Day 91 - Flight of the condor

Arequipa

The dreaded 3am pick up wasn't too bad in the end, the bus arrived pretty much on time and we tried to get a little more sleep as we headed off towards Colca Canyon. We stopped in the small village of Yanque for a basic breakfast (dry rolls and black coffee), then another stop in Maca to see the colonial church while we tried to avoid the souvenir stalls and bowler hatted women touting for photo opportunities with alpacas.

We reached the Cruz del Condor lookout on the edge of Colca Canyon around 8:30am along with hundred of other visitors in the hope of seeing Andean condors gliding over the valley. The condors visit and fly this area in the mornings because of the updrafts rising out of the canyon. At first it seemed we would be out of luck but after about 20 minutes the condors started appearing, initially a few but by the time we left we had probably seen at least 15.

From there we piled back into the bus and made varied stops on the way back to Chivay for lunch. There was an hour long stop at some average looking hot springs that very few people wanted to swim in, but we lucked upon some more natural springs around the corner by crossing one of the most unstable rope bridges we've ever crossed.

Back at Chivay we skipped the buffet lunch and found an ice cream instead, while we looked at the large statutes (with explanations in English) of many of the local characters that are used in dance and folklore, including the masked men we'd seen at the festival back in Ollaytantambo.

On the way back to Arequipa we stopped a couple of times, once to see some grazing alpacas (as if we hadn't seen enough already), the other at the Patapampa lookout at the highest point in the road (4850m) where we could clearly see smoke from the very active Volcan Misti.

No, those aren't clouds

We were back in Arequipa around 4:30pm, just in time to sit on the terrace at a restaurant and have a couple of Pisco sours. In the end we were quite pleased  that we hadn't put our hands up for the 2 day trip, though we paid the price by having a very early night.