Yes, we did it …. want to know what exactly I am talking about? Well, sorry, but you’ll have to read through the whole entry, as I like to tell the things rather chronologically and unfortunately for you we fulfilled one of our “desafíos” at the end of our stay in this region!

So we arrived to Arequipa, also called “The White City”, more or less one week ago and stayed at the Bothy Hostel for two nights, which allowed us to visit this charming Andean city (at about 2300m in altitude but definitely not looking like this with nearly one million inhabitants, called Arequipeños and NOT Peruanos). Especially the historic center and its architecture deserve to be “World Cultural Heritage”, with lots of colonial and religious buildings. Among others, we visited the “Santa Catalina Monastery”, very impressive due to its size, the deep colors and its former organization: the whole area is just like a smaller town located inside a town, where the nuns were not allowed to get out and the “normal folks” couldn’t get in, which seems a pity to us because the place is simply too nice and luxurious for wasting it during such a strict way of life. However, the nuns were not quite acting as Christian as one would expect – most of them had several maids for cooking, washing, sewing etc., and the poorer nuns could sell their belongings to the rich ones (of course too much mercy is not appropriate in this place, but at least the basic principles of capitalism had passed the big walls). 

Next stop was Cabanaconde, small town above the Canyon de Colca, which is together with the nearby Canyon de Cotahuasi the biggest canyon of the world. We stayed one night at the Pachama Home Hostel and then did two days of trekking: go down 1300m to the river at the bottom of the canyon, then 800m up to Tapay (beautiful small village with an amazing view) and then 800m down to the Oasis de Sangalle, where we stayed for the night after relaxing in the pool (and where some dogs found it very funny to wake me up at 3am by jumping onto my bed). Without stressing, we were still able to be twice as fast as the estimated times, and we met only 10 persons – 9 locals and just one tourist. On the next day we went the 1300m up again to Cabanaconde, for which we needed two hours. After a stop with our German friends Gitti and Arno (both teachers who have taken a year off for travelling) at the “Cruz del Condor”, where we actually had the chance to see lots of condors, we finally reached Chivay, where we should fulfill our challenge: leaving this 3635m high city in the morning by bike, we drove up the 1300m to Patapampa and had our summit picture 2 and half hours later at 4910m, means that by bike we were higher than the Mont Blanc, highest point in Europe!

We spent the rest of the day at the “Baños Termales La Calera” and I think we really deserved it to relax in 39 degrees warm spring water. And then we went back to Arequipa, staying two more nights at the Amazing Home Hostel to plan our future goals. Now we are in Cusco and will do some further trekking towards Machu Pichu. To be continued ….