By the time we got to the bus terminal, it was already 1am. We ran to the gate, only to find out that the bus was meant to come at 1:30am. And like I said about Peruvian time keeping, the bus arrived at 1:50am. While waiting for the bus, I kept looking out and checking with their staff about the arrival of the bus whenever a bus came by. I had no way of telling where a bus was headed. I didn't see signs or hear announcements and they all parked at the same gate. When our bus finally came, it was actually all the other fellow passengers who signalled to me that that was the bus. I have no idea how they could tell, but there is no doubt Peruvians in general are very friendly and helpful.
Passengers on this bus were sure a peculiar lot. They were very local people, dressed in their traditional clothing, and darker-skinned. I had a lady holding a toddler sitting next to me. The toddler kept sleeping on my arm and as much as I dislike kids, I kept pushing him back to the lady so he wouldn't drool on me. :P
When we arrived at our first stop at 5am, lots of people got off. I wasn't sure if that was the stop for us, so I went up to the staff and asked. He said no, so I said I'd go to the bano (bathroom) and he nodded. Some fellow inside the bus station said "bano" and pointed me to the bathroom. "Gracias" and off I went. I had to pay 0.5 sol for the bano, but I had no money on me. So I just shook my head with a "no", and pointed outside and said "bus". The dude eventually let me in and I shouted "gracias". When I came back out, the same fellow who showed me the way to the bano shouted "amiga" to me and pointed me back to the bus. I got on, pushed people out of my way, and went to the back seat, only to see my friend not there! I kind of thought the people looked a bit different from the people I saw earlier. I was like, shit, and I pushed my way back out of the bus again. It was the only bus still parked at the bus terminal. If this wasn't the bus then I didn't know where my bus was! Luckily, when I made my way down the bus, the staff from my original bus was waiting for and took me back to the bus which was now parked on the other side of the bus terminal. My friend later told me the bus was actually about to leave without me. My friend tried to tell the driver to stop but she had problem communicating with the driver. Fortunately (for me), the new passenger next to me was an English teacher and helped out. It would've been a real adventure for me if I didn't make it back on the bus. So for the rest of the journey, the English teacher and I chatted and we each learned more about each other's culture. I asked her a lot about the Peruvian customs, and she obviously took this opp
ortunity to practice her English. She was newly wedded and was travelling with her husband to Cruz del Condor for the Semana Santa weekend.We finally arrived at Cabanaconde at around 7am. We were greeted by an old lady who took us to a small place where we met our guide Remiglio and had breakfast -- two pieces of Peruvian bread, strawberry jam, a banana, and mate (herbal tea). I love the Peruvian bread... They're d
rier, harder, but have more flavour of the dough.It turned out that it became another private tour for us. We were told there'd be someone else in the group, but apparently that wasn't the case. Remi didn't speak very much English so we didn't talk very much.
The Colca Canyon is claimed to be deeper than the Grand Canyon. We started off at 3290m. The first 30 minutes of ou
r hike was pretty flat. Then we started to descend
1200m to the river, over a span of 9km. The trail was mainly coarse sand and loose pebbles. It was quite slippery because I was wearing my trail runners. It was 32C. It was hot and dry, albeit with a breeze so the weather was mainly fine and a bit too sunny.
It was a nice hike, but it wasn't very exciting. The view was not as magestic as the Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan, China. There were a lot of cacti along the trail. The rock formation was quite interestin
g.After we reached the bottom of the canyon, we went back uphill a bit, then we stopped for lunch at a tiny village. We finally had lots of fibre for lunch and I finally drank more fluids. We then lied on the lawn and chilled for two hours before moving on again. After passing the villages of Tapay and Matala, we go to the Oasis at 3:30pm and we had a swim in the swimming pool with a nice backdrop of mountains. The pool was drained daily and re-filled again by stream water. It was a refreshing dip after a day's hike under the sun.
We had dinner at 6pm and had some fun chatting with Remi. It was a fun guessing ga
me. He said the Spanish word and we guessed the English equivalent. We showed him the last few pages of the Lonely Planet - how we managed to communicate in Peru. He was interested to see the translation, and was particularly intrigued by the few lines of Quechua quoted. Remi also made us an ingenious candle holder using a 2.5L plastic coke bottle. Too bad I forgot to take a picture of it. During dinner we saw lights flashing on the top of the canyon. Remi told us people got lost because no one was supposed to be there. People were sent up there to escort the lost hikers to safety. I once again felt the friendliness of the Peruvians. They had no obligation to help those hikers, especially when they weren't in apparent danger.We went to bed not long after dinner in preparation for the next day's hike -- at 2am!
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