un Viaje Increible al Canyon de Colca

Just got back from a weekend excursion to Colca Canyon, the world¢¥s second deepest canyon. After it took our tour group a good hour and a half to round up everyone at their various hotels we were well on our way. The terrain outside of Arequipa reminded me a lot of the less actractive parts of the American southwest. Barren mountains, dusty, occasional splashes of green. The main difference was we were a LOT higher up. That, and we were able to see wild herds of Vicuna, and domesticated herds of Alpaca. Both are related to the Llama. From Arequipa at about 6,000 feet we climbed as his as 15,000 feet before descending to the town of Chevay at about 10,00 feet. Chevay used to be in the middle of nowhere before tourism in Peru started to blow up. Now it is used as the basecamp for all excursions into the Colca Canyon, and believe me you can't spit in Arequipa without it landing on someone offering to take you to Colca. Now Chevay is full of little girls in traditional dress who will let you take their picture for about 15 cents. I paid a couple (they are unbelievably cute, especially when they had baby Alpacas with them), but I also surreptitiously snapped a few picks when they weren't looking.

Once in Chevay we set out on a hike to some pre-Incan tombs. On the way we bore witness to the entire valley floor carved into step like terraces. The original inhabitants of the valley even before the Incas) created these terraces in order to grow crops in a region where flat land is at a premium. Not only is the land still farmed today, but these terraces are still in use, despite the fact that they're over 1,000 years old!

The tombs, built into the side of a cliff face were bizarelly open to the air. Bleached white bones were clearly visible, left where they had been initially excavated. It seemed kind of strange to be able to reach out and touch the bones (I did see one member of my group actually pick up a skull, hopefully the rest of my trip won¢¥t be cursed Brady Bunch-style), but I was mainly preoccupied with my head at the time. Hiking at altitude (we had not had enough time to properly acclimatize) can lead to some splitting headaches. We capped the day off with a trip to some of the nicest hot springs I've ever been to, usually hot springs are the biggest tourist trap in all of latin america, before retiring for the evening in order to meet our 5:00 am(!) wake up call to see the Andean Condor.

We dragged ourselves out of bed and into the bus, and I was a little apprehensive. Noone was willing to conclusively say that we¢¥d see this condor, and after a rather rough night of little sleep I was more than a little pessimistic. I pictured something akin to the emergence of the bats at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico if you¢¥ve ever seen that. Impressive enough sure, but hardly awe-inspiring. I threw all those thoughts out the window once we arrived at the Cruz del Condor. Once the Condors began to emerge (they leave for the day around 9 in the morning to begin their search for carrion) I nearly wet myself. One, they're huge, their wingspan nearly 8 feet across. Two, of the 20 or so condors that I watched fly for the better part of an hour I saw maybe 2 wing flaps collectively. They are perfectly designed to ride these Andean wind currents with a minimal ammount of effort. After a while I swear they knew all the people were there to see them. Occasionally one would lazily glide by and almost hover motionlessly in front of an orgasmic crowd and set off an explosion of flashes, camera clicks, and whatever you call the random artificial sounds generated by digital cameras. I could just picture on saying...

"Hey Fred, watch me go mess with those weird things that come out here every day. This'll drive them crazy..."

as it sped towards the waiting hordes.

Anyway that was the last couple of days . We're in Arequipa for a bit longer before we push on to Lake Titicaca and then Bolivia!