After leaving the icy weather in Puno we decided to try to get to Cotahuasi Canyon - the deepest canyon in the world. The canyon thought to be the deepest up until Cotahuasi was found is very touristy and much more easily accessible but as Mike likes to think of us as non-tourists we tried to avoid the tourist route.
From Puno, Peru, we took a bus to Arequipa where we found out there are only two bus services to Cotahuasi and they leave at 4:30pm and 5:00pm so we decided to stick to our plan of avoiding the tourist trail and got a place for the night in Arequipa. We had some ¨burgers¨ from a stand for dinner - Mike got his with the works - topped with chips, mustard, mayo, ketchup and hot sauce. The next day, we toured around the ¨white city¨ and set off on our bus trip. The first few hours were pleasant and we dozed in and out. After that, it was a bumpy, windy, cold ride through unpaved mountain roads (hence the non tourist track) and we arrived at 4:15am - not an ideal time to arrive but we had no choice. Luckily, a woman flagged us down right away and we were able to get a hostal quickly.
The next morning, we awoke at 8am and began to explore the town in hopes to get a ride to the canyon. Turns out, the town has only a handful of public transportation vehicles and the lone car that uses the streets otherwise belongs to the mayor. It also turned out that we missed the transportation to the canyon, so we were again delayed in our travels. Thanks to the owner of our hostal, we were able to find a good hike to do for the day and even planned out some more to do over the next two days...
That afternoon, we set off to get on the 4pm taxi-van to Pampamarca - a town 2.5 hours away (about 10miles). As we walked up to the van with our packs it looked like all the seats were already full which would have been really disappointing to have missed another ride. After being in South America for a month and a half, we should have known better. We walked up to the van and a few people in front insisted on making room for the gringos. We thankfully squeezed in the van and thought we would set off shortly. Again, we thought too quickly. About 8 more people proceeded to board the vehicle leaving us with 25 people inside a 12 passenger van and one brave soul on the roof with the caged in luggage. The ride was comfy cozy of course and we had some incredible views along the way. Also on the way, a man let us know that he had a hostal. When we arrived in Pampamarca it was easy to see that we had little other choices - there was one other hostal across the street, no restaurants, and one market-convenience type store.
The next morning, the man from the hostal pointed us in the right direction to get to a trail that lead up to ¨bosque de piedras¨ or rock forrest. The rocks that made up this ¨forrest¨ were definitely unlike anything we had seen before and we had our fun trying to climb on them before deciding it was better to be safe than sorry. After hiking down, we also checked out a waterfall nearby, enjoyed some cookies for lunch, (as we lacked any other choices) and then took a much larger but equally crowded bus (hence the girl in the picture on Mikes lap) back to Cotahausi.
After a good nights sleep, we set out on the 6:30am bus to the canyon and hiked to a ¨150 meter¨ waterfall. The waterfall definitely didn´t seem as high as claimed but it was still very pretty. After the visit, we hiked back and thankfully had enough time to shower (due to the next turn of events...!) before getting the bus out of Cotahuasi.
From Puno, Peru, we took a bus to Arequipa where we found out there are only two bus services to Cotahuasi and they leave at 4:30pm and 5:00pm so we decided to stick to our plan of avoiding the tourist trail and got a place for the night in Arequipa. We had some ¨burgers¨ from a stand for dinner - Mike got his with the works - topped with chips, mustard, mayo, ketchup and hot sauce. The next day, we toured around the ¨white city¨ and set off on our bus trip. The first few hours were pleasant and we dozed in and out. After that, it was a bumpy, windy, cold ride through unpaved mountain roads (hence the non tourist track) and we arrived at 4:15am - not an ideal time to arrive but we had no choice. Luckily, a woman flagged us down right away and we were able to get a hostal quickly.
The next morning, we awoke at 8am and began to explore the town in hopes to get a ride to the canyon. Turns out, the town has only a handful of public transportation vehicles and the lone car that uses the streets otherwise belongs to the mayor. It also turned out that we missed the transportation to the canyon, so we were again delayed in our travels. Thanks to the owner of our hostal, we were able to find a good hike to do for the day and even planned out some more to do over the next two days...
That afternoon, we set off to get on the 4pm taxi-van to Pampamarca - a town 2.5 hours away (about 10miles). As we walked up to the van with our packs it looked like all the seats were already full which would have been really disappointing to have missed another ride. After being in South America for a month and a half, we should have known better. We walked up to the van and a few people in front insisted on making room for the gringos. We thankfully squeezed in the van and thought we would set off shortly. Again, we thought too quickly. About 8 more people proceeded to board the vehicle leaving us with 25 people inside a 12 passenger van and one brave soul on the roof with the caged in luggage. The ride was comfy cozy of course and we had some incredible views along the way. Also on the way, a man let us know that he had a hostal. When we arrived in Pampamarca it was easy to see that we had little other choices - there was one other hostal across the street, no restaurants, and one market-convenience type store.
The next morning, the man from the hostal pointed us in the right direction to get to a trail that lead up to ¨bosque de piedras¨ or rock forrest. The rocks that made up this ¨forrest¨ were definitely unlike anything we had seen before and we had our fun trying to climb on them before deciding it was better to be safe than sorry. After hiking down, we also checked out a waterfall nearby, enjoyed some cookies for lunch, (as we lacked any other choices) and then took a much larger but equally crowded bus (hence the girl in the picture on Mikes lap) back to Cotahausi.
After a good nights sleep, we set out on the 6:30am bus to the canyon and hiked to a ¨150 meter¨ waterfall. The waterfall definitely didn´t seem as high as claimed but it was still very pretty. After the visit, we hiked back and thankfully had enough time to shower (due to the next turn of events...!) before getting the bus out of Cotahuasi.
Ok, sorry but we completly forget until we went through the pictures. So as we are hiking up to the rock forest and we find two odd looking rock formations. Obviously man made and we look inside. They are old buiral tombs from the Incas. You can see the children´s skeletons in the picture. Creepy stuff.
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