Colca Canyon

After a big night on the Mojitos the night before it was a tough start to the day for the 4-5 hour drive out to the Colca Canyon, home to the mighty Andean Condor. Along the way, we stopped off at a point that was 4.9km above sea level, so the breath was quite short and it left many of us puffing like fat men. I slept most of the way due to the previous night´s festivities, so it was on the one hand a quick journey but painful on the other hand.

The marker stone at 4900 metres asl:

Colca Canyon is quite high and the spot where we stayed was about 4km above sea level. Being up this high for three days is good acclimatisation for the Inca Trail that was to follow. The main highlights in Colca was the hot pools, which was completely dominated by gringos, and obviously the condors.

The best condor spotting point was near a point in the canyon that has about a 3.5km drop to the bottom, so it was best not to slip off the edge. It only took us about 20 minutes of waiting till we glimpsed our first condor. These birds are massive and also quite beautiful with their white wings with black tips. If my memory serves me correctly the wing span of an average adult male condor is about 3 metres - so they are huge. We saw a wide variety of condors in the hour we were there and I got plenty of photo ops.

"Como se llama?" (haha) - Simon the llama botherer (Actually I think it's an alpaca!)

Looking out over Yanque from our hotel:

A couple of condors in flight:

A stone cross marks the Crux del Condor, from where we viewed these magnificient birds:

An ass-licking (haha):

Watch the edge kiddies, it's a long way down:

All up we had three days in Colca Canyon. I would have preferred to get back to Arequipa for another day, but as mentioned above it was great to acclimatise at a high altitude.