The Mistakes…I Mean, Lessons of Arequipa and Colca Canyon

Arequipa- The White City

After a relaxing time at the Jihuay farm, we were off to the city of Arequipa and on our own once again. Arequipa turned out to be a refreshingly, urban setting so we decided to upgrade our accommodations to a hotel instead of a hostel. Big spenders!

As usual, we had a few different hotels in mind to check out but our taxi driver had other plans.

Lesson #1. Harmless corruption: Even if you don’t have hotel reservations, say that you do. Otherwise, you may spend the majority of your first day riding in the taxi as he insists you see all of the places he has a brochure for first (aka… he gets a cut of the dough).

Eventually, we compromised on a place that was one of the taxi driver’s choices but also had the accommodations we were looking for- clean with hot water. We were fond of our ocean baths at Jihuay but were ready for a socially-approved deep clean.

After building some confidence in practicing my Spanish at the farm, I was ready to put it to practice in the big city by heading up the hotel cost negotiations.

Lesson #2. Spanish 101: In my excitement to practice my Spanish, I apparently forgot how to negotiate. In the future, I’ll ask for more than 10 soles (aka $3) off the price. Doh!

Finally deciding to move on from our mistakes, we explored the city for a few days. The weather was beautiful- not too hot and not too cold, and the historic buildings, made of white sila mined from the nearby volcanos, were so impressive.

Often described as “the most photogenic” monastery, the Montessori de Santa Catalina lived up to the hype. Our attempt to capture the beauty fell short but we gave it a good try anyway.

Lesson #3. Be careful what you wish for: Caught up in the lovely aura of the place, I made several comments to Marea about how I could picture myself living the peaceful life of a nun. She reminded me that new nuns spent the first 4 years in a vow of silence. “You wouldn’t make it past the first day!” she rightly claimed. I quickly changed my tuned and instead just decided to enjoy the moments we had there.

We also got the chance to visit the grand cathedral in the main square. It’s majestic towers have been devastated time and time again by centuries of earthquakes- one even on the 8.3 Richter Scale. However, this city is full of heart and pride and the Arequipenos bounce right back and rebuild. Its truly amazing.

Colca Canyon

Our next stop on the Gringo Trail was the Colca Canyon trek. As hiking enthusiasts, we were pumped to get out in nature and really get some good exercise.

Tourist companies bombard you in the town square hawking all sorts of different tours. We spent time online researching all our options, only to find out that A, B, C, and D aren’t actually available as advertised online. Instead, secret option Z costing an arm and leg is the only option available 4 days later and it’s the tour bus that you never wanted in the first place.

This realization actually turned out to be good news for us because we had been deciding between hiring a tour guide or trekking the trails on our own. Normally, no guide would be a no brainer for us but nervous about unmarked trails and getting lost in a canyon in the middle of nowhere made us a bit hesitant about our ambitions. With seemingly no other options, we took excellent notes and photos of a few people’s blogs encouraging others to hike without a guide and trekked out on our own.

Lesson #4. Hydration: Without the tour company, we had to take local buses to get to and from the canyon- 6 hours each way. With no bathroom on board, I figured my bladder could hold until the first major stop in Chivay 3 hours away. When we arrived a LONG 3 hours later, there was a line snaked around the building ready to board our bus. I wasn’t sure where all these people were fitting and wasn’t about to lose my precious seat, so my bladder would have to last another 3 hours. Despite all the warnings about dehydration increasing your risk of altitude sickness, it looked like dehydration was the way to go. There just wasn’t a choice.

Along our 6 hour journey, we stopped on and off to pick up locals along the way like a commuter bus. Luckily, Arequipa was the bus’s first stop and we had pre-assigned seats. Although, we failed to learn the Spanish word “asiento” until too late. Our pre-assigned “seats” weren’t together and my seat welcomed all on board, nearly sitting in the doorway with no room for my bag except my lap. No bathroom, poor, self-inflicted seating arrangement- I thought it couldn’t get worse.

Lesson #5. Local transportation: Each moment I thought the ride couldn’t get any worse, it did, until I decided to accept this experience as a true Peruvian adventure. For 6 hours, people got on and off the bus, crammed sardine-style down the aisle, sat on the arm rest of your seat, used your (Marea’s) leg as a balance railing or to support their child, and overall took up any remaining bit of your personal space.

But hey, if the kids and elderly could hold their bladders just as long and stand for 6 straight hours, so could we in our precious seats.

We stayed the first night in the cute little village of Cabanaconde at the recommended hostel Pachamama (meaning Mother Earth). It was a great relaxing evening to rehydrate, acclimate, and head to bed early for the big hike the next day. The hike itself was easy to follow (with a little help from the friendly locals) and stunning.

There were 4 more villages along the hike on the first day with the 4th promising to be a serene oasis to recoup for the final ascent the last day. The 18 km hike was an ambitious schedule for the first day, but we were so eager to hike that we were confident we’d be relaxing at the oasis in no time.

Lesson #6. Tourist traps and extreme altitude changes: Colca Canyon is the world’s 2nd deepest canyon (nearly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon). We may have been a bit overambitious with our itinerary and by the time we got to the tourist trap, run down, overly priced oasis our legs were shaking and we were too exhausted to go any further. In retrospect, we’d encourage anyone hiking to stay in any of the previous villages for they are far cuter and way more personable than the overly-hyped dud of an oasis.

Nevertheless, we found shelter to put up our feet for the night in hope of a quick recovery for the straight-up-the-mountain hike the next morning. We did manage to have an enjoyable evening listening and singing along to our new hostel friends’ marathon guitar jam session.

We made it out of the canyon the next day on wobbly legs and back on to the wobbly, crowded bus to Arequipa. The trip was amazing but we were so glad to be back in the lovely, flat city of Arequipa.

Later in our trip, we may have claimed we didn’t hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu because it was too expensive and over-crowded, but deep down, we knew our bodies were still recovering from the epic Colca Canyon hike.

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