Colca Canyon Trek (ft Cruz del Condor)

Coming to you from a fresh three day trek is the latest blog post from Colca Canyon Trek, featuring the best photos from Cruz del Condor - With a three metre wingspan condors are one of the biggest birds in the world, weighing in at a jaw dropping 15kg they have everything you need to set your heart racing.

The first four photos demonstrate the classic beauty of the colca canyon that fans will know from old; updated with the fattest plumage, beaks, flights and sights that Cruz del Condor can bring.

Sudden mule crossings pervade this three day trek, you can`t help but feel a sense of urgency as hardcore trekkers hurl themselves to the side to avoid being sent tumbling down the hill. 

With the one of the biggest drops in any valley, the Colca canyon is twice as deep as the grand canyo - The Arizona canyon scene better watch out....Colca is the next kid on the block and it isn`t holding back any depth at 4,160 m - it`s beem hearalded by those in the valley world as "the world's deepest canyon"

Midway through the trek and the frenetic notes from Cruz del Condor disappear, relaxing into an Oasis filled day deep in the bottom of everything Colca canyon can throw at you. You better enjoy that thermal spring heated pool because you know what this is building to - day three, end of the drop and the climb to the finale

  

This three day trek, up and down all the sides of colca canyon, holds nothing back and though you can't help looking forward to the end and the all you can eat buffet of life that lies in wait it's hard not to feel that it ended too soon. Fortunately there is a one off, special edition, extra photo to satiate your colca canyon wants - two cheeky donkey's eating the load they just hauled up from the valley floor and the quick steps of their owner running to save her day's work. Should`ve fed those donkey's more - thats how Colca does it...

    

Arequipa

Arequipa, well off town in the south of Peru, was our favourite city since Cartagena, Colombia. Mainly because it is big, full of beautiful white volcanic stone buildings and very cheap 'Chinese' (read Peruvian style Chinese) restaurants where 4 soles/1 pound gets you a plate bigger than your head.

 We saw great museums; - including seeing Juanita the ice princess who was sacrificed by the Incans to appease the mountains/gods; a giant convent (it was called a monastery but was filled with nuns, tricky - it's so big it has it's own internal streets) and ate good crepes (not in the convent although we did get a great oreo milkshake in one of the nun's cells - they'd turned it into a cafe, wasn't just from a very generous nun.) We also ate so much arroz chaufa (chinese rice) that we haven't eaten any more since arequipa. It was good though.

Plaza de Armas

Trine gets her shoes expertly shined / Cool looking baby chills by a bench

Carved volcanic stone building (unseen - courtyard full of incredibly expensive alpaca clothes)

Inside the basilica

On top of the basilica, playing with bells

Silencio in the convent

Nazca

Suffering slightly from the night before the next stop was Nazca, site of the 2000 year old lines that the Nazca made for reasons unknown, basically. Still they were pretty cool so we were glad they were there.

There's not much to say about Nazca itself, a town surviving on tourism money and running flights over the lines (you can only see the lines from the air, because they're so big). They helpfully told us how all the flight operators had got together and decided to fix the price of flights and stop undercutting each other, to ensure good standards and safety. We were glad they were looking out for our interests.

After waiting in the airport for hours we get to see the tiny planes everyone gets to fly in - smallest plane I'd ever been in. It took off and landed fine, so alls well that ends well. Seriously though, they did seem safe enough - they checked every plane between flights and then they flew like crazy in very tight circles around and around the lines so that everyone got to see everything.

Some pictures of the Nazca lines below, hard to give a scale but they were big (although not as big as we thought). You can see the astronaut, the monkey (with famously curly tail), the ant and the hummingbird. There were lots more, and most of the lines are just that - lines leading like roads from one side of the desert to the other rather than shapes or pictures. But they make quite boring photos so I skipped them... 

Huacachina

We'd seen our fair share of birds, sea lions and birds and quite frankly Paracas (where we saw the Islas Ballestras from) was pretty horrible so we headed on to Huacachina, a desert oasis known for it's sandboarding.

Sandboarding in Huacachina is half sandboarding (like snowboarding but grittier and hotter) and half being driven around the sand dunes in a beach buggy with reinforced roll bars and 'professional' drivers. It also included listening to Katrina scream everytime she realised we were actually about to drive straight down the side of that very steep dune. Lots of fun, and good views.  

Spike was the only one of us who managed to stand up properly on the board - we just lay on the board and skimmed down on our stomachs. Not as cool but you did go much much faster.

Sunset over the mountains....

After watching the sunset (incredible) we thought the day hadn't been busy enough so we went to an all you can eat bbq & headed out for a late night Peruvian wineries tour, with all you can drink wine and Pisco included. Lots of fun...

Islas Ballestas/Paracas

The first stop after Lima was the 'Poor man's Galapagos Islands' - the Islas Ballestas, home to lots and lots and lots of seabirds. Plus some Humboldt penguins and sea lions. The islands are a resource for fertilizing guano (harvested every 5 - 8 years) and also mainly a tourist attraction - there wasn´t really anything else to do in Paracas but wait for the boat tour and eat at bad, over priced tourist restaurants with other tourists doing exactly the same thing. There isn´t all that much more to say at the moment, so see photos below!

Lima

Lima, the big show, the Peruvian big smoke, city of nearly 9 million. A town of sights and sounds interesting to tourists refreshed from some time on the beach. We decided to check it out, we heard something was going down in the museum of Larco. Something lewd....

 

Our first three suspects weren´t saying nothing, their lips were sealed - paid off by by the reprobate Incans godfather princes. We tried the shelves next, the hustle and bustle hiding a menace, we found nothing but we could see the museum was bursting with hidden faces. Time to go all the way and face the problem head on. No problem we can´t handle....surely¿

 It was far worse than we thought - the depraved ceremonial hierarchs flaunting their ill gotten-gains for the world to see. We were in trouble....deep trouble...trouble we couldn't handle.

Exiled from the musuem and emprisoned on the Plaza de Armas, we watched the arrival of the the newly appointed president - all pomp and circumstance, nothing but lies and threats.

There was only one way out, and we took it - the catacombs of San Fransisco monastery. We´d never minded coming close to death before, it didn´t bother us now.

The catacombs emerged into bright daylight, with gunsong filtering though the prison bars. We took this as our cue to leave - chartering a bus up somewhere high, evading out enemies by escaping through the local favelas. So long Lima....

Peru: Huanchaco/Trujillo

We took our third night bus in a row and arrived into Chiclayo feeling somewhat worse for wear... Chris had an unfortunate bout of food poisoning and Spike's eyes were inflamed so we decided to take a short bus to Trujillo and hang out in Huanchaco, a beach resort, to convalesce. We arrived and sank, very thankfully, onto soft, real beds. Chris had a nap while Spike and I scouted out the town, observing a surfing competition and finding a restaurant that served pancakes (mmmmm). We spent the rest of the afternoon watching Planet of the Apes, drinking lots of water, and slowly recovering from our respective maladies (mine was grumpyitis caused by sleep deprivation). 

We enjoyed the rest of our time in Huanchaco relaxing by the beach, sleeping in, and visiting some nearby pre-Incan ruins - a site called Chan Chan, with an internal lake, intricately carved mud walls and a picture postcard perfect view of Chris and Spike leaning against said walls. We took it very easy for three days, and subsequently all felt much better. On the fourth day, we took a taxi to Trujillo, explored the cathedral there and spent a long time in a cafe eating chocolate cake, playing cards, and waiting for our next night bus to Lima, which we caught without a hitch.

Peru: Chachapoyas

Another night bus later, and we were in Chachapoyas (which wins Chris' award for favourite place to say). Katrina was somewhat grumpy, having played 'bum wars' all night with the Peruvian attempting to sleep next to her (and steal her rightful snuggle space). With military precision, we booked a tour, bought tickets for the NEXT night bus (please note this is three in a row, some sort of world record, i'm sure) and got breakfast. 

The tour took us to Kuelap, the second most impressive pre-Columbian site in Peru, at least according to Lonely Planet (it's pretty damn impressive). It's a giant stone fortress, built painstakingly on a mountain over 800 years, with houses and walls and views and steep, defensible drops. And llamas shagging. Looky looky!
(not at the shagging llamas you dirty people)

(we also saw some Chachapoyas terraces)

(the sacred walls)

real human bones... If you die making the wall, you become the wall...

(knew you wanted to see them)