Nice early start to get on the bus to venture to Colca Canyon. We are returning to the same hostel in Arequipa so we only took a single overnight bag with us.
As we will be reaching our highest altitude today we stopped off at a coco leaf shop. I brought some leaves and candies and looked forward to trying the tea. Just in case I did take anti altitude tablets to be safe as well, been pretty stressed about how I will react in altitude so today was a big test as we are going higher than Cusco, in which I am there a week!
With the coca leaves in anything I would now fail a drugs test for 9 days lol we didn’t try the leaves yet but there will be time for that in Cusco. The mint sweets I brought are OK and when we stopped along the way we tired Andean Tea, which has coca leaves in as well as other herbs too. I actually quite liked it!
After this pit stop we continued through the national park and saw plenty of Alpacas and llamas. We got the chance to stop and have photos as well!
I didn’t dare touch them with being allergic to wool in case but some of them clearly didn’t want to be touched so worked out anyhow!
We then continued to our highest altitude yet of 4910m! This is higher than Cusco as mentioned but with the help of the tablets and coco leaves I was ok. Yes feel abit breathless but able to walk around fine. I felt abit like a rush of adenine where your legs feel alittle shakey but you get through it. The relief to not be sick was huge!
We then arrived in Colca Canyon and to our hostel, which was really nice! Altitude After a short break we got our swimming things ready and it was time to head for the hot springs!
To get to the hot springs we had to cross this bridge! It had bits of wood missing or weirdly placed and I didn’t think I was scared of heights or things like this but I was very mistaken. It even wobbled abit, I clearly did manage to get over but it took some coaching from Brad on the way there and Taylor on the way back. For me this was on pare with the dune buggies in terms of fear!
Loved the hot springs as you would expect we stayed 1.5 hours before going back to our hotel.
Colca Canyon is the same altitude as Cusco at 3400m, I decided not to drink but had a coco tea instead as it doesn’t have caffeine in. Had a terrible night sleep but found others did too so was more likey the altitude, let’s hope it doesn’t keep affected me when we arrive in Cusco, I will need my sleep lol
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