A Condor Moment

After a hideous night on the bus we were on the road again within 20 minutes, this time heading for the Colca Valley in the search of Condors.

As we left Arequipa we were made aware once again of the complete disregard that many companies have for property or, in this case, landscape, when it comes to getting their advertising and logo out to the masses.

Claro (large mobile phone operator in SA) borrowed a local mountain to advertise on.

On the way to the Colca Valley we were to stop a few times at various towns to see a few interesting things.

The first, a Pequinia. A smaller version of an Alpaca which is again, smaller than a Llama.

We were heading to the highest point Lauren and I had ever been to before, 4900 metres (over 16,000ft) so we stocked up on Coca leaves and Coca sweets which are a fantastic help to keep you sane at high altitude.

The next place we stopped offered 'Mixta' tea which, from what we were told was Coca tea with added Andean herbs to help with stomach upsets as well as altitude sickness. However, to us it looked like Coca tea with garden sweepings after Alan Titchmash and his team had visited for the weekend.

At every stop we were starting to see a theme developing. There were stall holders selling every kind of Llama and Alpaca merchandise you could possibly imagine. Jumpers, gloves, scarves, hoodies, throws, baby clothes, phone cases, purses... you get the picture!

This lady however was spinning the yarn directly from the Alpaca wool ready to start knitting her next item. It was pretty impressive to see, even if the finished item would look exactly the same as the items every other stall holder at every tourist town en route was selling.

Lauren gets sucked in by some Alpaca merchandise but gave the stall holder a lesson in negotiation! #hardcore

On our way to the high point overlooking the volcanoes we came across these Llamas and Alpacas. They're marked by coloured cloth tied to their ears rather than being branded by coloured ink on their skin to differentiate who they're owned by.

Finally, after numerous stops we arrived at the view point for 3 huge volcanoes.

Zoom in, you can see them on the horizon in the background.

The one on the right, Sabancoyo, is still active. You can see it smoking here.

Thanks to the copious amounts of Coca leaves we'd been chewing, we both felt really good which is a surprise bearing in mind we'd struggled at 3600 metres and we were now over 1300 metres higher!

It was a 'breathtaking' site, especially at 4900 metres!

We were effectively in the desert and the terrain was incredibly dry and arid.

Around midday we arrived in the small town of Chivay where Lauren and I were staying for the night. 

We ate lunch at an average buffet restaurant with the whole group then got dropped off at our "2 Star VIP" hotel they had booked for us. I had a feeling we'd be looking for the "VIP" part for the duration of our stay.

Once more, Lauren's Dad, Stuart had booked our room and for the eleventh night in a row, we were in single beds!

Still, we didn't care as all we needed was a siesta to help us add to the 2 hour's sleep we'd cobbled together on the previous day's mobile sauna (night bus).

We woke 3 hour's later groggy but thankful for some rest and headed out to a 'touristic restaurant' for some food and local entertainment.

The food was average but the entertainment was quite amusing.

The band

The dancers were strange to say the least but maybe it was lost in the culture difference. 

Local costume or has the guy on the right had a fight with a lampshade?

The dancer then came out ten mins later wearing a scary looking balaclava!

We retired to our single beds and prepared for our 5am alarm call.

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5am came sooner than we'd have liked but, as with all our early morning rises, there was a purpose and that was a trip to the Colca Canyon within the Colca Valley to see the world famous Condos riding the thermals with their spectacular 3 meter wingspans.

We'd imagined that we had to get up at 5am to get to the Condors for maybe 6:30am but we were wrong.

Our guide packed us in the minibus and told us our first stop was in ten minutes time at a small village where the locals would be selling 'touristic gifts' and where they would perform traditional dances for us.

We groaned (internally) as, although we are tourists ourselves, we hate organised tourism where locals are 'put on show' for hundreds of foreigners. We understand they make a living from this but we'd rather find out about local culture by meeting locals, eating where they eat and drinking where they drink. Authentic cultural experiences, not ones put on for foreigner's voyeuristic pleasure.

Saying that, there are times where we're torn. We managed to hold back from taking photos of the baby lamb being held by a traditionally dressed 5 year old girl in Cusco and the Cholita with the Alpaca dressed in knitted clothes too but as we got out of the minibus at 6am, we were greeted with a beautiful Eagle which we couldn't resist a photo with!

We reluctantly dawdled around the town square as the local children prepared to start their first dance of the day. We wondered if the children enjoyed doing this or were, as many children here are, doing it to bring money in to the family.

Being honest, the dance was pretty uninspiring and the only highlight was when one of the local dogs decided to get involved and constantly jump up one of the boys as he was trying to dance!

To keep up the tradition, Lauren the dog whisperer, then attracted 3 local dogs and decided to take them to find their mates who were disrupting the touristic proceedings in the square. 

That's a full house for Lauren now's at least one dog story from every South American country so far!

After another pointless 'touristic town' stop where we wished we'd been given an extra hour in bed, we arrived at Colcar Canyon and agreed to a 30 minute hike to the highest point where the Condors are regularly spotted.

The canyon here is about 1200 metres deep but reaches a staggering depth of 4400 metres in parts!

Ooh Matron, a prickly cactus!

Me and a cactus (cactus on the left)

On the way to the viewing point our guide, Mira, told us that the group yesterday didn't see any Condors and that July was the best time to come and see Condors. We would've preferred that information before we booked!

We reached the high point and there were no Condors to be seen. We waited and waited until out of nowhere a huge Condor appeared on the sky, riding high on the thermals running through the canyon.

There were three of them in all and it was stunning to watch these wild birds in their natural habitat, majestically soaring above our heads and into the canyon below us. 

One came and landed on a rock fairly near us. I caught him on video landing and taking off again.

Condor Landing:

http://youtu.be/C6KJ3F3mUYA

Condor taking off:

http://youtu.be/mbXmxTOfpps

The return journey was much like the outbound; Stop after touristic stop and the opportunity to spend more money on more of the same Alpaca merchandise.

The one unique thing which we liked though was trying ice cream made from the fruit of the cactus, Chirimoya.

A few more views of the canyon and we were on our way back to Arequipa, a town we were looking forward to exploring. We had planned 24 hours there before flying to Peru's capital city, Lima, Wednesday evening.

We arrived in Arequipa around 3:30pm and collected our large luggage from the tour operator's office.

We had noticed on our way back into the town the extraordinarily large percentage of taxis in Arequipa. We stopped in traffic and I took this quick picture.

There were ten cars in front of us and nine were taxis!

We needed a taxi to take us to our next hotel and ironically stood outside the agent's office for ages trying to hail a cab but dozens went by before we found one available! I guess there is a need for so many cabs in Arequipa!

We arrived at 'Casa Arequipa' and were bowled over at how lovely it was! We'd stayed in so many rough hotels recently that this was like an oasis for us, albeit for just one night! It was no more expensive than the previous hotels but it seemed the owners really cared, the decor was lovely and we were treated like royalty when we arrived. More importantly, Lauren's Dad hadn't managed to influence our bed type this time! ;-)

We chilled for a while, caught up on some admin and then went to explore the roof terrace in this small boutique hotel.

The sunset was incredible.

For once my iPhone took a decent picture!

We'd asked 2 separate people their recommendations for restaurants and they both, without hesitation, said "Chicha's". So, that's where we went and had a lovely evening with great food.

More importantly, they had 'Nieto Senitiner' wine on the list, our favourite from Argentina and one of the wineries we visited, so that was a welcome addition to our culinary experience, especially as we've not had much wine lately!

We tried to stay out as late as we could but our body clocks have been altered with really early mornings and early nights since the jungle so we gave in to tiredness & ordered a taxi (easier than hailing one!) & went to bed.