"The Search for Geraldine"

A Hike through the Colca Canyon by Tim Ghazzawi:

From behind the curtain of my dormitory bunk bed, I sat noiseless and still, debating whether to pretend to be asleep or help the poor girl out. It was almost midnight and I was to leave for a hike early the next morning. The girl had eaten something she shouldn’t have. Her stomach was making a mess of our floor. As I peeled back the curtain, I saw her struggling to the door and into the bathroom across the way. Light from the hallway poured into our room and her sick gleamed in three large puddles. One by one, the heads of my dorm mates peeked out from behind their curtains. Our curiosity and guilt had gotten the best of us and we begrudgingly slipped out of our beds. So began my journey to the Colca Canyon.

In no less than an hour, our room was scrubbed and sprayed and smoked with incense. My alarm rang what felt like seconds later and I boarded a bus sleepily in the dark. The Colca Canyon was to be my last hike in Peru and, for the first time this trip, a hike I would complete alone. Three hot days and two cold nights lay before me. 15 miles into and out of the second deepest canyon in the world. My friends had hiked the same trail a few weeks prior so I was excited to retrace their footsteps. They told me that in the cool evening air I would bathe in hot springs beneath the stars.

Unfortunately, the bad luck which began my trip did not relent. It continued when the guide who bought my entry ticket to the park accidentally took it with him when I separated from the group to hike alone. The woman in the information office in town, rather than make me pay again or print me a new ticket, gave me oddly specific instructions: Find Geraldine, she said, and give her this, and she handed me a note she’d written to Geraldine to explain what had happened to me and to approve my passage through the park. That the canyon measures over 40 miles in length did not seem to cross the mind of this woman as she sent me on my scavenger hunt to find Geraldine somewhere along the trails. She’ll be there, the woman said confidently. I’d already been delayed for hours because of my ticketing mishap so I took the note and began my journey without asking any more questions.

On the first day, I hiked with mixed emotions, excited for canyon views, anxious to meet Geraldine, but also nervous at the prospect of getting caught by a park ranger without a ticket. I encountered no one, though, until I reached my hostel. The most memorable person I met that day was my new dorm mate, a Frenchman with a horrible series of tattoos on his back, including the scripted advice “stay free traveling” and the image of a bird perched atop a skull. On the second day, I got lost descending deeper and deeper into the canyon. Frustrated, thirsty, and tired, I approached my next hostel wearily, feeling almost angry at it for being so well-hidden. I’d passed no one again. On the last day, having climbed for hours up and out of the canyon, I breathed a sigh of relief when the town came into view. I was so concentrated on the town, in fact, that I almost bumped into the woman wearing an official blue vest standing along the trail in front of me. Ticket please, she said. My heart sank and in one breathless stream I recounted the events of the last three days, starting with the loss of my ticket, exaggerating my subsequent hardships, and urging her to let me go. When I finished rambling, she smiled and said, Are you Tim?

On the bus ride back to the city, the other passengers and I were treated to two movies: Snow Dogs, a film in which Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays a dentist who moves to Alaska after inheriting a team of Siberian huskies, and Eight Below, an Antarctic survival film in which Paul Walker escapes an icy death with the help of, you guessed it, a team of Siberian huskies. There are times when I wish I had a portable dormitory curtain to close myself off from this world of puking people, terrible tattoos, elusive park rangers, and husky-themed films. I have to remind myself, though, that the lack of a curtain makes for a more interesting life. Besides, I couldn’t have taken the curtain into the hot springs with me. I wouldn’t have seen the stars.

If you enjoyed reading about my experience hiking through the Colca Canyon, you might also check out the following stories related to my other Peruvian adventures: