The Colca Canyon

We arose early to aboard the tour bus taking us on our overnight trip to the Colca Canyon. I was a bit surprised to see it was a 16 seater minibus and hoped that Leo would fare well for the journey.
The Colca Canyon is apparently twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US, and around the area you can visit typical Andean villages. And an early morning stop at the Cruz del Condor gives you a chance to view condors flying within the canyon as they awake for a morning of scavenging.
The journey to the Canyon involves quite a hike up in altitude, in Arequipa we were already at 2380m but the roads on either side of the canyon are at about 4000m and the highest viewing point is at 4900m! A journey with baby not to be taken lightly! For those of you that may be concerned with our gung ho attitude to dragging Leo around with us wherever, we did our research before embarking on this trip and it seems that babies adjust much more readily to changes in altitude and don't suffer the effects as we adults do. On that basis we made sure he was comfortable, slept lots and was always well hydrated. Right that's my justification over with..

A trick to combat altitude effects recommended to us by the ancient Incas is to drink copious amounts of coca leaf tea, perfectly legal here, and you can buy it every supermarket. We were thinking of bringing some home for pressies but we're not convinced it's legal back home.. any ideas? Anyway as this was freely available in our hotel Ari was especially keen to make sure there was no chance of him suffering any untoward effects. This included buying dried coca leaves, coca leaf sweets and a coca leaf fizzy drink for the journey just to make sure..

The journey itself was really lovely, passing through amazing scenery, pastures of vicuñas, alpacas and llamas and stopping at a few tourist directed markets to view the woolen goods on sale whilst taking a loo break in the meantime. Came back to find Ari being mobbed by a group of young girls, was somewhat intrigued until the reason turned out to be none other than Leonardo Andricopoulos causing a stir as usual! I fear he definitely has an eye for the ladies already.. Bought a Peruvian outfit for Leo as it was too cute not to once the saleslady had put the poncho over his head and refused to take it off, not that he needs more attention given the magnetic pull of his chubby cheeks and his red hair.





Unfortunately the highest viewpoint was shrouded in clouds so we had no view of the surrounding volcanic mountains, and to be honest I was feeling a little breathless so was quite happy to continue on back to lower pastures for lunch. Once we had our lunch in a local town it was on to the hotel for the evening which boasted a nice scenic location and its own thermal pools. When we rounded the bend to get my first glimspe of the spot I was quite taken aback, it was beautiful! Shame to be spending only 14 hours here. We did manage a dip in the baths, and after Ari and I discussed the wisdom of it, Leo came in for the ride, though in the cooler of the pools which felt just like a warm bath. And he had a fab time splashing about. He loves water now, and kicks about like mad as soon as he gets in. Call me somewhat optimistic but I think we may have a budding Michael Phelps in the family, better get him signed up fo some lessons when we get back (pushy mother alert).



We set off ridiculously early the next day to get to el Cruz del Condor, and the weather being fantastically clear and the time of year meaning we had a 70% chance of viewing, we were hopeful to get a glimpse of the majestic creature. At the spot many people were already milling around, buzzing with the anticipation of getting some condor action. There was little to do whilst the birds were deciding to emerge so people were wandering about, buying souvenirs etc. One American lady was sporting a typical Peruvian hat, asking everyone how it looked as she was considering buying it. When she asked Ari, he promptly responded 'it looks ok here but not sure how it would go down in- where abouts in the US are you from?' The meek and desolate reply 'oregon' came before she slumped off in a huff told us that maybe that wasn't the response she wanted to hear.
After a little waiting around we saw a distant condor in flight, and after a few slightly dodgy camera shots and some more of a little lizard on a nearby rock to pass the time, we managed to see one flighing really up close, and managed this fantastic shot.



Actually, I cannot lie to you dear readers, we could only have dreamt of getting such a shot. We were getting little condor action so Ari decided to take the camera off to take some pictures of the area, while I stayed at my great vista spot. There then appeared a fantastic condor, gliding on the rising heat thermals and all I kept thinking was, I hope Ari's getting this. Turns out he got stuck behind some heads somewhere else, got into conversation with some Greeks or something and well, he won't mind me saying, missed it all good and proper. So this is actually a photo of a photo, cheap I know but gives you an idea of what we would have liked to have captured. The best one we managed is here below.


The terrain here is beautiful and ancient, all the leveling of the land dates back to Inca days, and though a hard life it must be for the farmers working in the intense sun at such high altitude, living amongst such natural splendour must be some form of recompense.


We stopped at another typical Andean town to take some photos, buy some souvenirs from the locals waiting for us and then made our way back along the winding mountain roads back to Arequipa for our last night before an early morning flight to our next stop, Puno and lake Titicaca (great name).