The theme for Day 10 of the 30 Days of Indie Travel Project* is Earth.
At what point in your travels have you felt most in tune with the Earth? Share a story of how you interacted with the local environment or nature.
I will let my pictures do most of the talking for this post, but the time I felt must in tune with the Earth was while hiking the Colca Canyon in Peru two years ago. Every step of the way (although I was often terrified), I couldn’t help bu marvel at my surroundings – the second deepest canyon in the world, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon (which I shamefully admit to not visiting yet).
The Colca Canyon isn’t what many would picture as a canyon – there is no steep drop off with a glass platform where you can star down into an abyss. Rather, it is a never-ending valley with colored stone walls, sporadic greenery and a river running over jagged rocks at the bottom.
While hiking over three days, I was also brought back to a much simpler way of life, staying in a wood huts with dirt floors at the bottom of the canyon and eating simple meals cooked over an open fire. I fell asleep to the sounds of goats conversing, cats meowing and bugs buzzing around my head and awoke when the sun rose and to the call of the rooster, just next door to me.
*Throughout the month of November, BootsnAll is inviting bloggers from around the world to join them in a daily blogging effort – the 30 Days of Indie Travel Project – designed to reflect on how our travel experiences over the last year – or whenever – have shaped us and our view of the world. Bloggers can follow the prompts as strictly or loosely as they like, interpreting them in various ways and responding via text, photos or video posted on their own blogs.
