Colca Canyon

We were picked up in Puno by 6:15am, but Andrew was up at 5am to catch the sun rise again. The tourist van drove us the 5 hours to Chivay - there were 6 of us plus the driver and the tour guide.
We drove for about 2.5 hours and came upon a nice lake that was 4500m above sea level. We could see the Andes mountains in the background, it was very nice.

The next stop on our tour was a lagoon that housed Andean geese and Chilean flamingoes, as well as seeing alpacas all along the fields.

 

It was a nice drive, although I have to admit I slept through some of it. We did stop at a lookout point to see the snowpeak mountains, it was at 4910m above sea level, which was the highest we obtained on our Peruvian trip. Apparently it didn't bother the alpacas. They were also stopping to admire all of the rock statues.

 

We arrived to Chivay and found our way to the hotel. It was very picturesque but unfortunately was out of power for several hours. We wandered around the town and then our tour guide took us to the Calera Hot Springs. The temperature of the water coming from the mountains is 80 degrees Celsius, but they cool it down for the tourists to 39 degrees. They actually have separate pools for the tourists and the locals.

After the hot springs, we returned to our hotel to get ready for dinner. Luckily our hotel had power, so that we could shower off all of the salt water. That evening our tour guide took us to a local restaurant El Horno, which features food and a live dancing show. There was a live band and dancers with local costumes. Unfortunately it was one of those shows that invite audience participation and I was dragged on stage.

 

The next morning we had a wake up call at 5am and then they drove us to Condor's Cross, stopping at a few towns along the way. This is a well-known hangout spot for the condors in the Colca Canyon, and were lucky enough to have 7 condors flying over us at one point. We heard that the day before, it was cloudy and tourists only got to see 1 condor if they were lucky. So we were pleased with the clear weather and our luck at seeing these amazing birds.

 

On our way back, we drove through the Colca Valley back to Chivay, where we had a group buffet lunch and then a transfer for 3 hours to Arequipa, which was the last stop on our Peru trip!