Moving on to Peru where we did Colca Canyon and the Salkantay trek.
At the end of 2021, we found cheap flights to Peru for early 2022, around 400 euros round trip from Europe. Couldn’t resist that, so of course we bought them.
The only problem… we booked them at the end of the rainy season, thinking maybe we’d get lucky. Turns out, kind of a mediocre mistake. I would not recommend going to Peru during the rainy season. Anyway, here’s a quick look back at that trip, along with some photos.
Colca Canyon
We had three weeks in Peru, and the plan was simple. Do some hiking, maybe see a bit of the jungle and just experience as much of the country as possible. It was my first time in South America, so I was genuinely excited.
We started with Colca Canyon, which is a classic three-day hike. First day you descend into the canyon, second day you stay down there, and on the third day you climb back up. Pretty straightforward. So I thought, yeah, let’s go for it. This should be fun.
You usually get driven to the starting point of the hike, but to get there you have to cross roads that go above 5,000 meters, around 16,500 feet which is kind of crazy. When we stopped, some people were already feeling it. A few were vomiting, including my friends. At some point I even started feeling sick just from watching them feel sick. So yeah… great start.
But at the same time, you could already see these massive condors flying through the canyon. Just gliding through the valley, huge wings, looking unreal. That part was actually amazing. And yeah, that’s how the trip started. Then we began the descent into the canyon.
We weren’t carrying a tent, so we stayed in these small huts along the way. Since this was just after COVID and tourism was still low, there were very few people around which actually made it nice to see others staying there as well.
The huts were basic. Electricity only for a few hours a day. And inside… there were some kind of scorpions or spiders or something similar running around. So you just close your eyes, don’t think too much about it and try not to sleep with your mouth open. Bad your you, mouth breathers.
And yeah, I made the mistake of ordering salchipapas. For those who don’t know, it’s basically sausage and fries… but the worst version of it. The sausage is questionable, the fries are just cut and deep fried with almost no seasoning, and it just doesn’t look or taste good. So yeah, I’m officially anti-salchipapa.
We did survive, but hmm… don’t just trust every black dotted line on the map in Peru. Try to stick to actual routes, because you can very easily end up somewhere you really don’t want to be, like the edge of a cliff.
And yeah, bring proper trail runners. You want grip. Not just basic running shoes or sneakers!!!
Salkantay Trek
Of course, how would we go to Peru and not see Machu Picchu. But we didn’t want to just take the easy route. We wanted to make something out of it, turn it into a bit of an adventure. You know, the classic “it’s about the journey, not the destination.”
So naturally, the plan was to hike the Inca Trail. But it was closed for maintenance at the end of February, so that option was gone.
That left us with another route that you can do without a guide, which made it way more interesting for us. And since it was still just after COVID, there were barely any people around. Over the four days we were hiking there, we saw maybe five other hikers in total, and three of them were us.
So off we went. Since there were very limited amenities along the way, we had to keep it simple. Eat whatever we could find and sleep wherever we could.
It was funny seeing these places that were clearly built to host 100, 150, maybe even 200 people… and there were only five of us in total. So naturally, we just stayed inside, made ourselves comfortable, and did a bit of food swapping to get better meals. The goal was simple, just eat as much as possible whenever we had the chance.
That was the reality of it.
The rain
We had a few really rough, rainy days on the Salkantay trek. Days where you’re hiking and you just can’t see anything, completely drenched. On one of those days, we just wanted to hide. We found this small shed and went inside, cold and hungry because we were always a bit low on food. The places along the way only had some bars or chocolate, nothing that really fills you up.
Then out of nowhere, a shepherd showed up. We asked him if he could make us something and he cooked us rice with eggs, added some salt and pepper and brought us hot tea. Just a simple meal but in that moment it felt incredible.
Honestly, that was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. And it kind of shows what traveling does to you. You start appreciating things you normally wouldn’t even think about.
Machu Picchu
Up to that point on the Salkantay trek, it was just a few of us out there. We got hit with rain, got properly soaked and then to make it even better, we got absolutely destroyed by some bugs. I don’t even know what they were but they know what they were doing.
And then the last part… you’re basically walking next to this raging river, following what feels like a railroad track. It’s a bit sketchy, a bit exciting, a little bit scary at times. But yeah, that’s kind of what makes it good. It all just adds to the experience.
Machu Picchu itself was absolutely packed, even at the tail end of COVID. That kind of tells you everything about how busy it gets in a normal season. Not really my thing.
But the way we got there, that was the fun part. That’s what made it worth it.
This trip was mainly about hiking, but at the same time, I used it as preparation for the Pacific Crest Trail which I started about a month after finishing this. It was a good way to get my legs ready and, at least mentally, start understanding what I was getting myself into.