Colca Canyon day 2

We thoroughly enjoyed our sleep-in till 3:45am, not, where we awoke and got ready to the light of head touches. We collected some snacks and with Huno in toe we headed down to the bridge. We had to head down a few hundred meters (altitude) to cross the river and start our ascent. It took a while to reach the bottom and as Sarah changed the length of her walking poles, we realised the moon was sitting on the horizon where the hike ended, the only other form of light (at the end of the tunnel). From this point it was a four hour uphill climb to the top (one or more hours in the darkness) and then half an hour to the town.

The uphill was a constant uphill slog, with sections that it was hard to believe a mule could climb, and that's what they were, a climb. Half way up we detoured around a section which had slipped and where the track destroyed, it made you think about what you were walking on. We walked past rocks that would interest everyone, massive hexagonal columns of rocks stacked next to each other making an impenetrable wall we had to climbed around. We saw this from the other side and got a photo for our linked in profile.
As we got higher we started to see more rubbish on the track. Most people complete this hike the opposite way around so this would be their first day. We started collecting everything we saw and soon both Huno and I had a full plastic bag each of trash. It's a goal I like, to make everywhere better off for you having been there, and this was just a small way.

We finally reached the top with a time of 4 hours and 4 minutes.... Dam, 4 minutes late.

We walked back into town towards a well earned breakfast still talking, now about Peruvian literature, and our favourite books. Huno highly recommended 'One hundred years of solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a noble prize winning writer and possibly the most import Latin American writer of all time, Mario Vargas Llosa.

We had a huge breakfast and piled onto the bus for our multi-stop return to Arequipa.

First we stopped at the ancient terraces (which are in photos) and a old closed mine was in sight in the background. These are really impressive terraces and they go on for huge distances, up and down cliff faces.

To get to the next stop we went through a gravel based dusty tunnel with no lighting or reflectors. We followed two red lights on the back of a coach, constantly in a dust cloud and not able to see the walls in the one lane hole. We arrived at a small town on the other side where we saw a lovely church that took a hit in a recent earthquake. This town had a brightly coloured market and a few stalls selling the juice from a really sour fruit. He gave me one with a hit of pisco and instantly it was easier to breath over the chest infection, hmmmm, maybe it was a cure.

We piled back in and headed to some thermal pools to ease our sore tired muscles. It was across an old rope bridge about 50m long and over the river with jagged rocks beneath. There was no sign to say this but a lady collecting tolls told us it was one at a time.

The hot pools were great and the lunch buffet filled us up before our last two stops on the way home. We stopped at the highest pass on the road, just under 5000m where we took some photos and that was about it as it was so bloody cold. The last stop before Arequipa was to take some photos of llamas and alpacas.

We just filled in time in the hostel and Sarah stole a shower before we headed to our 9:30pm bus to Nazca