Colca Canyon and the Long Drive Back

The next morning, Travis and I woke at six to catch our ride up the mountain. If you will recall, I mentioned that the only vehicles in the canyon were mules. Mine was a nice grey one.

We met a man with a mess of donkeys, and he set up our saddles and helped us on. After that, he basically tapped the mules on the bottom, and they went up! The way up was incredibly steep, and we passed a bunch of people who decided to hike (Katie and Derek had opted to hike) as our mules charged onward. The Mule Man kept shouting "moo-lah!" ("mule" in Spanish), and whacking our mules when they would stop for a rest. About halfway up, I noticed that Travis' mule was absolutely covered in mule sweat. It was a thrilling climb, because we were on huge animals walking along a steep cliff, and their eyes are on the sides of their heads! The path wound back and forth, sometimes having "stairs" of cut stone, other times being relatively flat, so to speak. The Mule Man mimed that we should lean forward on the stairs, so as not to topple off the back of the mule and go tumbling off the edge of the mountain.

About an hour later, our mules hit the summit. Derek was waiting at the top (the hikers left about an hour before we did) and Katie joined us shortly after. We paid our Mule Man and went on our way...hiking along more "Peruvian flat" land to town.

At the top!

We had breakfast, and then got back into a big van to drive back to Arequipa. I filled an album with some pictures from the drive, which you can look at here if you are interested!

There are two points from along our drive that I would like to discuss on here. First, we passed through a beautiful, fertile valley (I think it was called Colca Valley?). I am posting a giant version of this picture so you can better see the details.

Here is a picture of an eagle that a man let you take pictures with for a Sol. It is sitting on some guy's head.

The second stop I would like to mention was at the highest point in our journey. If I recall correctly, our guide said it was 5000 meters or so (over 16,000 feet!). At this point, you are supposed to build a small tower out of rocks and make a wish. The sight of thousands of small rock towers from people who stopped here was incredible.

There were signs that pointed to the various mountains in the distance, naming them and giving their height.

We were so high up, it was pretty chilly!

Eventually, we got back to Arequipa. And after that, we caught a Night Bus back to Cuzco. We were wishing we had taken the Night Bus to Arequipa to begin with after we saw how awesome they were with over-sized reclining seats, an outlet per passenger, and airplane food service. It was a far cry from our journey out.