We really didn't know what to do around Arequipa; however we quickly figured out most people are in the area to do Colca Canyon. We wanted a few days first to relax, so we scheduled a trek a few days out. We checked out the town, and the views of the volcanoes and the town square which were pretty great.
We ended up meeting a guy from New Zealand, Hamish, and a couple from Portugal, Ricardo and Catarina, at our hostel that booked the same trek as us. The trek was a 2 day/ 1 night hike down into Colca Canyon, stay over night at the river, and then hike back up the next day.
So we packed our small backpacks, made some trail mix, bought plenty of water, and hit the hay early the night before our trek because we had to wake up at 2:45 A.M. the next morning for our 3 A.M. tour bus.
The bus picked us up at 3 and we rode about 5 hours to get to Colca Canyon for our first stop, Cruz del Condor. Here we saw the Andean Condor which has the largest wingspan of any land bird, a little over 10 feet!
After watching these birds for a little while, we continued on for another hour until we got to the town where our trek started. We had a good group for our trek as it was only the 5 of us and our guide. The hike down into the canyon involved lots of pretty steep rocks and took about 3 hours. Colca Canyon is reportedly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and one of the deepest canyons in the world, but the walls of Colca Canyon are not as steep as the Grand Canyon. Matt and I said to each other at the end of the trek that we both thought the Grand Canyon was more impressive.
Once we finally made it to the river, or "The Oasis", where we were staying for the night we all just wanted to eat and rinse off in the pool.
The rest of the day was pretty relaxed. Our hike back up started the next morning at 5 am. We made it back up the canyon in a little less than 3 hours. Between the altitude, dust, and sore legs, the hike up was quite the morning exercise.
As part of the tour we also stopped at a hot springs pool that was quite nice and a look out of the area and then another look out of multiple volcanoes. Arequipa has over 80 volcanoes in the area, but only 1 is active.
We made it back to Arequipa and relaxed for a day before heading on to Cusco.
We stayed at Wild Rover Arequipa for $11. This hostel is more of a "party hostel" which isn't the norm for us; however, we stayed there based on a review from another traveler. The hostel was clean, fun, and we met some good people that we experienced the canyon with so it worked out well. We forgot to take pictures of this hostel, oops!
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