Cañon del Colca day two

The Alpaca wool blankets on our beds were warm and the matresses firm so we all had a good night´s rest and got up for breakfast at 6am.  I awoke early when I heard a scratching sound like something trying to get in.  I lay there a few minutes then heard the sound again and decided to get up as it was getting light. 

As I put on my shoes, I saw the little brown dog that lived at the camp.  He must´ve gotten in while we had the door open in the dark last night.  I let him out, looked around, and as I saw there was wood started in the stove, figured it was close to time to get up.  There was a nice area outside our cabin that was grassy and flat so I decided to do my morning stretches.  Looking down in the middle of one stretch, I saw the brown dog also doing his morning stretches!

We had breakfast of banana stuffed pancakes with caramel sauce, which Omar prepared for us, then hit the trail.  Today we would hike another four hours up a little way into the valley, through two small towns, to our destination, which was called "the oasis."  Little did I suspect that it truly was a genuine oasis!

The differences in dress between the Cabanas(l) and the Colaguas

One of the towns we passed through had a small one room Museo (museum), which was really quite nice and highlighted the traditional cultures that originally inhabited the valley years ago and whose descendants still did to this day.  

Our Group and guide

Approaching the Oasis

When we got closer to our destination we could see what appeared to be swimming pools at the bottom of the area we were headed to.  Omar assured us that they were indeed swimming pools fed by the warm water that came out of thermal springs under the mountains.  We arrived at the oasis around 11am and were told we would have lunch around 1 pm.

 The Oasis was beautiful with grass huts and a swimming pool!  The day was hot and we all changed directly to our swim suits afted stowing our bags in our rooms.  The water was nice, not really all that warm but, we swam and sunbathed on the grass and rocks till the sun was too much and we had to move into the shade.   

Many different hiking groups arrived the rest of that day as there were at least 40 rooms at the oasis and everyone swam and enjoyed the day after they arrived. 

Me in the pool

My buddies, Prince and Kam arrived with their group and told me they had challenged the Peruvians to a soccer game and would I like to play.  I said I hadn´t a clue to the rules but would give it a go, maybe I could be a handicap for the Peruvians.  

Once everyone got down to the soccer field we figured we had 3 teams of 5 each.  We had to play barefoot and the field was nice with all grass.  I was on the third team and the rules were goals had to be low, below the knee and there was no goalie. Sounds easy enough and looked easy enough as I watched the first two teams play.  The first two teams were mostly the Peruvians and the Europeans and they seemed pretty evenly matched.  Kam and Prince obviously had some skills at controlling the ball, passing and setting up for goals.  The Europeans finally scored and it was my team´s turn.  I was in for about a minute when I fell into a hole that was covered by grass and twisted my left ankle, the same one I had badly sprained last May.

I couldn´t stand on it or put any weight on it so I crawled off of the field and watched the rest of the day.  I tried to put weight on my ankle several times with not good results.  I hope it will be better for tomorrow´s hike out of the canyon.  After some of the pain subsided, I limped back up the hill to the oasis.

After dinner everyone was sitting in the dining area and visiting.  I met two people from Holland, both traveling seperastely, a woman from Omaha Nebraska named Rachel, and a guy from Madrid Spain named Julio.  Around 8 pm someone came by about taking a mule to the top for a woman who had gotten sick from the flu and couldn´t walk up.  I decided that it would be a bad idea to try and walk up the next day with my ankle still extremely painful putting weight on it.  I didn´t want to chance ruining my ankle for the rest of my life so I booked a mule for myself for the next day.