ortunately the town was absolutely dead - there wasn’t a café or anything, and there was no sign of a bus either!! Our backup plan was a taxi given how cheap they were around here, but that was also a no-go, there wasn’t one to be seen. So we resigned ourselves to the 8km walk uphill back to Chivay with empty bellies!! I’d seen quite a few people hitching around here, and figured that in such a rural place it would be safe, and our salvation came in the form of the first vehicle to pass us - a huge stone carrying lorry with three Peruvians in the cab. They were all too happy to take us to Chivay, we had to climb into the cab and sit on the driver’s bed, and I did my best to converse in Spanish with one of the guys. Now we would have been perfectly happy to be dropped off anywhere near Chivay, but as it turned out one of the guys in the cab was also hitching a ride, and we ended up being dropped off outside the door of our hotel!! Result!!

We hit the market again for lunch and were treated to rice, potatoes and some greenish stew which was just divine!! The food markets in these parts are just great - there are lots of women there with little stalls and all kinds of different food on the go - with only about four or five seats around them - and the food is great and very cheap!! Once again the afternoon’s weather wasn’t the best, so we headed to the comfort of our new room for more photos and reading. We wandered down to the bus station to buy tickets for our bus down to the other end of the Canyon tomorrow, and then treated ourselves to a pizza in the same restaurant as the other night, as it was the warmest place in town!!

The bus ride down the canyon the next morning was amazing!! It took a total of about three and a half hours, and the road went hair-raisingly close to the edge on many an occasion. When we got to the