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We arrived in Arequipa in the early hours of the morning, and checked into a double room as I was feeling like s*** and all we wanted to do was sleep. I had come down with a serious case of Loki-itus, which comes of partying too hard and too many people in each room. Plus, cos I'm taking these anti-malaria tablets, it took me ages to shift it. I spent the whole of the first day in the gorgeous hostel ´The Point´, which is run by an English guy and and Aussey guy, who both know exactly what a hostel needs, sitting in the fabulous sunshine, in a hammock, reading my book.
We investigated the beautiful town of Arequipa over the next two days, and did alot of sitting in very nice restaurants in the sunshine. It was nice to see some sun after all the cold. We booked our three day Colca Canyon trek for the next day and we were psyched!!
The trek started unfortunately with a 6 hour bus journey. After that and lunch we started our first bit of trekking which was just three hours down the side of the very steep canyon. We actually spend the first night in a kind of guest house on the side of the canyon. We had a 7am start the next day, and a group of five of us decided that the normal 3 hours of trekking wasn't enough, so we went for the bigger journey of 5 hours, up to the nearest gorgeous town (which only has 66 inhabitants), and then back along the side of the canyon. This is a bloody hard day made harder by going at a pretty fast pace with all the other guys. It was a fabulous walk, and really made us feel great at the end. You finish at the bottom of the canyon, in an oasis with bedrooms and swimming pools. I jumped straight in the second I got there. The only shame was that we only had the sun until 3pm before it went behind the mountains.
The next day I had been dreading all along. We had a 2.10am wake up, and started trekking at 2.30am. Basically the trek was to get out of the canyon. This canyon is the second deepest in the world, and we were right at the bottom. It took me 3 hours to reach the top, and that was 3 hours of sheer pain and horribleness. It was such a monotonous journey and it was just straight up, no straight and no down. I had to stop so much. I was relieved that when I did finally get to the top, everyone had hated it as much. I would have been concerned if they even loved that. It was cold and it was miserable, but its done now, and never to be done again!!
We were rewarded by looking for condors, and then spending a few hours in some hot springs in the blistering heat. My whole body was sore by the end. We went to watch the re-run of the football and eat some serious steak. Then Claudia and I took the 10 hour journey to Nazca luxury style! We went for the good company, with the big seats. It was good and well needed, plus that is known for being a dangerous route. We were thinking safety first, nothing to do with the fully declining seats!!
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