Whole inside the earth - Colca Canyon.

Colca Canyon

From Arequipa we wanted to see "the whole inside the earth" - Colca Canyon, which is promoted to be the deepest canyon in the world. And it is apparently twice deeper than Grand Canyon in USA.


Hiking inside the canyon is a cool activity since it is reverse mountain hike. First you have to hike down the hill and afterwards you have to hike down the hill.

Unfortunately, the day before I met Malgosia and Maciek, they had gone for a day trip to a desert, where unfortunately Maciek sun-burned quite sever his feat, so we decided to split for two days. Me and Malgosia went to hike the Canyon and Maciek stayed additional days in Arequoipa.

At the bottom of the Canyon with my sister.

Early in the morning we departure down the hill. This was basically the first hike for my sister in Peru and the first serious hike in quite some time. The landscapes and the canyon was beautiful. Magic whole is huge and at the bottom there is a running river. We rested and enjoyed our time a bit at the bottom of canyon, but we did not stay there too long, since the plan was to hike back outside the canyon the same day, and the way back was seriously challenging for me as well as for my sister. My sister was not adjusted to the altitude, so she had some high altitude challenges. Do you remember that I wrote that I really liked Chicha the day before in Arequipa? In deed it was delicious, but caused huge diarrhoea... and made all the Colca Canyon experience much more challenging.

We walked up the canyon but much slower than I expected. The dusk was coming and my sister started to complain that she would not manage to the top. And then suddenly we were overtaken by the local guy on the donkey, who had a spear donkey and he offered a lift to my sister!!! This was great coincident. She jumped in and I speed up. I was not able to catch up with the donkey speed. When it was seriously getting dark and I got very weak, mostly because of diarrhea, a small group of locals was overtaking me. One guy did not wanted to leave me on the track on my own, so he motivated me to keep up with them. So for the last half an hour I tried to keep up with them, which allowed me to get out from the canyon much faster. My sister, that enjoyed a lot the ride on the donkey was waiting for me up there and together, already in the night we finished our hike to the village.

This was very exhaustion one day hike for me as well as for my sister. But a very beautiful and rewarding one.