Alright, so this one has been a long time coming... Obviously Acacia and I have been seriously slacking (you might say completely slacked since about October of last year) on the blogs.
The bus ride was maybe the worst one yet. It's not like we had many options, because there seemed to be only one general time frame that buses left for Cotahuasi, and that was a couple days a week leaving around 5pm. At the bus station, I did some haggling to find the cheapest ticket, which was about 20 bucks for a 10 hour bus ride. We had the very back seats, so they didn't lean back, and they bounced extra along a windy, gravel, washboarded, mountain road that went straight through the night. Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep. Once we arrived at about 4am in Cotahuasi, we sat on the side of the road as the one shuttle van in town shuttled all luggage carrying people (which included us since we now had 3 backpacks between the two of us after selling Alejandro and throwing all the contents of the car into packs) from the bus to the center of town in about 6 trips. Just before sunrise, we got to bed at a hotel and crashed for a much needed few hours of sleep.
We woke up to this amazing valley that we were in! Rooftop deck at the hotel had amazing views, and I think I speak for both of us when I say that we were incredibly stoked to explore the area! The first step was to find some information about the valley. There was a little tourist office in town that was open for a couple of hours spread out throughout the day. We walked by it several times as we checked out the rest of Cotahuasi, which was about 3 blocks in all directions, and saw the church, several street meat stands in the form of stir-fried intestines and potatoes, and a restaurant serving local trout ceviche. When we finally saw the door to the tourist information place open, it was a pleasant surprise when the lady working there wanted to practice her English telling us about the area. She wrote down the bus schedule for us, which was critical because most buses went a couple times per week from Cotahuasi to even smaller villages scattered throughout the valley, so in order to see more than a couple of the towns and accompanying hikes we had to really plan out the timing of the buses. Rather unpleasantly, she also informed us that she had only ever heard of one group of people who hiked from the valley to get to Cuzco, and was pretty sure it would take us at least 2-3 days. She claimed to have a map of the route, but not with her, so we had to come back later and she would have one for us.
 |
| The main church in the town Cotahuasi |
 |
| Rooftop view up the valley |
 |
| Rooftop view down the valley |
 |
| The local pond. Wandering through the pastures reminded me so much of Kamicancha, Peru in the Sacred Valley |
At this point of the trip, Acacia was working on figuring out employment back in Canada, so, in addition to figuring out the logistics of our exploration of the valley, she was working on the logistics of getting hired. In any case, our first destination was Velinga, a town about 25km west, and a couple km lower in elevation than Cotahuasi. Since hiking the whole round trip seemed excessive, and the only buses coming from Velinga back to Cotahuasi left around 9am, our most viable option was to catch the early morning bus to Velinga and hike back to Cotahuasi. So, our third day in the valley (still without seeing a single other tourist in town) we caught the 6am bus with backpacks full of food and water, and watched as many locals loaded weeks worth of supplies onto the top of the combie, including a young calf we picked up on the way down, which was skillfully lifted and tied to the roof of the bus! Like, "oh, no big deal, just strap another ungulate to the roof and drive down this treacherous mountain road , totally normal." I guess at least Mitt Romney would feel at home. We arrived at the bottom after driving through some gorgeous terrain, ran into a couple of backpackers at the bottom, watched as the locals hoisted the calf off the bus, and then began our long hike up the valley. Our decision to hike straight back up was a fairly controversial one, as we opted to skip visiting the actual town of Velinga, or going farther down to the valley to Quechualla, a town reachable only by doneky, and Ushua, the town at the deepest part of the deepest valley on earth! Yea, Cotahuasi Valley puts the Grand Canyon to shame in that regard, its more than twice the depth. But, in order to maximize our exploration of the valley given the limited bus situation, our hike was on a serious timeline because we had to catch an afternoon bus in Cotahuasi to catch another bus up the valley.
 |
| Ready for the long hike up |
 |
| Cactus Forest! |
 |
| Catarata de Sipia |
 |
| Some pastures part way up the valley from Velinga |
In any case, we began the paced march up this valley, following the river through some crazy saguaro-esque cactus forest called "Cactaceas de Judiopampa", crossing several bridges back and forth across the river on our way up to Sipia Falls, roughly the half way point of the hike. The incredibly steep and rugged terrain, with a few critters here and there as well as condors flying WAY overhead made for quite the scenery. But, being on a timeline and not having kilometer markers pushed our pace as we neared the halfway time without having reached Sipia Falls, the approximate halfway point. We stopped there for a bit, giving Acacia's heels a break (which she can tell you more about later) and enjoying this one perfect seat for enjoying the view of the falls. Seriously though, there was only one good seat. The rest were blocked by the fence from being able to see much of the falls. It was pretty terrible design in that regard. Anyway, we took turns sitting there, and then climbed down a bit for a closeup of the falls from above and to scoop some water into our bottles. From there, it was just a long slog another 10km or so up through the valley. From this point on, I knew there was one little storefront/home between us and the top, and I was super looking forward to grabbing a cerveza and some other cold beverage since it was pretty warm at this point. And, as we got farther up the valley, it definitely got more populated closer to Cotahuasi, since that was kind of the hub of the whole valley. Unfortunately, as I saw the storefront/home, it was closed and there was just a dog barking at me :(. So, onward and upward until we finally were within sight of pavement, aka Cotahuasi town center, and immediately sat down at the entrance sign for a nice long 45 second rest.
 |
| Eating some delicious trout ceviche in Cotahuasi |
 |
| Made it! |
We quickly snapped some pictures, checked the time, and had about 30 minutes to eat some Popsicles, go back to the hotel and pack our stuff, take our extra backpack full of things we probably wouldn't need for the next few weeks to the bus station to get placed on the bus to Cuzco with the intention of picking the backpack up when we got to Cuzco, and then find and catch the bus to Pampamarca, a town near the canyon's rim. Needless to say, it was a bit rushed. Especially given the fact that when I showed up with my bag to send on the bus, the lady was like "no way dude, shit's going to fall out and all those straps are going to get caught on something, I don't want the liability". Or at least that's what I gathered from her face and little boy who immediately ran to a store, grabbed a huge blue sack, charged me 2 bolivianos, and then sewed my backpack into this giant sack within about 20 seconds. Impressive. Then some old guy in the back eyed the sack, charged me 20 bolivianos to get it to Cuzco, and Acacia and I raced to catch the bus on the outskirts of town.
Waiting for the bus, I built up quite a hunger since it had been a while since we had had anything substantial, so I went looking for calories while Acacia waited with our stuff. I couldn't find any place open, and then I finally found a store that was open, but with nobody inside! Somebody must have seen me looking into the store, because pretty quickly a woman came from down the block to ask what I wanted, and I ended up settling on a bottle of chicha, which took too long for her to get since the bus came and I ended up just running back to the bus, buying a skewer of meat from the street vendor about 7 feet from the bus, and then we jumped on for a long windy road up the valley to Pampamarca. At least this time there were no bovine to worry about.
 |
| Our accommodations in Pampamarca |
 |
| View of the one restaurant in town, and top of the ridge is the rock forest |
We arrived in Pampamarca fairly late and didn't really know anything about the town except that there were some crazy "stone castles" near by as well as a hot springs. Most people had gotten off the bus at stops along the way, close to their village or family's house or whatever, so by the time we got to the town square in Pampamarca we were one of just a few people to get off. Fortunately the one store/market in town opened up as the bus arrived, and the lady working at the store was also in charge of running the one hostel in town, so she walked us across the square to the hostel, who's only other residents appeared to be guinea pigs, and then took dinner orders and walked back to the store to start cooking us meals. Awesome!
 |
| Pampamarca town square |
The next morning we got off to an early start since we had a lot of hiking planned for the day and still had to catch the evening bus back to Cotahuasi to keep our valley exploration schedule. Surprisingly, there was at least one other person profiting off the tourism in Pampamarca--a haggard-looking old guy sitting in the middle of the square waiting for people to look lost while trying to find the trail up to the "stone forest". "Are you guys looking for the trail to the top?".... "uhhhhh, yea!"..... "ok, follow me." So, we did. Now, I don't know if it had just been a while since we were last tricked into paying for something we didn't really want to pay for, or if the friendliness of the valley and distinct lack of tourist infrastructure had conditioned us otherwise, but the friendly fellow led us down the trail just to where it started to get steep and then looked at me and said "Money?". Damn. Tricked again. So I paid him a couple soles and we began the climb up.
 |
| View down into the town from the start of the hike |
 |
| Following out guide |
While this climb wasn't too intense technically or overly steep, we were right around 12,000 feet elevation so it was no walk in the park either. The view was spectacular! Even just a few hundred feet above Pampamarca, you could see the whole town just emerging from the shadow of the mountain we were hiking up, and it's sunlit sister town across the valley that was just slightly lower. I kind of thought they should have built a zip-line to at least avoid the long bumpy road going between the two in one direction. Anyway, we continued up at a slow and steady pace, with occasional breaks for Acacia's open heel wounds to regenerate some much needed epidermic tissue, towards the rim of the deepest canyon in the world. Total, it was about 2 miles up through some pretty dense shrubbery at the lower elevations and then up to a very alpine environment to an incredible view where we could see the valley in about a 300 degree view. It was incredible! We were like on this little peninsula of rim that jutted out into the valley so we could see several small villages thousands of feet below and miles away. AND, the 60 degrees or so of our view that wasn't the valley was this crazy collection of rock spires that was like a prehistoric playground.
 |
| Ouch! |
 |
| Other side of the ridge |
.jpg) |
| One of our attempts to get a 2-Acacia panorama photo |
 |
| Rock forest |
 |
| Epic throne! |
After trying to get the most epic panoramic photo we could (and trying really hard to see if we could get Acacia in one panoramic photo twice by like having her run around me to be on both ends of the photo... didn't work) and sitting on these spires like our own iron throne of the valley, we hiked back down the mountainside straight to the one market in town to calorie up before our hike to a waterfall and then a hot-spring! Except the market was closed. Alright, well back to the hostel to Steripen some water and eat whatever non-perishables were in our backpacks. The path towards the Uskuni waterfall and hot-springs were at the opposite end of the square from the hostel so we followed the cobbled road down to the outskirts of town and began following a dirt path through pastures. The path split a couple of times, but there were some locals doing trail maintenance and they helped direct us towards the waterfall. Finally, we were going around the last bend before the waterfall, aaaaaaaand LET DOWN. I guess the lack of rivers nearby should have been a clue, but "the waterfall" was just a view from about 5 miles away of a waterfall down in the valley. Not that it was unimpressive or anything, just nothing like actually being at a waterfall.
Whelp. Hopefully these hotsprings will be better! We walked back a few hundred meters from the lookout to the waterfall and then took a different path that began a pretty steep descent down into the valley. Acacia, with tender heels and what not, realized that coming back up the steep descent wasn't going to be fun, so I was our scout and headed down into the valley. Which, quickly turned into a less steep path that made it's way across several different pastures and then followed the villages aqueduct right along the edge of some pretty steep cliffs until finally I after a mile or so I saw what looked to be a hotspring. It was waaaaaaay down the valley right at the river, which probably would have been a pretty cool spot to hang out with the whole cold/hot water combo and being pretty secluded, but being on a pretty regimented timeline and not really wanting that much of an adventure after our climb to the rock forest, we opted not to. Which was actually pretty enjoyable since we just walked back to town, packed up, and then hung out in the market and had a solid lunch waiting with a variety of other folks awaiting the bus back down the valley. Naturally they were all curious about what we were doing and super friendly. And, one of them was the bus driver for the ride down, so we didn't have to worry about missing the bus.
After the long bumpy ride back down the valley, we checked into the same hotel we'd been at in Cotahuasi. Acacia went and sent some emails at the incredibly slow internet cafe while I went and got a beer and heard Thrift Shop blaring from one of the bars in town, WHAAAT!? I'm always surprised at how ubiquitous American culture is in places as remote as this. We went and got some street food of fried intestine and potatoes and got some rest before the start the unknown adventure that lay ahead.
