Colca Canyon

We got up early in Chivay for our visit to the Colca Canyon. It wasn´t the best night´s sleep in the very basic accommodation with no hot water and a very hard bed.

After a breakfast of hollow bread and jam, the bus took us out of Chivay towards the Colca Canyon. We made several stops in a couple of small villages where they were obviously ready to greet tourists with their local goods for sale and alpacas to pat. Kids in traditional clothing, doing their traditional dance offered some great photo opportunities. The villages were really interesting with all of the buildings built from traditional mud or clay bricks.

As we climbed up through the Colca Valley we saw the first of the terraces that cover the mountain sides, built by the pre Inca groups, I forget their names but their ancient people that had cone shaped heads! The terraces are just spectalcular and mind-boggling how they built them with no machinery hundreds of years ago. We got the feeling that today was just a taste of whats to come in Cusco.

After an hour or so of amazing scenery we arrived at Cruz del Condor, the best viewing point for the second deepest canyon in the world at 3,200 metres deep, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US!

We´ve said this before about other places, but the photos don´t even start to show the magnitude of the place.

And yet another "Thelma & Louise" shot...

We didn´t see any condor unfortunately, but after seeing plenty in Patagonia we weren´t disappointed.

We leave Arequipa tomorrow morning for Cusco where we begin the Inca Trail on Wednesday for 3 nights in the mountains, so you may not hear from us for a few days.

Adios til then.