THE COLCA CANYON
14TH - 18TH MARCH
The bus to Chivay, at one end of the canyon, wasn’t the plushest thing we’d ever seen, but it was comfortable, and the driver was fairly sane, which is are the two main things you hope for in this part of the world!! We headed off up towards El Misti, the volcano which towers over Arequipa and just kept on climbing!! By the time we’d been travelling a couple of hours or so we had reached the Salinas and Aguada Blanca National Reserve, which was supposedly a great place to view Llamas, alpacas and the endangered vicuna. Given our sunny start we were amazed to find that the only thing it was good for viewing was a blizzard!! Once again we had seen what a difference a few thousand meters of altitude can make!!Once we’d cleared the snow storm we began to descend again - and before long got our first glimpse of the Colca canyon, and the village of Chivay. The
Colca canyon was thought for years to be the deepest in the world, at 10,725 feet, over twice the depth of the Grand Canyon. It was found out relatively recently though, that it is actually second, beaten by a few meters by it’s neighbour of a few miles, the Cotahuasi Canyon. The end near Chivay is nowhere near that deep, more like a hundred feet - but nevertheless from up above it was a pretty impressive chasm running down the valley.
As we get off the bus we were immediately reminded of India, there were both lots of people mithering us, and even rickshaws!! We ignored both though and took a short walk into the town plaza where our choices of accommodation from Lonely Planet were. One looked grotty, and the other was nowhere to be found, so we checked out a few around the general area, and were very disappointed to say the least!! We eventually found a place a short walk out of town and got an
As we get off the bus we were immediately reminded of India, there were both lots of people mithering us, and even rickshaws!! We ignored both though and took a short walk into the town plaza where our choices of accommodation from Lonely Planet were. One looked grotty, and the other was nowhere to be found, so we checked out a few around the general area, and were very disappointed to say the least!! We eventually found a place a short walk out of town and got an