Colca Canyon Continued

Where were we?

Ah yes, we'd just driven past herds of cute little vicuñas (or vicunas, in English). We both love these critters - relatives of the llama and the alpaca - now: Andean peoples have a similar affection for the camelids, and have used them for food and fibre for millennia. They live above 4000m in the puna and altiplano spanning from southcentral Perú to northwestern Argentina. The Incas valued them highly for their very fine wool, but the Spanish invasion made them vulnerable to hunters, and by the middle of this century there were less than 10,000 vicuñas left. After the creation of numerous reserves there are now about 25,000.

At the road's zenith, 4,900m, we stopped to buy Katherine a nice grey alpaca scarf. From there the road wound down towards Chivay. Somewhat incongruously, we passed a flock of pink flamingoes - I'd always thought they were tropical birds, but they seemed perfectly happy in the driving rain at high altitude!

We arrived in Chivay at 3pm, and had a spot of lunch (alpaca steak for me - I felt terribly guilty :). After that we retired to our hotel.

The next day, Christmas Eve, we woke up at 4.30am, had breakfast and were ready for action at 5.30am. The minibus picked us up and we drove along a winding road down into the Colca Canyon itself. We arrived at Cruz del Condor by about 7am.

The Canyon is home to many groups of condor, magnificent birds that held a great significance for the Incas, and are now very rare. They're huge - wing span of three metres! - and so prefer to fly with help from thermal winds. As luck would have it, Cruz del Condor is a great vantage point from which to watch them glide above the Canyon.

We were obviously very lucky, because in all we saw about fifteen different condors - some groups only see one or two. In the crisp morning light, it was amazing to look down thousands of metres and see the condors circling far below. One pair were sitting on a rock close by, only above five metres away from us, and we sat and watched them preen each other until they finally spread their massive wings and took flight. Pictures of these two birdies are available on ImageStation!

After an hour of condor watching we took the minibus back the way we came, stopping at various scenic view points en route, and took a little nature trail along the edge of the Canyon. Another lunch stop followed in Chivay. Thoroughly exhausted by now, we spent the next five hours on the bus, and finally arrived back in Arequipa late afternoon. We checked back in to our hotel - we discovered they'd left us Christmas presents! - and went to sleep...