It was the 27th June and time for likely the most physically challenging part of our South American adventure – a three day trek through Peru’s Colca Canyon, self-dubbed ‘The Rose’. I call it this because this is probably one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to in this country, but it might hurt you too!

We started the day at the untimely hour of 2.30am, where a drunk guy in our hostel got confused, thought he was in the bathroom and weed all over the floor. Maybe this is the true hostel experience as this was simultaneously accompanied by 4 alarms going off for people that were NEVER going to wake up for them – it was an eventful half an hour and maybe in the future we won’t book party hostels before 3 day treks?

After a 3.5 hour drive out of Arequipa, dawn began to break in time for our first stop – the viewpoint to see the Flight of the Condors. Jamie seemed somewhat disappointed that it wasn’t a parallel of a Red Arrows air show – in fairness they were somewhat shy. We took some photos and jumped back on the bus to Pampa De San Miguel – the starting point of our trekking route.The next 4 hours definitely put us through our paces. The colca trekking path is well defined but by no means smooth sailing. As we snaked our way down the cliff edges towards San Juan De Chucchu Village, every step had to be taken with care to ensure we didn’t take the quick way to the bottom! (Ouch)

Add the searing heat of the sun said to be well into the 30s, and a wonderful bit of uphill – that lasted maybe 10 minutes but seemed to drain us more than the previous 4 hours – and you have a lovely little cocktail of pain that Jamie referred to as “total annihilation” 😛 a little more walking and we reached the town around midday having definitely earned our lunch!

We rested for much of the afternoon and got chatting to a couple from Montreal, Margarida and Emil, that were joining our hiking group for the next 2 days. Having started with just 3 of us and our guide Juanito, it was nice to have a couple more faces around.

To finish off… a cute dog I saw, just because really