Viaje-Arequipa

We arrived in Arequipa around 1 on Tuesday and were  taken to the hotel by my brothers friend Carlos.  There we were given extremely cheap rooms as my brother knows the owner.  The hotel  where we are staying at is very nice and in a cute part of the center.  The first day we walked around, got lunch, and checked out all the local stores.  We returned to the hotel and made the reservations for our tour to the Colca the next day.  That night around 9 we went out with my brother and his four girlfriends to do some leisure drinking.  We ended up coming around 230 back to the hostel and left for the Colca around 3am.  It was a horrible idea to get there so late as we were extremely tired for our hike.  We arrived at Chivay, the start-off point for the Colca hike, around 5 hours later.  We began hiking around 9 and ended up at the cabins around 7 hours later.  In total the first day we hiked 15 kilometers and descended over one kilometer in elevation.  We had dinner around 7 and fell asleep moments later, waking up around 430 in the morning to begin the final ascent.  We did a straight one kilometer ascent to the top, I finished the climb in around an hour and a half, pretty record time for me since it was 9 kilometers.  We stayed some time in Cabanaconde having breakfast and then began the seven hour drive back to Arequipa, which turned out to be nine hours since the streets were destroyed from mud slides the night before.  We arrived back around 6pm the most tired ever.  Overall the Colca was the most beautiful place I have ever been.  I've officially now been to the deepest canyon in the world.