Significant Life Event #14: Cañon de Colca

All of us together at the Canyon : )

This past weekend we Calvin College kids all went to Colca Canyon with our director, her husband, a bus driver and a guide. It was our first of 4 weekend excursions. Writing this post is going to accomplish two things: 1. Inform you of my awesome experience, and 2. Help me study for a quiz tomorrow on our trip by summarizing my excursion packet for you all to read. If you would like a pictoral guide of my weekend you can check out my facebook album entitled "E es por Excursiones".

Oldest Cactus in the World

We set out around 6:30 am Saturday morning in a 20 passenger van with 22 passengers. We became friends real quick. Our first stop was el Jardin de los Cactus - the Cactus Garden. In it we encountered Corrycactus brevistylus, which is more than 500 years old and positively massive, and several other large cactuses in varying shapes and sizes. My favorite cactuses are the tall and skinny ones with flowers on the top.

Vicuñas!

We continued driving and happened upon some vicuñas very close to the roadside. Vicuñas are the smallest of the camel family. They have the finest fur in the world and only weight about 80 pounds full grown. They are not domesticated but if you can catch them and shave them you can get close to $400/kilo. Unfortunately, you can only shave these little guys every 3 years because their fur grows so slow and when you do shave them you only get 1/2 a kilo per vicuña. Needless to say, clothes made from vicuña fur are crazy expensive. We also saw some alpacas and llamas. Llamas are the biggest of the three animals. Fun fact: Alpaca meat does not contain any cholesterol and I dare say it tastes just as good as (or even better than) beef. So if you have high cholesterol, consider switching meats!

Our next stop was el Parqueo de Piruña/Bosque de Piedras - Forest of Rocks. Here we encountered enormous volcanic rocks that have been shaped by wind erosion over the years. Climbing down and around them was incredible and exhausting!

Bosque de Piedras

Arte Rupestre

Next we found our way to la Cueva Sumbay - The Sumbay Cave. We got a flat tire on the trail so we ended up walking alongside some railroad tracks for over a mile until we reached the cave while our bus driver changed the flat. Aren't adventures fun? In the cave we encountered over 480 paintings called 'arte rupestre'. This art is more than 6,000 years old. Outside the cave was a pretty little stream and lots of rocks to climb and take pictures on top of. Nature is a jungle gym sometimes : )

After this we made our way to a city called Cabanaconde to stay the night. It is INSIDE the canyon. A surprisingly large number of about 100,000 people reside there. We stayed in a beautiful and quaint hotel called Hotel Kuntur Wasi. We had a phenomenal dinner saturday night and breakfast sunday morning before departing to take in the sights of the canyon.

I cannot describe how incredible the canyon was. Words nor pictures do its beauty justice. We were fortunate to see many condores (big vulture type birds) soaring through the sky. They are beautiful and graceful in flight. We had a time of singing and devotional on one of the look out decks and spent over an hour hiking through the canyon looking at different plants and flowers and taking photos of the spectacular sight all around us. Afterwards we went back to a little town called Chivay for lunch before departing for home.

Cañon de Colca - Waaaay bigger than the Grand Canyon

I hope you've enjoyed going on this tour with me. Many more to come...