It’s one of those moments when you question your life decisions. Should I have woken up this morning at 4am to get in a late 70’s/early 80’s Toyota van and take an hour and a half ride up the Andes mountains because we didn’t feel like hiking today? Should I have eaten those last 3 pringles, because that extra 0.0267 of an ounce from those chips could be what tips this van and its 15 (yes, 15 people in this van) from tipping over the side of this 1000ft cliff? Why do I keep deciding to look out the window? And that was just the first sketchy ride we decided to take today.
Ok, first rewind a few days. We left Arequipa to check out the Colca Canyon. Its the second deepest canyon in the world. A 5.5 hour bus ride there is 17 soles. Or about $5.63. It’s not so bad at first. Typical Greyhound type bus. Typical overly aggressive Peruvian driver. We’ve gotten used to it. The part we weren’t really ready for is the driver passing 18 wheelers repeatedly on switchbacks on two(ish) lane roads going down a mountain without any kind of railing. Not that railing would’ve helped, but at least the dude would quit driving 9 inches from the side of a cliff. And then the road turned to dirt road once you really get into the mountains, which is super awesome. Obviously we made it, but it was not with out much nail biting. We passed through a bunch of tiny mountain villages. They were mostly collections of ramshackle huts and tiny shacks along dirt roads, enough to house maybe a couple hundred at most, but most seemed empty. The bus would be inches from the buildings on either side. It seemed every single town did have a large white stone church next to a town square, which would be the only decent looking thing in town.
We got to Cabanaconde, which is the biggest of these little villages. There’s an actual paved road. We get out of breath just walking the two blocks to the hostel. The altitude change/sickness is definitely a real thing, as we’re suddenly 3300 meters/10,000 feet up. We got some coca candies, and coca leaves (yes, same leaves cocaine comes from. Legal and encouraged here. Just the leaves, silly. It does make your tongue numb.) to chew and it helped a little. The weirdest part is waking up hyper ventilating. And getting out of breath going up one flight of stairs kinda suck too. But I was kinda used to that anyways. The hostel is called Pachamama. Most of the volunteer staff has been there for months and months. They also have a restaurant, which is not unusual for a hostel. What is unusual is that they have a trained chef and a menu that belongs in a 3-4 star restaurant in a big city, not a tiny, disheveled mountain town. Not that I’m complaining. We both lost our alpaca steak virginity here. And if you haven’t, you really need to.
Now, the fun part. Woke up at 6 to check out Cruz del Condor, a spot where a bunch of Andean condors make their home in the sides of the cliff. It took a couple hours, but they finally came out and put on a show. Talk about some big ass birds. They swooped pretty low, and we feared for any small dogs and children that were around. We decided to hike, since that’s what people do here other than farm. Hiked up to Kallimarca, some ancient ruins, only getting slightly lost one time. So here’s the deal with hiking. Hiking is great if you love walking and have good equipment. We both only kind of like walking and just own running shoes. Good running shoes do not make good hiking shoes. And I, personally am just not quite in peak physical condition. Just throwing that out there. But you get to that point hiking up where you’ve gone too far up to go back down with out seeing the top. So after a couple hours of battling severe spaghetti leg and dodging donkey shit we make it to the top. The ruins themselves are highly unimpressive. Like a bunch of piles of rocks. The view from the top, however, is pretty damn awesome. You can see Hulca Hulca, which is a volcano that had recently been rumbling a bit and throwing off some smoke, making the locals nervous. We didn’t notice any of that because we were too busy being awesome at hiking and not falling down mountains. All the farms below looked like puzzle pieces. It was really pretty cool. And the best part of the hike? Going down. You almost want to run.
We booked a lodge at the bottom of the canyon for the next day, so we had to hike there. Since it was at the bottom of the canyon, we figured it would be super easy. It’s not. Going down 40° slopes full of tiny slippery rocks is really not cool. It’s not good for your knees or mental health. You can see the bottom, but it never gets closer. And then there’s the whole running shoes and inexperienced hiker thing too. After about an hour, it really sucks. But you can’t turn around because that would really, really suck. The views, however, are spectacular. The mountains don’t look real in pictures. They don’t look real in the distance. Up close and personal, they are absolutely fictional. Pictures can’t convey the magnitude and magnificence of these things. So for another 2.5 hours, we hike/slide down mountains to a dirt road that goes downhill. Absolutely glorious. Until it starts going uphill for some reason. We were supposed to be going downhill. Instead, we are having to stop every 8 steps to rest. We pass through a “village” where there is only 1 old lady, and she sells the best warm Coke on earth. Then there is another downhill down the side of a mountain hike, another cruel uphill battle, and we reach the lodge four and a half hours later.
The Llahuar lodge is a strange, wonderful place. Its a bunch of stone/mud/bamboo huts at the bottom of the canyon. There’s only solar power, and most of that is used to power the refrigerator that has the coldest drink in Peru. Not a joke. We spent just as much on Fanta and Sprite there as we did our room. The only time we get light in our little hut is from 6:30-9pm. And during dinner they had light in the bar area while playing the same silky sweet soft side of 80’s mix over and over. You don’t get a choice of what you eat, you just eat what you get. Which was all pretty good. And vegetarian. We were vegetarian for 2 days. Lots of other travelers came through. They were all hiking somewhere else. They wanted to know where we were hiking to next. Which was nowhere at all. We ate breakfast, went back to bed for a couple hours, went to the 39°C hot spring bath until lunch, went back down to the hot spring until dinner, ate, drank 2 beers and went to bed. We weren’t hiking shit. The hot spring thermal bath might be be greatest thing ever. It sat down next to the river in the very bottom of the canyon. Talk about peace on earth and little slices of heaven…this was it. If they would’ve brought our food down there, we would have never left. No joke.
Which brings us back to the 4am ride back up the mountain. We decided climbing back up,was not even an option. We would not have made it. Our options would have been to call a taxi from the top, which was prohibitively expensive, or ride with the farmers up before the sun came up. So we hiked (a very short but still way too long hike) in the complete darkness. Well, not complete darkness. The moon and stars are quite spectacular in the mountains. The already over-filled transport arrives, and we pile in for a scary, ass numbing ride up the mountains. I don’t even know how the van got up there. The dude must have left it in first gear all the way up, and that thing was seriously struggling. But it finally made it, we happily pile off, and into the big, safe, public bus back to Arequipa. Never have been so happy to get out of a vehicle before. Except that bus driver was the biggest asshole driver ever, and he was driving a big bus through the mountains. He was cutting off people for fun, not because he was saving time. He was practically running people off the road and off mountains. We kinda slouched in our seats, hoping no one would see us riding the bus that this asshole was driving. Getting off that bus became the second happiest moment ever.
And now we are safe in Arequipa. There is electricity. There is internet. There is meat. The streets are flat. We don’t have to get in vehicles to get places. Think we might have to stay here a while.
Best Name Ever For A Travel Blog 
I love that I get to journey with you both; keep posting!
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