Views around Cabanaconde

Cabanaconde sits on the edge of the canyon, hemmed in by mountains on the other side. Beyond the central plaza, there are shops and hostels for 2 blocks along the main road which quickly turn into houses and then terraced farmland. There are no cars. When there's no festival going on, it's quiet enough to hear the whistling of the wind, and the air has that crisp, clean quality of being in the mountains. I really liked it.

Here are two shots of the central plaza:




On our first morning, we hiked up the hill from town to a small church and lookout point. Here's a shot of the edge of town from the hill. This view makes it clear just how abruptly the canyon drops away at the town's edge.

In the other direction, you can see more farmland, and their bull fighting arena. Apparently they held two bull fights on the last two days of their festival, but we were hiking at the time. In any case, Lip told us on our return that the tourists who had gone said it was pretty sickening so perhaps it was for the best. (All the vegetarian restaurants we've been in all over Peru have anti-bullfighting stickers with the slogan "ni arte, ni cultura" which mean "not art, not culture").

In the afternoon we made our way back to Pachamama and sat down with Louie and Lib to talk about hiking in the canyon. Our guidebook discussed several ways to hire local guides (or men with burros) to organize your trek. Since Louis was a trekking guide, we thought he should know, and it soon became clear that we didn't really need a guide. He gave us a map and talked us through a 3 day/2 night trek that he liked a lot. We wouldn't need to camp, because we would be hiking between small mountain villages which could house and feed us overnight. Unlike the Sierras, there are no dangerous animals.

There is a native plant whose milk can burn your skin or blind you if you get it in your eyes, but you have to break the stems to get the milk out, and it only grows in a small portion of our hike. So we figured as long as we didn't go breaking any stems we'd be fine. The trails are also extremely obvious, because they are all narrow paths along the canyon walls. From the lookout point at Cabanaconde we could see many of the trails we'd be taking into and along the canyon. In addition to their free trekking advice and map, Louie and Lip also let us securely store our bags at their hostel for our 3 days, free of charge. We made it a point to eat there as much as we could--which was easy because their restaurant was delicious--and we ended up spending our last night after the hike with them.