Just had a massage in Arequipa, really won´t recommend it. Have been back from my Colca Canyon trek and has had two days of Spanish class already. Ok, hehe, lotsa to update. First, let me start from last Thursday when I booked my Colca Canyon 3-day trekking tour. I booked with Zarate Expeditions, which is owned by this 83 year-old mountaineer who has been guiding mountain climbing tours to Misti and Chachani (6,000M peaks nearby) for like 50 years and is supposed to be the oldest mountain guide still working on Earth. He charged me USD60 for my 3-day trekking when I consciously knew that the agency across the street was charging 45. Anyhow, this stout lil´ old man (not even 5 foot tall) seemed really nice n sweet so it´s ok I was ripped off. But the truth is it doesn´t matter which agency you book with, you often end up with another one cuz´ all the travelers are pooled and in my group, everybody paid different prices for the same thing. ah well. So I was told I wud be picked up at 5am on Friday, ended up the taxi didn´t come until 6am to take me to the public bus station where I met up with the other group members. There were 5 of us in total, an Australian couple (Sam and Jason) who are traveling Europe and South America after having worked in London for many years, a 20-year old Danish boy (Morten) who has worked night-shift in a furniture factory for 8 months and just saved enuf money for him to travel the whole world for a year, and a French girl from Breast (some town in Brittany of France supposedly) by the name of Claire who´s traveling in Peru for 6 weeks while doing 3 weeks of volunteer work here in Arequipa.

We boarded 630am public bus which took us to Chivay in 4 hours, then hopped onto another bus which took us to Cabanaconde in 2 hours, a small town which was the starting and ending point of our hike. The hike started with wide flat terrain overlooking a lil´ snowy peak called Apple? where the indigenous people apparently go each year to worship God. Then the trail in the canyon started to take form and we descended for about 4 hours on this slippery rocky road which took us to our first night of stay, San Juan de Chucco. Shaky legs and improper shoes (i intelligently didn´t wear my hiking boots!) triggered a minor injury where I slipped and landed on my back - luckily my lovely pink Lafuma backpack was long enough to cushion my lil´ ass while my abs shielded my camera, rendering only an injury of merely 1 mm in diameter in my left palm. In my recollection, San Juan de Chucco is probably the nicest lodge I´ve ever stayed on a trek ever. It felt so serene and clean! Took a cold shower and strolled about barefoot until the sun went home. Next day we got up at 730am and started hiking around 830am. Terrain was fairly mild on the second day, some flat, some uphill, then downhill for the last hour or so because our destination was an Oasis in the middle of the barren mountains, which had a huge swimming pool! It was great! Sunbathed for several hours until again, the sun went away... Since we were at the bottom of the valley on the second day, it meant that we have to make our way back up, and quite a long way.. back to Cabanaconde on the last day. There were several other groups that had to do the ascension hike on the same second day, which is basically a 3-hour non-stop uphill hike of 1,200M (from 2,200 to 3,400M in Cabanaconde). I´m so grateful my group had an alternative itinerary of doing it at 3am the next morning, which, although sounds horrible (having to wake up at 230am), but really was miles better! So we had dinner at 6pm and at 720pm, we were all tucked into bed together in one big round hut thingy (that actually had great comfy warm beds). At 730pm, Jason discovered static electricity by rubbing his hands on the mattress in darkness, and for like 30 minutes, he and his girlfriend would not stop trying to make a video out of him running his legs on his mattress, and of coz, to no avail, since any light (from the v-camera) wud just kill the sight of any electricity. I fell asleep around 9pm, so had a good 5 hour of deep sleep with the sound of running creeks right next to me. And we started hiking at 3am in pitch darkness. We had our headlights so it was fine. In fact it was great, cuz´ we got to stop every now and then to stargaze! The first 45 minutes was grueling, I was panting my lungs out and had to consciously tell my legs to lift like a baby learning to walk. After the first hour or so, my mind sorta stopped spinning futile thoughts and my body just took over my soul and I was marching like a machine. So I got to the top around 6am, just when the sun woke up from its sleep and greeted me with a gentle ray of gold. Sun rays painted the rolling terraces at the top with a sheen of yellowish gold. In awe of the beauty I was surrounded in, I put on my fleece jacket and gloves and took a few shots with my camera. The day then kicked off with a full course breakfast, followed by busing over to La Cruz del Condor (a higher point of the canyon) where we watched huge condors (a kind of big birds) in white and brown colors swirl right over our heads with the backdrop of the Colca Canyon, which is apparently twice as big as the Grand Canyon. To my naked eye, it looked, DEEP. So that was the trek. Highly recommend.

Joined my host family on the night I returned and I have this room in the backyard of their house which renders great sunlight in the morning, so so precious as hostals are rarely bright and lighting makes SO much difference. There was hot shower on the first day but this morning my luck was out, no hot shower because thermal wasn´t on or something so resorted to duching with a bucket of warm water. Spanish class is fun. You can´t believe this! I ran into Rebeka, the girl I met in La Paz!! in the very beginning! It´s so incredible because I tried to write her last week, suspecting with my intuition that I could see her and Jewels again in Peru, but then because I´ve lost my notepad (where I have recorded everyones emails) in Bolivia, I didn´t recall her email off the top of my head properly and the email was bounced back! So there she was, in the Spanish school on Monday! So we´ve been hanging out since and are in the same class together. Our teacher, Alan, is a 21-year old Peruvian university student of literature and an aspiring novelist who loves Edgar Allan Poe. He´s great. Went out drinking last night with some girls I met on the Colca trek - my first time partying/´po-ing´ since my travels in South America. Had multiple glasses of Pisco Sour (a popular Peruvian drink made with Pisco, lemon juice, sugar and egg white), which is incredibly yummy but really actually quite strong..

Will return to host family for dinner (get two free meals per diem with my stay) and catch up on my readings. Finally got a hold of the book, Che Guavarra´s motorcycle journals in South America last week, am enjoying it!