I was told Arequipa is the 2nd biggest city in Peru after Lima so I expected at the very least a decent sized city. I mostly stayed in the center and didn’t get to see the outskirts but it reminded me of Cusco, with a beautiful plaza in the center and a very safe place to walk around alone.
The activity to do there is a hike in the colca canyon, the 2nd deepest canyon in the world. The 2 day trek started with a view point along the way to see condors flying above before the full day trek into the bottom of the canyon. It was all downhill and made for an easy but long first day. Along the way, the trail gives beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and active volcanoes, one of them even had smoke coming out. A good night’s sleep was well needed for the next day’s hike back up. The trail is much more direct going up and with an early start to the day, I was able to hike while enjoying the sunrise.
At the top, I came across some friends I had met on the bus to Arequipa from Cusco. They wanted to hike up one of the volcanoes, the highest one specifically, which was just above 6000m or 20 000ft. I was planning to do a hike up a volcano as well and decided to join them for this exciting adventure. The problem, which at the time seemed like a good idea because I was full of adrenaline from the hike up the canyon, was that they were leaving that night at 10pm for a 3hr ride to the start of the trail…we were going to start the hike at 1am! We were also joined by a German girl who they had met previously. We invited others, who were smart enough to say we were crazy and refused to join in. Normally, this hike is done in 2 days but the 2 Americans and the German had a bus to catch so we did it in 1 day, hence the late, or early, start in the middle of the night.
Since the volcano is so high, we were nicely equipped with many layers, ski gloves, snow pants and the most exciting, crampons and an ice pick. I got quite a few looks and smiles walking down city streets with an ice pick in hand! Running on no sleep, we started the adventure with a very very quiet ride to the start of the trail and the hiking began at 5000m in the pitch black, the only light coming from our head lamps. Nine hours of dreadful uphill hiking later, we finally arrived to the top, cold, hungry, exhausted but so happy and relieved. This resulted in an interesting hike down, especially the last part where we hike among lots of big rocks. We were so over exhausted that we started hallucinating and seeing things among the rocks including houses, faces and Shrek?!?! Yet, we decided not to go straight to bed once back in the city. Our last “meal” was some bread and tea for breakfast at 3am so we were more desperate for food. After a shared roast chicken, an ice cream, tacos, another ice cream and a pizza later, we were finally hitting the sack at 11pm meaning we had stayed awake for about 42hrs with 2 hikes under our belts.
We were the talk of the town back at the hostel. Apparently everybody had heard about these crazy Americans, German and Canadian hiking up a volcano on no sleep after having hiked the colca canyon. We came to a consensus that it was a dumb idea but so worth it even though we do not recommend anyone doing what we did.
I took a much needed day of rest in Arequipa before thankfully heading to nice warm places for a few days.