Backtracking...

I promised I would write about the Colca Canyon tour, and that is exactly what I intend to do. It was bus madness. I think that might be the best way to describe it. The entire thing was done from a bus with only a little bit of actual hiking in between. It started around 7:30 in the morning when the bus made its rounds to pick people up. Nothing interesting there, we just got on the bus and picked people up, bought a coca drink and went on our merry way.

With one exception, they almost forgot me (and 2 Irish guys) at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Emily had to get our tour guide to stop the bus so that we could all get back on. Remember the ¨where´s Olive?¨scene from Little Miss Sunshine, it was a bit like that.

Back on the bus and things are going well. We are going up to the mountains, to the peaks of the mountains, I can touch the clouds at this point. I can understand how the Incans thought the mountains were gods. The higher we climb the closer we come to snow capped peaks and the bottoms of mountains, something truly beautiful. We get up to a snow capped peak and the air is so thin Emily and I can hardly breathe. My chest feels tight and my heart is racing but I was able to get out and walk around. Emily was not =(

We get back down to the little town we are staying at for the night and proceed to have the most random stops ever, apparently everyone on the bus is staying at a different hostel and the bus is dropping us all off then picking us all up in 15 minutes for some awesome hot spring action. Which Emily and I don´t participate in. No swimsuits, no swimming. We instead walked around some ruins and went to the hot springs museum. At this point, we all felt like the geeky kids.

The bus picks us up and takes us back to our hostels to get ready for dinner and it´s the same thing over again, pick up, drop off, etc. Dinner was ok, way too toursity for my liking, but that is what happens when you get landed on a tour. I have video of the traditional dancing that was going on. It was interesting to say the least.

We go back to our hostel (which was AWESOME, it looked like a cheap motel room) and slept for the short night until it was time (5AM) to get back on the bus and get ready for the canyon tour.
The canyon was amazing, amazingly beautiful. Words can´t describe the sense of peace I felt while I was just sitting and staring into the cracks in the rocks. But for some reason peace led into intrigue and from the darkest corners of my mind I kept thinking about suicide and people jumping off the cliff. Maybe it was because of the mummy exhibit we saw before, but sitting on top of those rocks, all I could think about was jumping. (don´t worry, I´m not actually going to jump, just a morbid thought) The canyon was amazing, I have pictures but they do not do justice at all.

After our time canyon watching and bird hunting we got on the bus and headed back to Arequepia, which is nothing worth writing about.

But now we are in Puno, it´s been good times so far.