Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Colca Canyon (who has the best buns) -- Part 2

(Note: some updates--and photos added--to part 1)

Day two of the Colca Canyon trek started with a bang. That was Sandro knocking on my door at 4.30am. For a few seconds I had no idea where I was, then I realized I was in a cabana in the middle of nowhere. But a good nowhere.

I spent the first two minutes trying to turn on the flashlight. The tour operator said to bring, among other things, a flashlight and a towel. As the saying goes, a good traveller always knows where his towel is. I thought the towel was for showering. Wrong. There were no showers, not much in the way of washing facilities, and so I had pretty much eschewed hygiene. Since that was only one day of personal squalor, my trek-mates could deal with it, just like I deal with their smoking (and not just the funny cigarettes--though one guy had 'Che Guevara' cigarettes, which was funny without being illegal).

So the towel was for swimming, and the flashlight was because the lodge has no electricity (meals were made with gas). Anyway, I hadn't brought a flashlight on my trip (apparently this is almost as bad as not knowing where your towel is) and couldn't locate one in Arequipa, so I would have been stumbling in the dark had Sandro not wisely packed a second one for nimrods like me. My head must have been fuzzy since it took me a while to push the only button there was in the right way. I stumbled out for breakfast at 4.40: a fried egg, coffee, and two buns with jam. Melinda appeared a few minutes later. The kids, however, were obviously not on mountain time. They hadn't finished eating and packing by our 5.00 starting time, or by our 5.30 starting time, and Sandro was getting kind of antsy--the later we started, the longer the part of our hike that would be spent in the sun. Besides, the rest of us were on vacation, but Sandro was on the job, and probably didn't want to arrive home an hour late. There was also some bitterness about the size of the breakfast.

We started at 5.45. Melinda and I went ahead, and Sandro stayed behind with the others. Eventually I went ahead (it wasn't a competition, it just worked out that way). Instead of being gruelling and setting fire to my feet and lungs, the trek up turned out to pretty much be a piece of cake.




I thought an ascent of 1100m, starting at 2200, wasn't bad for someone not in the first flush of youth. Speaking of which, where were the others? I don't kid myself that I'm in any better shape than they are, so I was wondering why they hadn't passed me. I was waiting at the top of the hill and had found some Canadians from another tour group to talk to. Melinda arrived 15 minutes later. Then one of the other guides from the same company but with the other group told us that Sandro was delayed and we should walk into town--Cabanaconde, about 15 minutes away--where we would be picked up by bus to go back to Arequipa. Cabanaconde is a small farming town with a few hostals around the main square that seems like it might be a nice place to relax. The guide told us we had an hour before the pickup, so Melinda and I went for a second breakfast. Mine turned out to be two eggs and four--count 'em and weep--buns.

As for what delayed the rest of the pack...that is unclear. One story was that a couple of the girls were suffering from some intestinal bug (one had been ailing the day before). The other story was that everyone was fine, but that things were "complicado". The kids seemed pissed off at Sandro and one said he had "abandoned" them. Evidently a bad fit between trekkers and guide. That being said, I had a good time, and I'd recommend Sandro and the agency, Inti Yaku Tours, which is run out of my hostal in Arequipa, pleasantly named Home Sweet Home. I give the hostal a mostly good rating: the rooms are a bit rough-hewn, but the staff are friendly and helpful, the price is right (40 soles--$14 for a private room with bath, 20 soles for a dorm room) and a good breakfast is included and is served on a very nice third floor terrace. Like most hostals, they are quite all right with people using their facilities--Internet, washrooms, luggage storage--after they've checked out and are waiting for their bus, even if this turns out to be all day.


I liked them well enough that I'm now staying at their hostal of the same name in Cusco.

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