Colca Canyon

After the stride retreat, my friend Anna (a fellow strider who works in Lima) came back to Arequipa with me. She stayed from the Monday to the Thursday and it was nice having some young company to do things with.

On the Sunday we met up with a girl who used to go to All Souls called Trinh. I had never met Trinh before but when she heard I was coming to Peru she contacted me because she was going to be travelling around South America for 6 months at the same time I would be in Peru. She arrived in Arequipa last weekend without expecting to, and it was nice to meet her and hang out with her for a bit.

Despite the fact I was not on top form, on Monday morning we got up at the crack of dawn and went to Colca Canyon. Trinh managed to join Anna and me on this trip to so that was good.  We first of all travelled to Chivay and had some breakfast there, this journey took three hours. After breakfast we stopped off at another wee town for about 10 minutes were we got some pictures of us with hawks on our heads and standing beside women in traditional Peruvian dress (I have been informed that there are about 30 different kinds of traditional dresses in Peru as there are different ones for every region etc). 

We then travelled to another wee village but cannot remember the name and we were able to see around there for about ten minutes. But the main attraction was next, going to see the Condors. We arrived at 9am and there were many people there but there were no condors, we sat for about 10 minutes and I said let's go to another view point as was getting bored. However, as soon as I said that a condor appeared - all in all we saw six condors, they are amazing birds and are so elegant when they fly. There was one which was a real show off and just wanted us to admire him and flew around us for about ten minutes and came close a couple of times. I did get some good pictures, but have discovered birds are very hard to capture when they keep flying around.

When I was telling my Peruvain friend about seeing so many condors she said I was lucky because sometimes people go and never see them at all. But I prayed before hand that I would see some as I did not want another northern lights experience (I went to Iceland to see the Northern Lights - got up in the middle of the night to go and see them and never did, was very disappointing), so you see God answers prays, even the small ones which are not that important..but to me it was important. Looking forward to taking my parents to see the Condors as they are bird fans and will love it - so pray they come to play that day as well.

After an hour of watching these magnificent birds we then travelled further to see more beautiful sites of the canyon (it is the deepest canyon in the world, but to me the Grand Canyon in Arizona is more spectacular, but I did like this canyon too).

When we stopped for lunch (again in Chivay) we had time to go to the plaza where we met a lovely Alpaca called Monica who was three months old, she was so sweet. During lunch I had actually eaten Alpaca, which was very tasty indeed... 

On our way back to Arequipa we also saw more Alpacas and Llamas in the National Reserve

The scenery from Colca to Arequipa is absolutely stunning and the volcanoes were amazing, we saw El Misit, Chachani (which I have introduced to you before) but on this journey we saw another volcano called Ampato (this is a famous volcano as its where Juanita (the mummy) was found a few years ago after having been lying there for years). 

All in all it was a good day but we did arrive back to Arequipa very exhausted after only having three hours sleep the night before. If you ever come to Peru, Colca Canyon is definitely a must see. 

For more photos please go to: https://picasaweb.google.com/100676954376098189077/ColcaCanyonWithAnna?authkey=Gv1sRgCMDytrGhmaGtjQE