Calca, Cuzco, Peru Friday, June 19, 2015
Up early this morning to head to try and find some condors flying, apparently it's best to see them early in the morning.
We took a drive from our hotel across the bumpy road for about 40 minutes until we reached the lookout spot. We got out and it wasn't long until we saw our first glimpse of the condors. At over 3 meters in width the condors are one of the largest birds in the world. Our guide Freddy advised is that they don't even fly... They glide.
There were a number of condors and I got some great photos (well I think they are pretty good). It was amazing to see the condors so close to us. Our guide Freddy advised us that while they they are large and do fly close at times they won't actually attack or eat living animals, in fact they won't even eat freshly dead animals, they wait until the dead bodies start to rot before they will eat them. Another fact is that the baby condors don't even start to learn to fly until they are 2 years of age.
We spent a good hour or so there watching the condors before taking a small 40 minute hike through the Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. After the walk, we headed back to get some lunch, stopping along the way to get some photos of the terraces in the canyons, some of which are still used today (about 60%). Bruno and I tried to reenact a photo we took when we were at the Grand Canyon the previous year, but it just didn't come out near the same.
Then onto Maca where we took a quick look at their church. While this church wasn't near as impressive as some of the ones we have already seen, it was still impressive considering how small it was and also how remote of a location it was in.
We had lunch before catching our van back to Arequipa to get our bigger bags which we had left at the hotel so we didn't have to take them with us.
A few of us (Trent, Laura, Bruno & I) headed off to Le Terrace which we heard had a fantastic view over the city at sunset. So we had a quick drink on the 5th floor where got some photos, some French people took a liking to us and saw some of our photos from earlier today of the condors, one of them took a photo off Bruno's camera, which to be honest, you couldn't tell it was taken off another display... Now he can tell people he saw condors.
Time to head off now, 10 hour bus ride to Cuzco. Hopefully we don't get stuck with another roadblock.
What I saw
Colca Canyon - Arequipa, Peru