Despite having stomach issues - the Colca Canyon was amazing!

The descent down to the bottom of the canyon was steep to say the least! Lots of loose, slippery rocks with a 1000m drop or so on one side! Very scary, but amazing views! We had lunch in the bottom of the Canyon, then we walked along the other side through villages which have only had electricity for the past 4 months!  - they still bring everything down/up here by donkeys and mules! Crazy!

We finally reached the ¨oasis¨ by about 5.30pm - lets just say that the English version of Oasis and the Peruvian version are quite different! As you can see from the pictures! "Rustic Lodge" also appears to hae a different meaning! Lets just say we were up for half the night absolutely pooing our pants because what we think could have been a dog, was chewing a plastic bottle just outside our very thin and rickety door! This state of heightened freaked-out-ness was only increased by us just having dinner in the oasis dining room (a log with tree stump chairs!) with a Spanish hippy!  She was very nice, but we were slighty concerned by the fact that we were staying at the bottom of a very isolated canyon with a woman who had been studying with a Shamen in Iquitos for the past few weeks and was a cerified Wizard!!!!  She was formerly an architect - any plans to turn to Wizardry Ian?!

We woke at 3.30am - hence the very bleary eyed photos of Sophie and the pitch black sky!  However, the clouds parted and we walked up the side of the Canyon on a path bathed in moonlight, and the stars were spectacular - we are still amused to see that Orion is on his side in these skies! Weird.  We spent a spectacular 3hrs climbing to the top, watching the sunrise slowly as we did so.  We also stopped for a tea break with some locals who had set up a make shift tea stop on some rocks - bless them - it was just what we needed!  We also met up with our wizard friend here -  thankfully she was still very smiley and doesn´t seem to have put a curse on us... 

We got to the top sweaty, knackered, but absolutely astounded by the experience... would definately do it again - but next time we´d take loo paper!!!!!

A big thank you to our guide Eddie who was ACE!