Colca Canyon

Hello all,

So I had a couple of spare hours between activities and took advantage of the wifi in the cafe I had lunch with Donna, josh and Willy in. Please scroll down one post for yesterday's photos, and I'm hoping today's work as well! I won't put too many so that the post hopefully works. Check out Facebook for more!

Today has been absolutely amazing so far. I'll post about what we have done. All we have left to do is a hot springs and dinner, and I'll post about those tomorrow in Arequipa where I know the wifi is very fast. 

I had the best sleep I've had all trip last night. The beds here are more comfortable than mine at home I reckon! So cosy. It was a cool night too so I needed blankets for the first time. Aaaah :) lovely. 

We got up at 5.30am today to travel to Cola Canyon for a half day trip. Colca Canyon is one of the deepest canyons in the world. At the main viewing part it is 1300m deep (about the same as the Grand Canyon) but at its deepest point it's 4200m. We stopped at many viewing points along the way. Most of today's post is photos really, words can't describe the beauty of what we saw properly. The terraces  and mountains are just incredible. 

We got to the condor viewing point, and for the first 40 minutes of our one hour visit I thought it was going to be journey to the midnight sun 2.0. For new readers, when I was in Norway in June we drove for hours to see the midnight sun at Nordkapp....only to see a sky full of cloud. But alas, after staring at two condors and willing them to fly for forty minutes, the four of us gave up and walked to a different area. But it turned out once we moved here, the condors started to fly and we had a great view! They are so majestic. The ones we saw were about 5-6 years old Freddie tells us and were brown. When they reach adulthood they can have a wingspan of up to 3m and are black and white. Amazing. Such beautiful birds! But apparently they are known to attack humans, so we were glad they kept their distance!

We then went for a ninety minute walk with the group, another mini inca trail practice. The views again were amazing, and we saw another condor and an eagle. I'm doing ok fitness wise but we are all finding it hard to breathe when climbing up steps. I'm getting nervous for the inca trail which is now just five days away. Throat infection still hitting me and the lack of oxygen in the air makes you feel like you can't breathe properly especially when climbing up. But I guess I just keep telling myself I can do it, and do it!! Gonna take all my little photos of everyone on the inca trail with me to remind myself I've so many people that believe I can do it!

We drove back to Chivay and made a few stops along the way including more view points and a small town called Maca. Some of the others went to do the buffet again but I wasn't that hungry so joined Donna, Josh and willy. I had a sandwich for lunch. 

This afternoon we are off to a hot spring and then will have dinner. But as I said, il post about that tomorrow. 

Much love to all

Claire

Xoxox