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Waking up knowing you have a delicious buffet breakfast is always good, and being the absolute tight arse that I am, I stole a bunch of food for lunch as well! Learnt that trick off mumsy.
We all piled into a van and met yet another tour guide Wilfredo, who will be taking care of us for the next two days during our stay in Chivay and the Colca Canyon. Arequipa is at about 2500 metres above sea level, and getting around town is slightly difficult due to the altitude. Wilfredo told us that we'd be going almost double that on our trip to Colca valley. So off we went, slowly ascending into the Andes, Wilfredo updating us with the new altitude every 10 minutes or so... 3000, 3500, 4000m and still rising! Finally we arrived at the peak, a staggering 4910m above sea level. I had major heart palpitations and struggled to walk any faster than a crawl, what a weakling! It was incredible how breathless I became just from wandering around slowly at this altitude. God help me on the Inca trail. I was glad to get back into the van (feeling like I'd just run a marathon) to begin our scenic descent into Chivay.
We arrived at our beautiful hostel called Mama Yacchi, and Wilfredo took us on an hour hike up the mountains to get a good view of the landscape. Chivay is at about 3600m above sea level so the going was a bit easier, the air a bit more rich in oxygen. The landscape was so lovely, very brown, but lots of old pre-inca ruins to explore and terraces that would be over 1000 years old.
Next, Monika and I headed to the natural hot springs in Chivay, everybody else chickened out cos they thought they'd get diseased. The water runs straight out of a hot spring from a local active volcano at about 80 degrees Celsius. It then passes though a bunch of tanks with frozen elements to cool the water down to around 40 degrees. The temperature here drops to about -3 overnight so you can imagine how nice this oversized spa was! After a long soak we headed back to the hostel for dinner - another buffet!!
I tried alpaca meat, which actually tastes pretty good, I personally would have chucked it in the slow cooker cos it was a bit chewy! And the rest of the dinner was pretty amazing, followed by a cactus fruit cheesecake yuuuum
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