Colca Canyon Condors

We left Ariquipa for a couple of days to do a quick trip to the Colca Canyon.  Which ever company we went with would likely prove irrelevant as here as elsewhere in South America there are far more tour booking offices then actual tour companies (despite claims by every agent that the bus is theirs!)

The tour involved a long bus trip to Chivay with a couple of stops to medicate ourselves with Coca (yes that’s coca not cocoa) in the form of sweets, tea or just chewing the leaves.  This is meant to help alleviate the symptoms of altitude sickness (and if you believe the hype stop you needing to eat, sleep, drink, keep you alert and any number of other side effects.. of course that sounds more like the effects from the processed form to me).  As we approached the high point on the road, marked by the thousands of small cairns of rock, each of which represents a wish made, we discovered one of the members of our party wasn’t handling the altitude very well.  We reached 4900m  the highest point we have ever attempted to walk  and we were both out of breath after just a few steps. We were a bit worried for the woman as she was planning to continue upward after the tour to do the Inca trail.  We were  grateful that we had spent the last 3 days at 2600m in Areiquipa so we had acclimatised a little.  (We suspect we went higher on the bus trip between Salta and San Pedro de Attacama but we sat the whole way for that.) 

From there we made our way down into the township of Chivay a spectacularly green valley after the barrenness of the road that we had journeyed along.  We were fortunate enough to see some of the local dancing in the town centre that we suspect was put on for one of the more expensive tours, (our organised dancing for dinner was somewhat less inspired).

Waking up for the second time the next day (our five o’clock wake up call was actually delivered at 1am!!!) we bundled into the bus to the Colca canyons.  We played the part of tourists on the way even paying to hold a hawk and take some photos.  Arriving a little early we walked up the path to the Condor view point that most tours take on the way out,  having it to ourselves was beautiful and relaxing.  Reaching the view point we were given two hours for the main event.  We hadn’t expected much as the photos in all the tour agents led us to suspect the condors wouldn’t come within 30 meters of us,  We were incredibly surprised as the morning went on different groups of condors would rise up on thermals out of the canyon some of which came well within 2 meters of us.  We spent a very happy two hours snapping pictures and enjoying the flight of the condors and other birds, the only disappointment was the “Traditional music” that a group of locals would play for the tourists disrupting the tranquillity of the place far more than the quantity of watchers would have.