The Latin Latitudes: Arequipe and Canyon Country

Arequipe is a vibrant little city from which we based our foray into the Colca Canyon. It boasts beatiful white stone architeture with many churches and a famous old Monestary. We also had our first Alpaca steak here and were impressed with the quality of the meat.

The Colca Canyon is claimed to be the deepest Canyon in the world - although the definition for 'deepest' is a little sketchy. However, at more than 4000m deep (thats more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon), it is most certainly an incredible site.

The hike into the Canyon was a seemingly endless 1500m decent that hairpinned into the depths. Needless to say it left us tired and sore. We spent two nights in the Canyon and a full day exploring the stunning rivers than ran along its bed.

The little village we stayed at boasted natural hot springs right on the edge of the river. This allowed Bron to to relax while watching Fred chase the trout in the icy Rio Colca. After all our 'hard work', we decided to order a bottle of wine on our second night but were startled to find that the colour had changed from red (it did say Roja on the label) to a vile pea green coloured which reflected yellow at certain angles. It went back.

Apart from that, we spend a wonderful time enjoying the views of the canyon and where priveleged to have great sightings of the endangered Andean Condor.

The hike out was not for ants and 5 hours of pure ascent found us back at the beginning of our path and praying for a shower! On our way back to Arequipe (and after a stop in the village of Chivay for showers and trout) we spent the night at an Alpaca farm in the Tocra Pampas. We were given an entertaining motor bike tour of the farm by our local host (who spoke no English) and also got see the Vicuna (an animal very similar to the Alpaca but only found in the wild).