Ariquepa is a really nice city in southern Peru, it has a much more affluent feel to it compared to the other cities I've visited and doesn't feel quite as touristy - although this may be just in comparison to Cusco because there, every second shop is a tour agency. Soon after arriving into Ariquepa we met my cousin Rachel again. After a brief catch up we went to organise a trek into the Colca Canyon. That evening we met up with 3 of the people we'd done the Inca trail with to have a couple of beers. Obviously as Aoidin and I were being picked up at 3.30 we planned on taking it easy. We did take it relatively easy and made it home just after midnight after having 4 or 5 beers.

As I said Aoidin and I were told we were being picked up at 3.30am, however at 3.15 as I was getting out of bed there wa a knock on the door sating our bus was here - apparently we were getting picked up at 3 - oops - not our fault though.Anyway, we got on the bus and went to Chivey where we had breakfast before carrying on to a look out point to look for Andean condors - unfortunately it is mating season and the condors are not very interested in showing up for tourists, so having stood for 40 mins waiting to see the condor we headed back to the bus to leave, at this point with our cameras away the condor showed up (this is why I don't have decent photographic evidence - but it looked cool). Then we continued on in the bus for 20mins to the point where we would start our trek in the Colca canyon.

The Colca canyon is a 120KM long canyon in the Andes created by volcanic eruptions, at it's deepest point it is 4100m deep making it the deepest canyon in the world. Hardly massively surprising, the first few hours of the canyon trek were spentgoing downhill, while this was a little sore in the knees the stunning views more than compensated for this. After a few hours we reached the bottom , nothing left to do now but start walking up the other side. We walked for about 30mins before getting to our lunch spot - at this point we had covered 8 of the 16kms we were doing that day. Lunch was lovely (if not a little sparse and certainly lacking meat) and prepared us for the next part, which was a predominantly uphill walk but again we were treated to some pretty stunning scenery.After a steep 20 minute climb we headed on through some nice little villages (each village has about 60 inhabitants and all supplies must be carried down into the canyon either by people or a mule). Then we walked the last few kms downhill to our oasis in the middle of the canyon. It was stunning, a beautiful green piece of land with about 5 hostels each with a stunning blue pool, the dip in the cool water was most welcome after the day of walking in the baking sun. So after a swim, shower, beer and dinner I retired a fairly happy man. Obviosly no day of trekking starts later than 5am so we got up nice and early and made tracks - obviously as this was a canyon trek and we stayed at the bottom of the canyon this part of the trek was purely uphill, so we walked 7kms, ascended over 1100m and it took about 2 hours. Luckily for most of the trip we were in the shade and again the opportunity to stop and enjoy the stunning views was welcomed (as much for the break as the views). Having reached the top and completed the trekking part of the trip we jumped in the bus and headed to some hot springs for some brief (1hour) r and r. Then we had lunch - a buffet my first meat meal in 2 days - I certainly got my money's worth, Then on the way back to Ariquepa we stopped to see some Volcanoes (in the distance not up close - but we saw 6 different volcanoes from a single point so pretty cool nonetheless). And some llamas and alpacas (it did strike me that if I saw tourists stopping to take pictures of sheep I'd think they were crazy). On returning to Ariquepa we met Rachel again and went for dinner before hopping on another night bus to Nazca. If I thought the bus to Puno was luxurious this was in another league, a departure lounge, food, drinks, wifi (that didn't actually work at any point) and even an aeroplane like safety video!