For three days we walked in and around the Canyon (just to the left of my hand in this photo you can make out the village where we stayed the first night in a well set up dorm for gringo´s).
We had a nice sized group of 8 people with 2 guides to do a three day journey through the Canyon. One guide (Nestor) was super cool and informative and taught us about the medicinal and commercial benefits of many of the local plants. The other guide (Pablo) was a super tough local who was up and down the hills like a rabbit carrying all sorts of things. Not bad for a 50 year old. I walked out of the Canyon with him and its fair to say he is my first Latin American friend! We had a few strained yarns with my crappy Spannish but thanks to the powers of sign language we managed a few laughs.
We left Arequepa very early in the morning so we could walk down in daylight and the views were magnificent:
Perhaps our group was a bit slow or perhaps we didn´t get up early enough because come dark we were still 40 minutes from our accomodation. Also at that moment a thunderstorm started. Personally, walking in the dark in the Canyon in pouring rain with thunder echoing down the valley was an absolute highlight.
On day 2 we worked up enough of a sweat to enjoy a soak in the natural pools.
And the only way out was up the zig zag to home
And the best news of all was that I discovered Nestle Peru´s ¨Sublime¨ chocolate bar at the top. And boy it was Sublime - after demolishing two of them, I had no choice but to get 4 more!
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