto the computer, so I’ll do my best to keep the images coming.

Arequipa

I’m writing this from Cusco. I made it back to the Point for Christmas and New Years! I just got off a terrible night bus from Arequipa this morning at around 6:30am but it’s great to be back in this city that feels somewhat like a home. When I was here in October/November you can notice from pictures that the surrounding mountains were all dry and brown, but now just over a month later they’ve transformed due to the rain to a healthy green. It makes the already very cool looking city quite a bit cooler.

I realize that other then the last two posts about Joe leaving and me staying, the last thing we talked about was the Choro trek we did out of La Paz. Although that was probably about three weeks ago now, we haven’t done all that much since then. Aside from Copacabana, Isle del Sol, the Choro trail, and La Paz, our experience trying to travel in Bolivia was a bit of a fail. We had done much less research on Bolivia then on Peru and only had basic ideas of what was available. After the Choro trek we retreated back to La Paz to form a game plan for roughly the next 20 days. We came up with a plan that we were fairly happy with, but weren’t dying to do as much as certain other things we had yet to do in Peru.

I won’t go too far into detail on the whole experience but basically, about a week after setting off for a 20 day cruise through Bolivia, after having already been there for a couple of weeks, we turned around and headed back to Peru. Although we met a few friendly locals, they’re bound to be out there, a majority of our experiences were with unwelcoming people that wanted nothing to do with us. When it got to the point where we couldn’t get any information out of anyone in three different cities, and couldn’t get onto cheap buses going to where we wanted to go, we turned around and retreated to Peru after a week of trying. The experience we had in Bolivia was one we had been warned by a few other people might happen, but I wanted to see for myself. Oh well.

We headed to Arequipa, Peru for two reasons. One was because of our experience in Bolivia, and the second was because it was in the direction of Lima, which is where Joe’s plane would take off. Arequipa is in the southwest portion of the country and most people go there in order to visit the Colca Canyon, which is deeper then the Grand Canyon in the States. “El Miste” is a huge, perfectly cone shaped active volcano that looks over the city. It also draws a lot of people to the city due to the fact that its 5,822meter high summit is known as the easiest climb in the world at that height. It blows its cap pretty regularly and last did so in 1985.

Arequipa was a nice city to hang out in. It seemed to have more money than any other places we had been. Granted we didn’t explore everywhere, but where we did had nice streets, impressive buildings, and well kept parks. We stayed at a party hostel, which I know we bashed a little bit in a previous post but if they’re used properly, they can be a good thing. Our main problem with the idea of them is how easy it is to forget where you are and just party with people who speak perfect English. This is something that is up to the individual to manage. No one was holding us down there and no one was saying we weren’t allowed to leave and explore things on our on. They can be a good place to meet people, live cheaply, and have a really good time. I think we were just getting a little bitter about the concept because we were allowing ourselves to be sucked in by the lifestyle and we were spending our money on booze instead of adventures. It’s just one of those many things in this world that should be used in moderation, at least for me, with my circumstances, and goals.

Anyway, for the last three days or so of Joe’s trip we hung out there, exploring the city for architecture and food by day and having some crazy times at night. We would have gone to the Colca Canyon together but decided it would be too rushed to try to fit a trek in before Joe had to head to Lima. So we had a few good days of fun and then Joe got in a cab and left, which was weird. It was officially just me, and the world. My first adventure was a three day walk through the beautiful Colca Canyon...

 Above you will see a picture of me dressed as a prostitute, dancing to  "YMCA" on top of a bar in Arequipa...

Traveling Solo

As stated by Joe in the last blog post, our trip has taken a fairly quick turn of events as Joe decided to head home due to money issues that weren’t a problem yet but were going to become one well before our scheduled return home in the second week of March. He dropped off while he was still ahead, with a great two-month trip under his belt and time to be with the family for the holidays, and hopefully sign up for some second semester classes near home.

This, as I’m sure one could imagine, hugely changes things for me and the rest of my trip. I’m not upset about the situation, or worried. It’s just not something I had been in the mindset for in a long time. When I originally made plans to go to South America they were to go alone. However, as soon as I started getting serious about it, when I didn’t sign up for Fall classes and started buying equipment and these types of things, Joe was hit with a realization of what I was really about to go do. In a single serious conversation one night he jumped on board, and I was glad to have him! Before that night a huge amount of both my excitement, and mild nervousness, was due to the fact that I was going alone. There are a lot of things to consider with the idea. Many of them great advantages, and others, things that would make the trip more difficult.

After Joe decided he wanted to go, I stopped thinking about it and started thinking about the trip we were now planning together. Joe, being my twin brother was probably the only person I would have been completely comfortable with joining me. When we need to we can work as one unit. We’re very different from each other but for the most part we’re in sync. My advice to anyone considering a trip like this is either to choose your partners very wisely, or go alone. Some of the most stressful situations I’ve ever had to deal with have come about while traveling, and stress can cause friends to be real ass-holes towards each other. If you and your partner can figure out when to leave something in the past and move on then things should be fine, but if you can’t then things will build up and explode. Any type of relationship whether it’s between friends, family, or couples, will be tested differently while traveling then it would at home.

The day Joe decided he was going to go home after two months of fairly successful and happy partnered traveling, I didn’t know what to think at first. Then all these thoughts started coming up into my brain that I had had before. All these original motives I had originally had for solo travel started to creep up, only this time unaccompanied by the nervousness. Now I want to be fair to Joe and the awesome trip we had and give that its due recognition. If I hadn’t had my brother with me for these last two months then traveling and getting the hang of things would have been a lot sloppier. We were there for each other to do things like look out for signs, or understand someone’s Spanish as a team, or read the map, keep each other company, and just plain watch each other’s back.

But when I realized that I was going to be alone for the second half I realized how perfect it was for what I personally wanted out of the trip. I’d like to think I know what I’m doing now. My Spanish is better, I have a better gauge of the people, I make small talk with taxi drivers, and there’s no way I’m missing a bus. I think this is as good a time as any to go solo. Yes, I’ll have to use my whole brain now instead of 75 percent of it. Yes, I’ll have to work harder on my Spanish. Yes, if I want some company then I’m going to have to go make some friends. And yes, I’ll have to make every decision regarding where, when, and how I do things for myself. All of these things are good, and they’re all things that will help me grow and help me get everything I’m looking for out of this experience. I didn’t hesitate about taking a year off of school because I knew there was the potential out there to find two degrees worth of experiences, and stimulation, and knowledge in five months of traveling. This will without a doubt be the best way to tap into that potential. I’m sure I’ll have more to write about solo traveling in the next few months, but for now I’ll leave it there and wait for the experiences to flow. After all, it has still been only a week. 

Mike's Blog

Seeing as I’m writing this from my parent’s house in Michigan, I think it’s safe to say I won’t be taking part in the blog anymore. Mike is now a solo traveler. I was running short on money and unable to stick to my budget, so I decided to come home. The trip will be quite different now and I’m interested to read about what life is like as a solo traveler.

After spending two months in Peru and Bolivia, coming home was a little bizarre. It’s strange to be able to take a hot shower, and know that it’s always going to be hot, or to drink from the tap. The trip taught me a lot and gave me a lot to think about. Good luck to Mike!  

La Paz and The Choro Trek

Arriving in La Paz, from Copacabana was actually quite surprising. Having not done much research on the city it was amazing to see how massive it was in comparison to Cusco. They even have skyscrapers! At 3,650m (11,975ft) La Paz is the highest capitol city in the world, and the highest I’d ever been without being in an airplane. Upon arrival, we took a cab to a popular hostel that I will not give the name of, because although they are great at what they do, I’m about to bash it. Not just this hostel, but popular tourist party hostels in general.

After our fair share of these types of places in Cusco, and few days at this place in La Paz, which seemed to be even a step up, we decided that this was not the way we wanted to travel. To hop around from party hostel to party hostel is a good way to spend twice as much money as you have and miss out on at least half of what any place has to offer culturally. It’s like a big vacation where people spend day and night in a well-kept English-speaking oasis where they eat like kings, drink at all hours of the day, and leave the hostel only for tourist excursions organized by the in house travel agencies.

We packed up after two night and headed off in search of something a little more modest that wouldn’t break the bank. What we found was a perfect place to make base; our own room with 2 beds, Wi-Fi, a shared outdoor seating area and a kitchen at our disposal. The hostel was run by a family that lived on the top floor and there weren’t many people staying there. Besides us, there was a group of hippies that practiced juggling and accordion playing all day. We spent a few days here relaxing and researching before heading out on our first multi-day trek of the trip, The Choro Trek.

 The Choro Trek is a 3 day trek that is best to do out of La Paz. We hitched a taxi to the trail head (located even higher in altitude than La Paz.) The trek is known to be one of the best in Bolivia and offers a wide variety of altitude and scenery.

 After the hour ride out from La Paz and some horrible directions from a guy at the ranger station, we got off to a shaky start. Less then half an hour into the trek we took a wrong turn. An error that took us about an hour hike down the side of a mountain before realizing, and a long tiring hike back up.  When we got back to the point we had turned wrong we discovered that we had to go even further up the mountain and down the other side. Our little misshape had taken us at least two hours out of our way and we were crunched for time if we wanted to make it to one of the campsites on time.

On the bright side, going down the wrong side of the mountain gave us a beautiful view that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen. Being so high up, there was very little vegetation. The mountains seemed to be made of slate ranging in color from red to blue, brown, and green. And there were lamas everywhere! As we made our way down the other side (the correct side) we were literally in the clouds. You couldn’t see very far in front of you and we were walking a long the edge of a cliff. It was very cold up there and a bit eerie. As we made our way down we discovered that we were in a lush, green river valley with mountain walls towering over us on either side. The valley descended gradually off into the distance. This is where we would be spending the majority of the trek.

For the rest of that first day the trail was more like a sidewalk. There were stones laid out on the ground for miles and a little stonewall along the trail. The Choro trail was a passageway created by the Incans sometime before the Spanish took over, so these stones were very old and had been there for a long time. It was interesting to think about how many people had walked the trail we were walking, and who.

At around 5:30 on the first evening we arrived in a little town in the valley. This place was literally in the middle of nowhere and it was the only town we would come across for the entire trek. We had originally planned to walk through and continue on about 2 hours to the designated camp spot but because of our mishap at the beginning, daylight wouldn’t allow it. We were able to camp in the schoolyard right along the river, which made for an interesting experience.

We were approached by several curious kids while setting up camp and making dinner. They would come very close and just stand there without saying a word, watching what we were doing. Some of them wanted food. Although they didn’t have a food shortage there, a lot of kids have become accustomed to begging. The trekkers give them food they don’t have in their village. The begging seemed to be out of curiosity rather than hunger.

The next morning we took down camp and headed off again as soon as the sun woke us up. The second day was undoubtedly the most difficult. We had trekked 7 hours the day before, our first time going any real distance with our packs, and we were sore all over. It got a little better once we got going, but I was finding it hard to breath the entire day. It didn’t help that the trail started heading up out of the valley and zigzagged up and down through the surrounding mountains. Although the trek takes you down several hundreds of meters in elevation, we had to do a lot of climbing in order to pass through the mountains. Day two was very hot as well. I was sweating more than I had in a long time.

At one point when we were down by the river, Mike and I decided to rest for a while and try to go for a swim. The river was descending   through the valley so the water was moving really fast, but there were a lot of big rocks. In this particular spot the rocks had formed a kind of pool, were the flow was gentle enough so that we wouldn’t get taken away. The water was very cold but so refreshing. We go all the way in and stayed in, splashing around for about 5 minutes. It was a well-needed cool off. We filled our bottles there and treated them with our purification pills. It was some of the freshest water I’ve ever tasted. From there we had about another 3-hour walk up a mountain to where we would spend the night, “Buena Vista.”

Buena Vista means, “beautiful view.” It was just one family’s home, located high up on a mountain overlooking the valley. We were several kilometers from anything in either direction. When we arrived there was a man and his two young daughters. Mike and I were exhausted when we arrived and the two girls gravitated to us when we sat down to rest…and when we set up camp, and when we cooked dinner, and as we walked back and forth across the yard between the tent and the cook stove. They were very happy to have some new entertainment.

The pair weren’t vey talkative at first. They would just stand very close to us and watch what we were doing. There were a bunch of chickens running around in the grass that were trying to get at the food we were making. The girls would chase them away, pulling out their feathers and giggling. They picked them up and threw them a few times. We learned that they were both 6 years old. They were twins! Mike and I are twins as well so they thought that was pretty cool.

I pulled out my big fancy camera after dinner and was showing them how it worked, which was really fun. They were smudging up the lens, were barley able to hold it up to their faces, and when I’d wrap the strap around their necks it would just fall off their shoulders and around their waists. I didn’t care though. They were having such a fun time. I was showing them how to make movies and they were doing little recordings of each other. They were learning how to work it very fast. Every time I had the camera one of them was either trying to show me some flowers, making a face, or flipping out in the yard. We had a good time for hours, until the sun went down and Mike and I headed into out tent to rest up for the night.

It interesting to think of how different their life must be. These little girls spend all of their time in their own backyard, nowhere near other people, a school, or even a road. They spend their days wrestling, chasing chickens, and riding flattened plastic bottles down a hill. They had an older sister. She looked about twelve and she came in from the trail as the sun was going down with a sack over her shoulder. She didn’t talk to us as much, but I assumed that she must have been gone for a few days, and that whatever was in the sack was something the family needed to make there living. These girls would grow up to be just like their parents; chopping chicken for food and wood for fire.  It’s strange to think about all the different worlds a child can be born into.

The next morning the rain was pouring. It felt great for a few hours. It was amazing how much the scenery had changed throughout the trek. On day one we were in rocky, barren mountains in the clouds and by day three we were in a lush wet jungle with cascading waterfalls and an abundance of vegetation. By day three we had it down. The same bags that where killing us the past two days didn’t fell all that bad. The queasy breathless feeling I’d had the day before was gone. We still felt sore, but stronger. We walked hard and fast that day, sometimes deep in conversation and other times deep in thought. There wasn’t much room to think about the effort we were putting in so the day went by pretty fast.

We took one break that day in the mid afternoon to make lunch. There was a group of little wood buildings at one point along the trail, someone’s property. The only people around were a bunch of little kids. The oldest girl looked like she might have been 11 and she was wearing a backwards baseball hat. We thought that the parents must have been gone getting something and this girl was in charge. They reminded me of the lost boys from peter pan. There were a bunch of little sheds built up from slop lumber and these kids were running around in the rain playing some made up game. They sold us some canned meat and we mixed it in with our rice and onion.

After lunch we finished up the trek in what seemed like no time. We arrived in a little town called Chairo by mid afternoon and took a taxi bus about an hour up the mountain to Coroico, a well-populated city with a great view of the valley we had just hiked through.  We spent one night in town before heading back to La Paz to prepare for our next adventure.  For being out first real trek, I would say it was a great success and I’d recommend it for anyone traveling through Bolivia.