Even for us the trip to Colca Canyon required an early start, we had to be up and at them at 2.30 in order to get to the bus station for our 3.30am bus. Having bagged the back seat we snuggled down in our sleeping bag for the 5 (turned out to be 7) hour trip, via Chivay, to the town of Cabanaconde (try saying that at 3 in the morning!). Colca Canyon is one of the deepest in the world and is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon so as you'd expect there was some pretty stunning scenery along the way. We're actually worried that we're becoming slightly immune to the landscapes we're passing as it feels that everytime you look out of the window there's another breathtaking vista.

Having got a half decent kip on the bus we decided to set off on the fairly well trodden Colca Canyon trek which can be done in 2 to 3 days, looking at the distances we were fairly confident we'd do it in two. We walked for about 3 and a half hours down into the canyon, it was pretty much down hill the entire way as we headed from Cabanaconde at 3,287m down to San Juan de Chuccho at 2,150m. We found ourselves a nice little hostel where we got a bed for a little over 1 pound and had a nice dinner before settling into bed at 8pm. While the bed for a quid was a bargain it didn't feel like they'd used too much of the profit on washing the bed linen, this was especially bad for me as I'd somehow managed to not bring a scrap of clothing other than what I'd hiked in, luckily I was able to climb into my sleeping bag for some protection from the slightly whiffy sheets.

Another early start for breakfast at 7 and by 8 we were back on the path as we headed along the valley through the villages of Cosñirhua and Malata, these villages were pretty non descript and teh trek was fairly easy with only one fairly short sharp climb. About 20 minutes after malata we reached the top of the path as it descends down towards Oasis Paraiso. Some sharp eyed entrepeneurs have basically opened up a load of little hostels with swimming pools at the bottom of the canyon. We headed down to spend a couple of hours lying by the pool, this was a welcome brather as despite the ease of the morning´s trek we'd been staring at the opposite Canyon wall which we were going to have to climb to get back to Cabanaconde.

This was really tough, climbing over 1,000m at 1pm in the afternoon in the blazing heat was really hard. We set off at a fairly rapid pace and were passing groups quite regularly in the first hour. It then got really tough, especially with the backpack on, made worse by the increasingly large steps that we had to haul ourselves up. However, with the encouraging words from my good lady that 'we can beat those people' we managed to get ourselves up to the top before the Germans having sped up in about 3 and a half hours. We had dinner with a Dutch couple and American woman we'd met at the Oasis and then went to bed at the outlandishly late hour of 9.30pm. The next morning the 5 of us headed over to Cruz del Condor to watch the Andean Condor's, we had to pay over the odds to get a lift in the back of jeep as there weren't too many cars to provide competition. After a couple of hours watching the Condor's and multiple tourists (having not seen a Frenchmen in 6 months of travelling it seem's the whole country is here) we jumped on an amazingly crammed bus to Chivay and then onwards to Arequipa.

A bit of a whistle stop tour but another really beautiful part of the world that we've had the privilege to visit. We're now back in Arequipa on Sunday night getting ready for work on Monday!