Hostel Jenga

Played with blocks about 2 inches by 4 inches by 12 inches, and a tower that almost goes to the cieling.

Rules:

1. Helping (1shot)

2. Wrong way (1shot)

3. Using the stool (1 shot)

4. Two hands (1 shot)

5. Too easy (1 shot)

6. Not in the room for your turn (1 shot)

7. Losing (2 shots)

… and I thought it was going to be a quiet evening after my 3 days of trekking …

Colca Canyon (day 3) out of the canyon

Today I woke up at 5am and trekked for 4 hours, 1000m up and out of the Colca Canyon.  It was an awesome experience to watch the sun rise as we hiked our way slowly up and out of the canyon, periodically looking back to see how far we had come.  And avoiding looking up to see how much further we had to go!  Reaching the top as a group was great though, and eating breakfast finally was even better!  Then we got to soak in some hot springs for awhile before the long bus ride back to Arequipa.  Hiking in the canyon was really great, partly because I wanted to do this kind of thing in Peru and its the first time I got to, but also because we got to hike through several small villages and learn about the local people, which I really enjoyed.  Tomorrow I think I am going to relax in Arequipa before heading out to Cusco, which is the tourist center of Peru.

Colca Canyon (day two) the oasis

Day two in the Colca Canyon began at the reasonable hour of 7am.  We had pancakes with bananas for breakfast!  Its amazing how familiar food makes you so happy when you are travelling.  It was definitely the best pancake Ive ever eaten.  This was definitely my favorite day of the three spent trekking.  We went through several small villages and got to meet some of the local people.  First we had to climb up a bit, while we were exhausting ourselves in the hot sun hiking up the canyon we came across an 80 year old man, hunched over, and hiking in only his socks.  It made us feel kind of silly, all the tourists come there with their fancy hiking boots, trekking pants and poles, and still have a hard time.  Meanwhile the people that live there have been hiking around the canyon for centuries with so much less.  Then we made it up to the villages partway up the canyon where they fed us some local fruits, liqour, and showed us a small museum about how they sustain themselves in the canyon.  The fruit in Peru is incredible, there are so many that Ive never seen before, and things like papayas are the size of your head!  We ate giant kiwi-like fruits that were very sour, and other local banana-like fruits.  The villagers mostly grow avacados and oranges and then carry them up to villages in the upper canyon that are accessible by road to be traded for other goods.  But tourism has also become a very big deal in the canyon, which they definitely have figured out.  We all had to buy water as we went along, which cost 5 times as much as it did in Arequipa.

After about 4 hours we reached our hostel for the evening.  If I thought the first place was great, this one was ridiculous.  It could only be described as a Caribean-like island in the middle of a desert canyon!  There were palm trees, and pools, and bamboo huts to sleep in.  I definitely enjoyed myself, but it is also a bit odd to be staying in a place you know is completely un-natural and has been built just for the tourists that are visiting there.  We spent the evening learning different card games from all the countries we were from.  The Belgians had this bizarre deck of cards that only had the number 7 and up, which is apparently very common there.  Then we went to bed super early because the next day we were suppoed to get up at 5am to trek out of the canyon!

Colca Canyon (day one) 1000m descent.

My Colca Canyon trek began at 4:30am when the bus showed up an hour early to pick me up and I dragged myself out of bed. I was then told by a very drunk Brit at the bar (I dont think she had slept that night) that everybody she knew who had done the trek had ‘died’, awesome. I joined the rest of the half awake group in the van and we began our 4 hour drive to the first town in the canyon, Cabanaconde. Bus drivers in Peru are NUTS. I already kind of knew this, but got to experience being on the edge of two cliffs driving down what should be a one way road hoping you dont run into any other traffic because youre screwed if you do first hand. I decided it was best to sleep through this experience, considering I was supposed to trek down 1000m into a canyon and had only had 4 hours of sleep. So we arrived in the town and were fed breakfast, and met our group. We had a Belgian couple, an older man from Spain, myself and our guide. There was also another group full of Belgians and Germans that we became good friends with on the trail hiking at the same time. I learned all about beer, chocolate and fries from the Belgians. Apparently those are the 3 most important items in their country. They also told me that people who drink Heneiken are a disgrace to beer drinkers, but that Stella was acceptable.

I didnt really expect Peru to be so desert like, the Colca Canyon was a completely different hiking experience for me. Instead of being in a west coast rainforest you are hiking through cacti and other desert plants, descending into this amazing canyon. Then at the bottom it is suddenly this lush forest full of lemon trees, avocado trees and lots of other plants I have never seen before. The entire canyon is criss-crossed with hundreds of year old trails that the people who live in the villages at the base use to get around. So it makes for an excellent trekking destination. We made our way down the steep switchbacks, with periodic breaks to learn about the medicinal uses for all the plants, until we finally reached our amazing hostel for the evening. Now I would have been prepared for something pretty basic, but the hostel at the base of the canyon had flush toilets and hot showers! As well as some of the best food I have eaten so far in Peru. I still cant believe they had donkeys haul ceramic flush toilets down there for the tourists.

We had a good evening chatting with our new friends, and I met the first Canadians I have come across on this trip, which was fun. When you are travelling you become much more aware of the importance of languages to communicate with each other. Our conversations were a mix of English, French, Spanish, Dutch and German so that everybody could understand, with various people translating for others. I have found that anybody I meet on this trip after they find out I am Canadian they ask me if I speak French, and are somewhat surprised that I dont really. Also, I am learning a few Spanish words each day, enough to get by so far.

Arequipa and sun!

I have finally left Lima, hooray! I took a 16 hour overnight bus but thankfully slept most of the way here. I also met a peruvian physics professor on the bus – we talked about the merits of different programming languages and then he helped me not get ripped off by the taxi drivers in Arequipa. The hostel I am at is definitely a change of pace, its full of brits drinking beer at 11am to get over last nights hangovers … should be interesting this evening. Its really sunny and not smoggy here though, which is so nice! Tomorrow I am going on a 3 day trek in the Colca canyon which is apparently twice as deep as the grand canyon. For now though Im going to go on a search for food because for the first time in 3 days I am actually hungry. Hopefully my stomach has toughened up a bit, although I might just become vegetarian for the next month.