Colca Canyon and Condors
Arequipa is surrounded by volcanos and the buildings in the city are made from a certain kind of volcanic rock. This rock is normally white and shiny but due to the street level pollution here, it’s more off-white/greyish. Lovely. It does have a cool texture to it though.
We decided to spend our last couple meaningful days in Peru taking a 2 day tour of the Colca canyon area, near Arequipa. The route to the Colca valley heads into the mountains and the high pass we went through was almost 5000m/16,000ft. The air is thin up there and the sky even looked different. Glad I wasn’t hiking that high on the inca trail.
After the pass it was the long descent into the valley, which is full of pre-inca farming terraces. Everywhere, far more than we saw on the inca trail or anywhere around Cusco.
We had a short hike after lunch by some of the terraces and food storage constructions, all pre-inca and then finished the day at one of the many local thermal springs. This one was warmer and better than the ones in Aguas Calientes. We spent the night in the valley.
Next morning, up at 5:30 (I’m really getting sick of this here) in order to get the 2 hour drive through the mountains over with early enough to see the Condors flying at one of the colca canyon viewpoints. At this particular viewpoint, the canyon floor was about 1200m below the rim of the canyon we were standing on, with mountains rising up another 2000m above us. Spectacular view.
The Condors were cool to watch too, though I don’t rate them as cool as the Albatross we saw in New Zealand last year. Their wingspan is similar, slightly less, and the soaring was impressive especially with the backdrop of the canyon. Nicer looking than the vultures in South Africa though.
After that and a great buffet lunch of local food in the town of Chivay (where I tried guinea pig, ok, but not worth the effort to eat it) we headed back to Arequipa, taking the same route back through the high mountain pass. Great views with the perpetual clear skies this time of year here, it is in this area that the amazon river starts, on this snow capped mountain.
Tags: Peru, Travel
Adam
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