Arequipa is known as "Ciudad Blanca" or "White City" as so many buildings here are built using the beautiful white stone produced by the local volcanoes. As a result of this it is a very elegant city which is home to one of the most beautiful plazas of all the places I have been to on this trip, although a protest against the local government involving setting fire to various things did taint its beauty a touch. As pretty as they are to look at, the streets and buildings of Arequipa were not the reason I want to visit, I had come here to go for a little walk in the relatively nearby super deep Colca Canyon for a few days. Tom on the other hand fancied climbing a 6,000m+ volcano, something that didn't really appeal to me as I still wasn't feeling 100% and had enough trouble doing any form of exercise at 4,000m!

The first stop on the tour of the canyon was a lookout point to observe condors. In order to arrive here at a good time to view these spectacular birds the bus picked me up at 3.30am for the five hour drive. An uncomfortable bus rattling along the terrible roads is not the easiest place to try and sleep, but I managed to get a bit of shut-eye before we arrived at "Cruz del Condor". I have never seen condors before and found that they are really impressively large animals that soar with such elegance. Against the backdrop of the canyon they were a truly beautiful sight. The only things that dampened this experience a little were the large numbers of loud and annoying middle-aged American tourists, and the array of handicraft stalls in the area. Without either of these things, this would be one of the most beautiful and peaceful spots I've ever visited.

Once we had finished our bird watching, we were loaded back into our minibus. Up until this point I still had not figured out which one of the four guides in the bus belonged to me, or which of the other tourists would be in my group. I got chatting with a really nice Irish/Aussie couple and hoped that I would be with them, however when we arrived at our bus' destination - Cabanaconda - I found out that none of the guides were mine, and the only other people who were also missing their guide were a strange middle-aged Swiss couple. Neither of them could speak English, but at least the woman had a very basic grasp of Spanish so we could communicate with one another. Eventually our guide (Alex) showed up on the public bus and we got underway. First up was a 30 minute walk from the town to the canyon itself on which we didn't see anything too exciting except for one lone snake crossing our path which scared Mrs Swiss half to death.

Upon reaching the canyon Alex pointed out the village on the other side that we would be staying in as well as two others that we would walk through the following day, all of which looked really far away. With all this walking ahead of me I was very pleased I had packed extremely lightly, especially in comparison to the Swiss couple who had a big backpack weighing about 18kg which Mr Swiss had to carry the whole way. After a little rest we set off on the long walk down to the bottom of the canyon in the blazing sunshine on a path covered in loose stones, which I inevitably slipped/stumbled on a couple of times cutting and bruising myself on the way down, but fortunately no serious injuries were sustained. When we got to the bottom of the canyon we had overtaken all of the other much larger groups as we seemed to be the only ones that did not take a rest... it turns out that these two oldies I was with were walking machines. On the other side of the bridge over the river we had a short walk uphill to reach our resting spot where I got a much-needed early night after a scrumptious dinner of alpaca steak.

The next day was mainly on the flat and took us through the two villages we had seen the previous morning. Along the way Alex stopped and collected a handful of legless insects that live on the cacti here whose blood provide a dye which is very rich in colour and also got used to paint our faces. I have not been to many canyons in my life, but none of those which I have visited have ever had villages within them or such an abundance of fruit trees/other vegetation - to me Colca Canyon is more like a valley than a canyon, although in all honesty I am not really sure what the defining features/differences of these are. In one of the villages we visited a museum where we got to try chica which is the local drink of choice, and we also learnt about the methods the people of the village use to make various things as they have no machinery here and all transportation is done by donkey. Around the back of the museum there were a few cages full of cuy which is a delicacy here in Peru, and better known to me and you as guinea pig. All this was fairly interesting, but more importantly gave me a chance to have a little rest from walking!

After another day of speedy walking we arrived at the Oasis and settled into our next hostel which had a really nice and refreshing swimming pool to relax in for the rest of the day. Shortly after we arrived the couple I had befriended on the minibus from Arequipa showed up so I had lunch with them and got to speak English again after over 24 hours of speaking nothing but Spanish. Following a hard afternoon by the pool and exploring the bottom of the canyon I got another early night ready for the 5.00am departure the next day for the ascent back up to the top.

Mr Swiss had decided that carrying the entire mammoth backpack up the hill would be a bit too much as Alex had told us it was a three hour walk, plus the half an hour back to Cabanaconda, so they hired a donkey to take it up for them who can make the whole journey in just one and a half hours. So, at 5.00am sharp we set off in the darkness climbing back up... at around 6.45 we were at the top already and waiting for Alex to catch up! I'm not sure who the guideline times are for on things like this, but I wish I could've had an extra hour in bed to arrive at Cabanaconda at the expected hour rather than having to sit around in a ghost town waiting for breakfast to start.

As soon as everyone had been fed and watered in Cabanaconda we started the long drive back to Arequipa, stopping off for a quick lunch where I sampled some rather tasty-but-not-that-meaty cuy before hitting the hot springs to ease our tired muscles. When I got back to the hostel in Arequipa I found Tom about as close to death as I've ever seen a living person after his volcano trip, which made me very glad about my choice to take a gentle walk around the canyon instead. After seeing him I am pretty confident that I will not be taking on any walking that goes over an altitude of 6,000m on this trip!