September 18, 2018 – September 20, 2018

Although we really enjoyed the city of Arequipa, we were happy to be back out in the countryside again.  We were driving to the Colca Canyon, which is only a hundred or so metres shy of being the deepest canyon in the world, and more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon in the United States.

We climbed up out of Arequipa to an altiplano, driving alongside volcanos, mountains, llamas and alpacas.  Just before the town of Chivay, we drove down switchbacks for several kilometres into a huge drainage, quickly losing more than a thousand metres in elevation.

 

Upon entry to the Colca canyon park area we had to pay a steep 140 sol entrance fee (about $55 CAD!!!).  Then we went into the small town of Chivay to have some lunch (an alpaca burger and some alpaca ribs – very good meat!).  We had intended to camp at a hotel/lodging along the canyon but when they wanted to charge 50 sol a night, which we haggled down to 40 ($16cdn), we ultimately decided to leave considering there was no electricity available and there was no wifi or toilets near the parking area. Going back in the other direction we found a small track going off the main road and and found a great place to camp for the night, just off of the main road but hidden from traffic by a small hill.  It was a cold but quiet night.

The next morning we drove a few hundred metres to one of the Andean Condor viewing sites in the park.  We, and about 500 other tourists waited on the ridge of the canyon to see these enormous birds.  It was easy to tell when a bird was heading our way, as a wave of cameras being raised to the eyes would roll along the canyon rim just ahead of the condor.

After a while, I decided to change out my zoom lens in order to get some pictures of the canyon in general, joking that that would bring the condors even closer, and sure enough, in the middle of changing lenses a huge condor flew right over our heads!

We drove further down the canyon to the town of Cabanaconde and did a small hike to another canyon rim overlook.

Late that afternoon we returned to the same wild campsite as the night before, pulling in past some grazing cattle.  We decided to hike to the canyon rim a few hundred meters away from the main condor viewing location.  We were the only people around.  We watched some more condors soar for a while and enjoyed the peace of the canyon in the late afternoon.

Then Derek spotted something on the canyon rim a little to our right at a slightly lower elevation.  “Are those dead cows?”, he asked.  Out came the binoculars, and sure enough, there in a field, mostly out of view of the main condor mirador, lay about 30 dead cattle, in various states of decay. We checked later and apparently Condors prefer to feed on large carcasses. This was undoubtedly going to be the fate of the small herd of poorly fed and watered cattle that lived down the little track where we were camping. I guess if you are going to charge 70 sol per person as an entrance fee to an area renowned for spotting Andean condors, you have to sacrifice a few animals to ensure continued tourist dollars….