Colca Canyon and Andean condors
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| Colca Canyon |
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| My favourite view of Colca Canyon |
After a breakfast at the hotel where the 6 of us got scrambled eggs made to order with some ham and cheese, we got ready to head out to see Andean condors!
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| Breakfast before heading out |
It's super cold in Chivay and a complicated process to gather everyone from 3 different hotels, including a couple who stayed in another town!
I think there's a system that tracks all the different tours booked and combined them to fill up the vans as efficiently as possible.
After gathering everyone, Victor showed us the Yanque town where the girls danced at the town square in front of the church around 7am. They gathered the tips from tourists and disband after a certain time to go to school. So the square clears out!
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| Yanque square |
We also stop by Pinchollo square where he said we will come back after seeing the condors. He did caution us not to approach the hawk guy as he clip the wings of the hawk and it's cruel.
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| Pinchollo town |
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| Coffee and Inka chips at Pinchollo |
We then head to the Condors mirador with a couple of stops to see the Colca canyon. We arrived at the Mirador and it's really great seeing all the condors flying
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| The condors flying when we reach the mirador |
There, are about 70-80 condors now in the canyon after the protection scheme. They are living in the caves and spend 3 months protecting the egg from Oct to Dec. So the condors don't fly during those times. During Jan to March it's 50/50 depending on the rainy season as they prefer the sun. During April onwards they are usually active when it's sunny as they like to ride the thermal waves.
I believe that's why we also reach around 8am as it's too cold before that and the condors don't want to fly. I can't upload the videos but they are close and magnificent.
Their speed can reach 80km/hour and they can reach Cusco for food within a day if they cannot find a big animal carcass like llamas or cows
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| The Andean condors |
Victor then brought us for a walk through the area with great views of Colca Canyon.
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| View of Colca Canyon from the Mirador |
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| Amazing view |
He explained that this is not the deepest Canyon in the area as there's another one closeby that's twice as deep. But it's not as pretty as Colca Canyon.
And showed us the spider bees. They created hives in the ground with honey. And appear in June and disappear by October!
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| Spider bees and their hive holes |
We also stop in various view points to see the views of the area
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| More view points |
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| With the sun, it looks unreal! |
We also had tuna which is a local cactus fruits that's really sweet. It has seeds and looks either bright red or yellow. He then brought us to have ice cream with chiramoya and also with the pisco sour using that fruit from the cactus. It's super sour but taste great in ice cream!
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| Ice cream and Tuna using cactus fruit and Chiramoya |
He also explained the hats which was 2 cultures that lives in Chivay. The cultures used the volcanos as God. So one of them tried to emulate the flat top volcano and they squash the kids face from the top to make them flatter. The other culture tried to make the kids face longer to emulate the other volcanos. The Inca didn't care to stop them but the Spanish did. And they killed the locals when they spotted the practice. So the locals had to switch to hats instead of changing their face visibly. But one of the hats is flattened and the other is straight and high!
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| Comparing the 2 hats of the local culture |
After that we got to another lunch place at Chivay and had another good buffet.
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| Lunch at Chivay |
After that we got out of Chivay and went through the high plain again heading towards Arequipa that took 3 hours.
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| The remote views of the high plains |
It's quite scary in the mountain road. There's a lot of mining trucks that's slow so the van overtakes them in a crazy driving style!
We checked into our hotel room in Arequipa by 530pm. We have a very nice room in Arequepay hotel with a functional patio that has a great view of the church and the city.
A note that we really like Victor as our guide. He never asked for any tips but ensured everyone is taken care of. And he ensured everyone is correctly check into the hotel before he left us. That is why we trusted him in Chivay to recommend a good 100% Alpaca store that's also ethical and local.
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| Our nice room in Arequipa |
After a long day, we didn't feel like a big dinner. So we got some wine and empanadas for dinner in our room.
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| Nice view with Empanadas dinner |
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