Colca Canyon
After a 4 hour drive we arrived in Colca Canyon ... here the "road" down to our hotel ...
The hotel consisted of little bungalows (actually they were quite big) and was located on 3,900 metres ...
We found out what that meant, when we walked up 40 metres to dinner in the hotel restaurant ... completely out of breath! Besides that you get thirsty ... we never drank as much water as there!
Next day we were greeted with those views ... the Colca Canyon is much deeper than the Grand Canyon in the US and - afawk - only a canyon in Taiwan is even deeper ...
Those terraces and watering systems are 3,000 years old, they are still working and being used!
This is one of the stops along the Colca Canyon ... gravel road, but you can see everywhere that a lot is done for tourism ...
Here's Cynthia with our lovely guide Diana, who explained everything so well ...
Finally we arrived at the Condor lookout place at 08:00 hrs ... already a lot of tourists there ...
... but Thomas kept his spot ...
We had to wait around an hour and the first of those majestic birds showed up ... here an adult, black with the white marking ...
They didn't have to flap their wings, as the thermal let them glide higher and higher ...
... the wing span is 2.5 to 3.2 metres ...
... absolutely impressive when they fly (or better glide) around and over you ...
Here's a photo of a look-back at the condor lookout ... we wanted to take a 30 minute walk afterwards (which is a lot when you're at 4,000 metres!)
The free toilet there ... the picture has the title "Advantages of having a dick" ;-))))... what you see is the queue for women ... but we have to say, the guard let them in both toilets, when no men were there ...
So here's the two of us with this background ... btw. we were SO lucky with the weather ... no lying, every single day we had good weather! ... well when angels travel ;-)
Another amazing shot of the Colca Canyon ...
On the way back we stopped in a little village ... the animal is the second from the left ;-)
... and a little boy looking at those funny tourists ...
That was the hot water bottle when we came back to the hotel ... unfortunately one was leaking, so we had to have the beds redone at 22:00 hrs ...
So next day we started the drive to Puno, which led us along those roads for roughly 6 hours ...