02/14 - Cañón del Colca

Our bilingual guide, Omar, and his Canadian girlfriend, Sophie, picked us up at 3am. We took a mini-bus to the pueblo of Yanque, right near the canyon. There, we had breakfast, and the man there brought out a baby alpaca. She was just 19 days old. I got to feed her, and took lots of videos with my phone, which, sadly is lost. When everyone walked back to the bus, I lingered behind. While I was packing up my things, she came over and started nuzzling me and I got to pat her a lot. She was much less shy after everyone else had left.

Then we went to Cruz del Condor, a point overlooking the canyon,  where one can always spot some condors-- the sacred protectors of the realm of sun and sky.  We saw a few, but they were too far away to take good photos. It was an absolutely amazing view. The place was also inundated by trinket vendors. We resisted buying very much there, but it actually turned out [we discovered later] that their prices were some of the best we would encounter in Peru.


So, then, we hiked a switchbacky 7km down Cañón del Colca. The vistas were stunning. We took countless photos. It was relentlessly sunny, and I got burned, despite multiple rounds of SPF 50. My knees were incredibly sore from the steep downhill climb, but it was worth it, and I healed up in a few days. We lunched in one of the villages near Tapay. Then, I fell asleep on the grass, right outside the toilet hut, having made no conscious decision to do so.

Then we had to hike several more hours downstream to our lodge at Oasis-Sangalle. I tried to swim, but the sun was setting, so it was too chilly in the pool. They gave us a lovely open-air dinner, lit by candles with plastic soda bottle reflectors. Then we went to sleep, in our stone hut with a thatched roof. We knew we'd have to get up before sunrise the next day, but that's not why we went to bed early. We couldn't have stayed awake if we'd tried.