Around Peru in 7 Days: Arequipa, Puno, and Rainbow Mtn
“Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” -Benjamin Disraeli
Finishing Strong
I have but a few precious weeks left in South America. In July I head back to US for a short break between continents. I’m trying not to think about it. I don’t want to leave. There are still so many things I want to do, and things I haven’t yet seen.
This deadline has put me in traveling overdrive.
I’m fighting my personal tendencies to exhaust myself. This is supposed to be a break, a travel sabbatical. Not full time tourist employment. But with my pending continental departure edging closer I can’t help but approach it like a job. More than once I’ve had to tell myself to CALM THE F DOWN. I can’t see everything. It’s better to enjoy the places I visit rather than jet set from place to place, trek to trek, exhausting myself along the way. Over activity is my natural Cassie tendency. Fit in all in. Catch up on sleep later at a time that never comes.
I’m trying to land somewhere in the middle. At one point I really wanted to add a last minute excursion to Bolivia to see the salt flats. But damn, I’d be cutting it close on time. Also I’d need a visa. This is a hassle. I decided this is too much. No Bolivia.
Also, I might still change my mind.
In the meantime, here’s what I was able to fit into a mere week of travel. Hear that, a mere WEEK!
Arequipa
Arequipa is Peru’s second largest city. It’s south of Lima, but inland. I can’t say I saw all the city has to offer. I spent several nights walking around the Plaza de Armas and the historical district, but that’s about it.
I’m here to trek Colca Canyon.
In addition to over-packing my schedule, I also have a tendency to over-research. I can spend hours looking up hostels, tour groups, destinations, etc, reading reviews and looking for the perfect deal. I like full information before making a commitment. In traveling and life this is a tiring trait. I’m trying to be better at making quick decisions, and I tested this with Colca Canyon. I found a tour company for a 3 day trek. The price seemed ok, and I booked it without looking back.
Gambles don’t always pay off. I thought my tour was cheap but I actually overpaid. And the company wasn’t the greatest. If I had done my research I also probably would have booked a 2 day tour, as it would have covered the same trekking route but with fewer breaks. The 3 day trek was beautiful, but slow. We trekked about 3 hours a day and had a lot of rest time. This is not my how I like to roll. But, you know what? Maybe the downtime isn’t so bad. I could use more practice doing nothing.
Colca Canyon: Fits and Starts
I don’t want to be a negative nelly, so I’m starting with the positives. The trek and the canyon were stunning. I had a great local tour guide with an interesting life story. The weather was perfect. Also, while the tour was slow and uneventful at times, the last day started with an early morning, 3 hour hike ascending 1,000 meters. Covering this height in such short amount of time was a personal record for me. I also did it at altitude (over 3,000 meters) which is another notable feat as well as good practice for future treks.
So there, it wasn’t all bad.
Now the not so great. The tour company I chose was super disorganized. The tour guide showed up 30 minutes early to pick me up. I was told to be ready at 3:30am, and they showed up just after 3am. I don’t know about you, but when I have to be ready in the middle of the night in vampire happy hour, I don’t get ready extra early ‘just in case’. No….I was set to be ready at exactly 3:29 am. Luckily I was awake when they arrived. I moved my butt and got ready in 8 minutes flat. I thought I did well, but the guide was clearly not happy.
Whatever. They let me in the van.
From my hotel, we began the 3 hour drive to the Canyon. Thirty minutes in, the van pulled over on the side of a highway and I was told to get out and switch to another van parked on the shoulder in front of us. No real explanation. Awesome. Then at breakfast I learned I was eating with a group of people who were only on a one day tour. After questioning my ‘new’ tour guide I found out I needed to switch vans again later in the day to join my actual tour. Again, no explanation. No feigned surprise when I brought this up. Nope. Just – oh yeah you’ll need to join a different van again later.
Thanks for telling me the plan, guys.
I spent a few hours with the one-day tour, before getting dropped off at a campsite with several other trekkers and told to find my guide James. Except it was actually David. James was running the 2-day trekking tour. David was guide for the 3-day.
So yeah, not off to the best of starts. I felt like I was in some kind of escape room trekking experience. I needed to follow the clues to make sure I got on the right tour before time ran up and they left without me.
Hiking the Canyon
David, it turns out, was a great guide. He grew up near the Canyon. His father is a local Shaman so David knew all about the indigenous plant fauna. When David was 18, he started working at the local mine as this was the main career opportunity available in a rural canyon in Peru. Mining is hard work, and so he saw a lot of people get hurt and/or killed. After he started seeing negative effects on his own health he decided he needed a different career path. He left home for Arequipa and enrolled in school to learn English and become a tour guide. By now he was in his mid 20’s. He’d never left home before, had never been to a big city, and had heard very little spoken English. He showed up to the ‘big’ city of Arequipa wearing repurposed rubber tires for shoes.
Fast forward a few years. He learned the language of tourists, got a degree in tourism, and had a new career giving tours of the Canyon.
Hearing a story like this makes you realize what you take for granted. Like the availability of choices. I’m so lucky to have choices in life. I may feel confused and at times overwhelmed by the choice of how best to earn a living, but at least I have the luxury of that choice. Not everyone is so lucky. For some people, the only options are mining or farming. And if you have real gumption and commitment, tour guiding.
I really admire David’s ability to find a path to a better life for himself and work hard to get it.
There were 11 of us in the tour group. Everyone was friendly. But…I have to say it wasn’t the most social of groups. It was mostly couples and mostly (7 of 11) French speaking. That left me, a german couple and an anti-social American who told me he preferred to hike fast and alone. Ok, bud. The germans were lovely and I liked talking to them. But there was a lot of self-entertainment time. I much prefer making new friends and sharing the experience. Sometimes there just isn’t the opportunity. Such is life.
Overall it wasn’t my favorite hike. But it was pretty and relaxing. I probably needed that.
Puno
Next top after Arequipa…Puno. Puno sits on Lake Titicaca, the highest altitude navigable lake in the world. The lake’s elevation is 3,800 meters and it spans between Peru and Bolivia. Puno is the city on the Peruvian side. Copacabana….the Bolivian side.
To get to Puno, I took an overnight bus from Arequipa, spent one night in a hostel in Puno, took a full day tour of the lake the next day, and then another overnight bus that evening to Cusco.
Like I said, I’m trying to fit a lot in.
This plan worked out ok. Puno is agreeable enough, but there isn’t much to see or do besides visit the lake. My first day here, I walked to the Plaza de Armas (there’s always one of these), and followed signs to a look out point without really knowing where I was going. Sometimes I like a spontaneous adventure. It turns out the look out point is a giant metal condor statue atop of a mountainous hill. It’s so very….random. Which I like. Also, no one was up there, which was also great. I had the awkwardly, but interestingly unique metal bird and the view all to myself.
The negative is that its atop of ANOTHER DAMN HILL. My legs are tired of climbing hills. Furthermore, I missed the sign pointing to a conveniently placed set of man made stairs. At the direction of a local, I climbed up a steep hillside to see this metal peruvian chicken, completely missing the staircase 100 feet to my right. Whoops.
Given that a steep climb to a metal bird statue is the highlight of city sights in Puno, you can see why one day is plenty.
Lake Titicaca
The next day I toured Lake Titicaca. My tour made two stops. The first stop was to the famous Uros floating islands. The second is to the firmly grounded island of Taquile.
What exactly is a floating island, you may be asking. Well, it’s a man-made island made entirely out of reeds. Local indigenous people cut squares of mud out of reed roots to build a base. They anchor and tie these mud blocks together, which float due to the release of CO2 by the root system. On top of this, local add cut reed stems, and build reed houses and other structures.
The practice started with the indigenous people first building boats out of reeds to fish on the lake. This then progressed to houses on boats, which progressed to entire small islands. Uros consists of a few dozen islands. Each island lasts about 25 years before needing to be rebuilt and is home to a handful of families.
It’s strangely interesting.
Right now, the main economy of these islands is tourism. It’s super touristy. I don’t normally like this kind of thing, but in this case I did. I’ve simply never seen anything like it. Walking on the island was what I would imagine walking on quicksand feels like. It’s not completely solid, but it’s can hold your weight with some sinkage. So. Weird.
The second island, Taquile, was a more traditional stop at a more traditional island made of firmly planed dirt. It included lunch, and a view of the Bolivian side of the lake.
I liked the tour. I was entertained, and felt satisfied that I saw what I came to see in Puno.
Time another night bus.
Cusco and Rainbow Mountain
Similar to many other tourists and travelers, I came to Cusco in search of Machu Picchu. I’m scheduled to trek the Salkantay in late June. But before doing that, the other site I came to see is Rainbow mountain, or the mountain of seven colors (la montaña de siete colores) in Spanish. It’s an Instagram-friendly mountain that has become a popular destination in recent years.
If so Insta-worthy, then why only recently popular? Well the mountain is covered with snow most of the time. But thanks to global warming, the snow has largely melted in recent years making the colors more visible. See! Environmental pollution isn’t just melting icebergs and destroying our planet, it’s also creating new tourist opportunities!
Aside from the social media benefits, the other feat I get to achieve with this hike is reaching my highest elevation. Rainbow mountain is at 5,200 meters, or over 17,000 feet. Before this trek, my personal best elevation was hiking through the Punta Union Pass at 4,750 meters on the Santa Cruz trail earlier this month.
I went into this hike feeling strong and positive. The month of June I’m doing a full-on Peruvian trekking training program. Rainbow Mountain is a one day hike. The typical route is 6 km out and back. I added a return hike through the Red Valley which adds some distance, but it still caps out at 17 km. I thought – only one day?! I’ve got this in the bag!
Confidence of this kind is destined to be reality checked by nature.
Holy moly, 5,200 meters is high! And so. Damn. Hard. To breathe. I thought I would do ok having been hiking in high altitude for the last several weeks. On Rainbow Mountain I learned there is a big difference between 4,750 and 5,200 meters. It didn’t take more than 20 steps for me to run out of breath at that altitude. But you know what – I still finished!
The only negative of this experience was realizing how crowded the mountain gets. The pictures I’ve seen show people atop a mostly vacant mountain with clear views. This is not the case. The views were spectacular, but I shared them with several dozen other tourists, as well as a handful of locals and a few baby alpacas there for pictures and good measure. The tour guides give their group members color coded walking sticks so they can recognize their specific hikers in the hoard. But, hey. More people means we can take each others’ pictures. Sure, it was crowded, but I wasn’t stuck with a day of selfies. So I don’t mind!
The Red Valley
My big surprise and the real highlight was the trek back through the Red Valley. I didn’t know much about this area going into the hike, so I benefited from not having expectations or pre-conceived notions. I also got to enjoy the hike largely by myself. The crowds don’t take this route, and I was the only one in my hiking group who researched enough to add it. So I got to do the entire hike with just me and one of the guides. For just $10 extra! Best bargain yet in South America!
I loved this hike. We started at 5,200 meters and descended to 4,300 meters over the course of 3 hours. The snow melted, and my guide and I walked largely alone amongst fiery red mountains, gleaming green pastures, azure skies and the occasional llama/alpaca farm. Scenery wise, this was one of my favorite hikes ever. This was one of the days where I counted my lucky stars that I made the decision to quit my job, leave my office behind for several months and travel. What a beautiful day.
I can’t wait to see what else Peru has to offer. My next stop is the Salkantay trek, and Machu Picchu.
