What I Learned: Arequipa to Colca Canyon

Hiking the Colca Canyon is doable on your own. I wouldn’t say that about every hike in Peru, so I decided to take advantage of it. Piecing together the logistics was a little tricky, there were some unknowns, and I had to figure out things on the fly, and while there were good surprises, there were also things I would do differently.

Plaza Armas

First off, I can't stress enough the importance of respecting the altitude. We flew into Arequipa which sits at 10,000 ft. Because oxygen is lower, you may experience altitude sickness, migraines, exhaustion, queasiness, dizziness, shortness of breath, sleep trouble, appetite loss, muscle aches, nausea, basically hangover like feelings. Symptoms will come on within 12-24 hours of arriving and people respond differently. On one end of the spectrum, I felt mild symptoms. I had a slight headache and a little nausea. My brother-in-law experienced full on altitude sickness while hiking. Hindsight is 20/20, we jumped into everything too quickly, take a look below:

Day 1:

We flew into the Arequipa airport and hit the ground running. We checked into our hostel, visited the Ice Maiden Juanita, got lost in the Santa Catalina Monastery, ate a beautiful dinner, then straight to bed, we were tired to say the least.

Day 2:

We woke up early to visit an alpaca museum and store, then dedicated the rest of the day to a long slow bus ride to Cabanaconde.

Day 3:

We tackled a hike down and up the second deepest canyon in the world, the Colca Canyon.

The result: Pure exhaustion and a scary bout of altitude sickness. You can read about our adventure here.

My advice is to pick a city in Peru that you can easily spend 3-5 days in (my suggestion is Cusco), adjust appropriately, relax, and enjoy a cool new city, and THEN start tackling the big hikes. Arequipa is beautiful, but there is not too much to do, but it is the closest city you can be in as a jumping off point to visit the Colca Canyon. If you choose to stay in Cusco, you will have to work your way down to Arequipa or Cabanaconde if you want to visit. If I redid this trip, I would reverse it. Instead of starting in southern peru and working my way up, I think it would have been better to start in Cusco and work my way down, because there is a lot to do and you can adjust to the altitude while roaming and exploring an amazing city instead of doing an insane hike.

The next big decision is whether to hike the Canyon on your own or go with a tour. There are pro’s and con’s to each. I opted to do the hike on our own for two reasons. The first being I like to have the freedom to be on my own schedule. And secondly, the tours I felt were worth considering were on the expensive side, which is fair enough, but it is easy to do a lot of good tours and before you know it, the trip budget runs out quickly. I figure we would save our money for the tours we couldn’t do on our own, and then enjoy the freedom of the hikes we could do safely on our own.

We did this trip in July 2015, so the information may be dated. Since our trip, it seems Peru has expanded its destinations, making much more available to the public, so make sure to look out for new things to do.

How we got to Arequipa:

• We flew into the Rodríguez Ballón International Airport. Check out my favorite cheap flight search engine, Skyscanner.

Where we stayed in Arequipa:

• La Casa del Melgar. This hostel is a preserved 18th century mansion in the historical section Arequipa. The grounds are beautiful and full of character. I always look to stay in the historical sections for a genuine aesthetic and historical stories. It is also one block away from the Santa Catalina Monastery and four blocks away from the Plaza de Armas. Perfect location to explore.

Things we did in Arequipa:

• Get lost in the colorful Santa Catalina Monastery
• Visit the Mummified Ice Maiden at Museo Santuarios Andinos
• Learn how alpaca wool is made, feed some alpacas, and shop, all at Mundo Alpaca
• Walk the UNESCO World Heritage Streets of called ‘sillar’ which are made from local white volcanic rock that gives Arequipa the name, ‘The White City’
• Walk Plaza Armas
• Walk Plaza San Francisco
• Good starting base to visit the Colca Canyon.
• Try Queso Helado, cheese ice cream, a specialty of the area.

Where we ate:

• Zig Zag: http://www.zigzagrestaurant.com/
• Chicha: http://www.chicha.com.pe/

How we got to Cabanaconde, the town that sits above the Colca Canyon:

1. If you are in the Arequipa City center, take a 15-20min taxi ride to the bus station called Terrestre, usually puerta #2. The taxi ride should cost you about 5-10 sole from the city center of Arequipa. Note: There are two bus stations in Arequipa that are right next to each other, Terminal Terrestre and Terminal Terrapuerto, look ahead of time and see where the buses are leaving out of.

2. Refer to a bus schedule. There are only a few options. Seats on the right side of the bus will be the seanic side of the bus. Note this was the bus schedule in July 2015.

3. Cabanaconde is the last stop, you can’t miss it. It is the small village that is perched at the entrance of the Colca Canyon. When we arrived, a worker from our hostel greeted everyone and walked us down the road to where we were staying.

Where we stayed in Cabanaconde:

• Backpacker Hostel Pachamama: http://pachamamahome.com/ Make sure to check their website out. Since I last visited, they have extensively updated their information and is an amazing resource. You can book and plan many things through them. There are a lot of new things to do on the website as well, guess I have to go back!

Things we did in Cabanaconde/Colca Caynon:

• Hiking to Oasis Sangalle
• Viewing the Condors
• Taking in dramatic mountains views

What we missed, aka saving for a later date:

• Arequipa: Walking around the neighborhood of Yanahuara that sells the unique ‘Queso Helado’ or cheese ice cream.

• Colca Canyon: Trekking Lluhuar and Lluhuar hot springs

• Colca Canyon: Trekking Fure (waterfall)

• Colca Canyon: Achachiwa Viewpoint

• Colca Canyon: Viewpoint of Tapay

• Colca Canyon: Officially visit Cruz Del Condor. We missed this because it is an early morning trip and we felt it was important for my brother-in-law to sleep in after having altitude sickness. By a stroke of luck, we ended up seeing the condors unexpectedly at another location. Two options to visit Cruz Del Condor is by taking a biking tour or the Kombi tour offered at Pachamama. Both sound fun.

• Colca Canyon: Visit the geysers of the area

Tips:

• Make sure to do some shopping, you will get more authentic items here than in the touristy cities. The best shopping spots were stops made on the long bus rides between towns. This is where we picked up some knitted goods and alpaca yarn.

• If you are looking for a tour, check out http://www.pablotour.com/ for an off the beaten path option to visit the Colca Canyon. This was the tour I was considering. They make more unique stops along the way and do the trek backwards so you miss the crowds. I feel like I would have seen more if I did one of these tours. On the other hand, because we did the hike on our own, we had the whole Colca Canyon to ourselves and a story we will never forget.

• As we did, you can use Arequipa as a jumping off base to visit the Colca Canyon. You can also come in from Puno instead of Arequipa. It’s further away, but you should do both the Colca Canyon and Puno when in Southern Peru. Whatever works best with your schedule. When in Puno, make sure to visit the Uros Floating Islands, the Island of Taquile, and others if you have time. You don’t want to spend any time in the actual city of Puno because it’s not pretty and there is not much else to do. I highly recommend http://www.edgaradventures.com/ for an authentic experience. You may have heard other say the Uros Islands are touristy, more of a production, and leave you feeling pressure to buy goods from the locals. This may be your experience if you do the generic tours. Go off the beaten path on this one, I only allotted 1 day and did the Titicaca Uncovered Express. It was AMAZING, my only regret is that I didn’t take a longer tour with them because it was one of my favorite experiences on our trip. Check out the section on their website called, ‘Our Specials’ as it will give you their more unique and off the beaten track experiences.

How we got from Cabanaconde to Puno:

1. At Pachamama Hostel, we arranged and purchased tickets for a ride to the town of Chivay. Conveniently they drove us to our charter bus (4M bus: we arranged and bought tickets before the beginning of our trip to Peru) that was to take us to Puno. Here is the website for tickets from Chivay to Puno: http://www.4m-express.com/ruta_ca_en.htm

2. The 4M is a LONG bus ride to Puno, buts it’s a big comfortable bus, and they break the trip up for you and take you to some genuine local goods shopping spots and sights. This is a good day to relax, sleep, and recover. And as a bonus, they have a huge buffet style meal stop with live music that is perfect to fuel you up before or after your hike. No bathroom on the bus, only a ‘baño ecológico’ meaning they will stop the bus while everyone watches you run behind a rock to use the bathroom. Tip - always use the bathroom at every pit stop.

3. You will arrive in Puno late at night, grab some dinner, and get to bed!