Almost time to go home...

But before I end my wonderful time in the traveling world, I still have a few days to kill...In a few hours I will be hopping on a bus to get to Lima, which I´m sure will be my last long overnight bus ride for awhile...I still have time to wander around the streets of Arequipa for a little bit longer.

Over the weekend we went to Colca Canyon, which is supposed to be twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. I guess they can call it that deep because it is surrounded by 14,000 foot Andean mountains! We opted to skip the tour and do it ourselves, knowing that we´d like to be on our own time schedules instead of a group of strangers. I´m glad we did it that way. Although we didn´t have much time there, we did a great hike down to the bottom of the canyon and back up in one day. Whew, was it steep!!! On the way down we really mosied along, walking slow because it was pretty slippery and steep-and even then I still took a digger :) At the bottom was a nice oasis with pools and we just relaxed. Funny enough, we were a little quicker hiking back up the steepness then hiking down! The town of Cabanaconde was really nice...A quaint little village made of rocks and giant stones held together by mud, with some of the nicest Peruvians we have encountered. The area was really beautiful, and if we´d had more time it would´ve been nice to spend a few days trekking through the canyon. Maybe next time...