Colca Canyon

The Colca Canyon, just 4 hours outside of Arequipa, Peru. Surely you've heard of it. It does happen to be THE DEEPEST CANYON IN THE WORLD. As in more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Yeah, I had never heard of it either.

In fact, I've begun to arrive at some other grim realizations about my ignorance. I'm not appreciating this trip nearly as much as I should. It's a bit like walking through the Vatican or Louvre. Yup, there's a masterpiece, there's a masterpiece, some guy spent his whole life to sculpt that, that's the largest canyon in the world, can I please get a beer over here? It's just impossible to keep up the stamina of awe and give everything the attention it deserves.

Oh yeah, and then I remember what working is like...and suddenly I appreciate the world's largest canyon again.

That's odd. Because when I'm working, I'll be thinking about walking to the bottom of this canyon to keep myself sane. And as I walk to the bottom of the world's largest canyon, I have to think about working to keep myself sane.

And suddenly I feel either incredibly wise, or incredibly stupid.

One other thing, photos. There are so many photos I wish I could take here. So many good portraits of Peruvian desert weathered faces, rosy cheeked children, Incan descendent features...but I can't bring myself to whip out my camera half the times I'd like to, to bother them or to expose myself as the tourist everyone already knows I am. So instead, I stop, breathe, watch, slip mental images into my sieve of a memory, and hope some of them don't slip out the other side.

I'll never get to be here again.