Colca Canyon

The first day of our Colca Canyon trek and it turns out that it’s just the two of us, a guide called Honorio and Vidal, our driver – quite the ‘VIP Experience’, obviously, but slightly intense at times! We drove up through a nature reserve created to protect the llamas’ more endangered cousin, the vicuna, and stopped a couple of times to look at groups of the various camelids, all looking very cool up there on these high, windswept plains. As we left the reserve, we stopped off at the highest point on the road and admired the volcanos, one of which rewarded us by spurting out a big plume of smoke and ash as we watched, really quite spectacular. Winding down into the Colca Valley, we stopped again to hike up a hill to a pre-Incan burial site built into the side of the mountain, sacked by the Spanish but then surreptiously refilled with hidden bones after they withdrew. It was a very atmospheric spot – with newer offerings of coins and coca leaves piled haphazardly amidst the discarded skulls and femurs. Afterwards we had lunch with a local lady, Sandra, at her parents’ house – very nice corn soup and alpaca with rice – and she made us dress up in traditional costumes for photos. In the afternoon we entered into the Canyon proper, stopping at various viewpoints and for a couple of short treks along the rim, mostly condor spotting. We finally wound up, after dark, at a quiet hotel in Cabanaconde, where, by virtue of an administrative error, I had alpaca again for dinner – something for which I consequently paid a price…!