Trekking en el Cañon del Colco

My watch reads 4:13 am when someone pounds on the door. It is the tin door of the small freestanding cement room where we´ve been sleeping the past 2 nights - so the pounding reverberates off the steeped corrugated tin roof and booms nicely throughout. Oh no. I´ve slept through the tiny alarm I had set for 3:38 am. That would have left me 22 minutes to dress and brush my teeth before meeting our guide at the designated 4 am departure time. As it was I now had -13 mintues. Who knew I could dress, wash and attach a backpack to my back in the dark in such record time?

By 4:35 am we were on our way. John, Kate, Leon, Danni and I dutifully following our guide, Gladys, singlefile under the pre-dawn moonlight sky. We were on our way out of the Colca Canyon where we had just spent the previous day enjoying the warm hospitality of Doris and her family in the tiny village of Malata. Doris runs a small hostel there, but it felt like we were staying in her home. The ¨hostel¨ was a compilation of 3 very simple cement rooms each with a few prepared beds atop of an earth floor and a single light bulb dangling above. All 3 rooms were situated along a ridge that ran above and alongside the Rio Colca below. We had arrived too late from our trek into the Canyon Saturday evening to see where we were but awoke Sunday morning to a breathtaking view of cows and donkeys grazing in green mesas, against sunlit canyon walls. A single faucet and bucket stood on the path outside our room so this was my view as I brushed my teeth that morning.

The rest of the day was our reward for the crazy hike into the canyon the day before. We had arrived via Chivay and finally the (very) (very) small town of Cabanaconde before beginning the continuous snake trail down to Malata below. Old Peruvian women with long black braids and weathered faces, wearing the traditional embroidered full skirts and small hats strolled the streets. The sun was very hot by the time we started the trek down and our happy astonishment at the magnificent views was quickly overshadowed by fatigue. A small oasis with little blue pools beckoned from below but instead of getting closer seemed to get farther away with every curve of the trail (was it just a mirage??). What should have taken us 2 hours took us about 3 but we did arrive in the end for our promised dip, some watermelon slices and a deep breath - before continuing from there on to Malata where we finally arrived at Doris´doorstep shortly after sunset.

So Sunday had been our ¨day of rest¨to enjoy Malata itself. The village was simple and tiny and lovely to see. A small church stood in the center and farms with maize and grazing cows and donkeys scattered throughout. One neat one story building with brightly painted yellow walls was the village clinic and another was the grade school that served the small children of Malata and other surrounding villages. The older children went to school in Chivay returning to the village only on the weekends, to avoid having to trek into and out of the canyon more than twice a week. There was also a church.

After our stroll through the village with Gladys, we returned to Doris´house where we spent the rest of Sunday enjoying the deep canyon breezes, and learning how to make the traditional maize drink chicha and prepare llama wool to be died from Doris herself. The day´s grande finale was when the lot of us - boys included - got wear the traditional Peruvian skirts and vests and hats and learn a little Peruvian dance. It was fun and funny and a fine end to a day full of immersing ourselves in an altogether different and facinating world.

All of which led us to that early early pre dawn trek back out of the canyon Monday morning. We were trying to make it up and out as quickly as possible to beat the sun getting too hot. Danni, Kate and Leon opted for donkeys. But John and I - who would also be hiking the Inca Trail within the week - were keen on getting some good preparation/practice out of it. It was probably the hardest, continuously uphill hike I´ve ever done but beat the sun I did (more or less) and by 8:15 am was back in Cabanaconde where we started just 2 days before, happy happy and tired.

All in all it was a beautiful 3 day experience. I have been lucky enough to see so much beauty in this world already, but the landscape in the southern desert canyonlands of Peru really did take my breathe away. I hope to provide actual photos soon; hoping this helps convey a little bit of what it was like for now.

Love,
Karen