Aeraquipa, Peru

The next day in Aeraquipa was Good Friday. We switched to a nicer place:

They aren't allowed to sell alcohol in stores during Holy Week. But, everyone has the whole week off and tons of people come home for the week. They do sell alcohol laced punch/tea on the street though and everyone in the city is on the street eating, drinking, and watching processions. It was pretty cool.





I think Naomi was still a little disgusted by the bed bugs at the first place.


We signed up for a trek to Colca Canyon. It is the 2nd deepest canyon in the world. We had to leave at about 5am to make the LONG drive to the canyon area. There was snow on one of the passes on the way there. I think it was about 15,000 feet here:

We finally made it to the canyon area:






and stopped for a while to check out some condors.



Then we drove quite a bit while longer to get to Cabanaconde:

From there we started our trek down to the bottom of the canyon.

There were some goats hanging out by the rim.

These donkeys have a hard job:

There are towns on the other side of the canyon and at the bottom. The only way to get to these towns is to walk up and down the canyon, or ride a donkey.

The first day of the trek we walked down to the bottom and stayed at a town on the edge of the river.

It is pretty steep, but going down wasn't too bad really.


Our accommodations were really pretty nice. We had our own little cabin and we had some pretty good food cooked for us. It was much, much nicer than any of us on our trek expected.




The next day was pretty much walking down the canyon all day.



We stopped at a couple little towns.



One had a museum with some traditional costume stuff you could put on and look like a dumbass.


Then we made it to the little town we were staying at the second night.






It was ridiculous. Even though they have to pack everything down on donkeys, every place you can stay has swimming pools.




It was WAY nicer there than we expected; a super, super nice place and we had our own hut. And they sold cold beer for not all that unreasonable prices. Crazy.


We hung out and played games with our people on our trek. Then the next day we had to get up and leave at 5am so you can get up the canyon before it gets too hot.

It is pretty damn steep and fairly far.






But we made it! You could ride a donkey up for like $15, but those donkeys have a hard enough job without hauling me up the hill.


Our guide was super tough. She wasn't even tired:


We had breakfast in Cabanaconde and then headed back to Chivay to have lunch.

Lunch was shockingly good. There were just a ton of things in a buffet at the restaurant we went to.

After lunch we went to a hot springs. The hottest pool was super hot. Pretty much too hot to be in for more than about 60 seconds at a time.

On our way back to Aeraquipa, we stopped to check out a big herd of alpacas and llamas that were hanging out by the road.



We made it back to Aeraquipa and were tired.

If you're ever near Aeraquipa, you should really do the Colca Canyon trek, it is great, and super worth the cost and the effort.


Movie review:

Hurt Locker: 6
Best picture? Really? It is a movie that people should probably see. It probably gets across how hard it is to be over in Iraq. But, it isn't a superb movie. Some of the parts seem pretty unrealistic and stupid.

District 9: 8.5
Way better than the Hurt Locker. It is super stressful to watch and I'm not sure I would want to see it again anytime soon because of that, but it is pretty high quality.

Roof pumpkins: