From the jungle we headed south to the Colca Cañon, which is the second deepest canyon in the world at 3400 m deep. It is second only to the Cañon Cotahuasi, by about 100 m, which lies west of it. These canyons are twice the depth of the Grand Canyon in the States, although not as wide.
We took some really interesting roads on the way out, and saw our fair share of camelids.
Some women knitting in a town on our way into the canyon. Thanks Mom for paying 2 soles for this picture! (60ć CDN!)
There was a lot of livestock on the road as we drove in, especially if you're driving later in the day when everybody is trailing them home
The Colca Cañon is home to some of the most extensive Pre-Incan terracing in Peru.
Just wait.....it gets deeper
This is from one of the condor lookout points, you can see the canyon is starting to deepen
It was hard to actually get a pictur showing how deep the canyon is, this one is an attempt
Lots of pretty souvenirs for sale
We drove up a side road to see a geyser, which you can see spewing in the river bed. Technically speaking this is a vent. And there is Volcan Sabancaya puffing away in the distance. More on him later.
Close up of the vent
Jared staring into the abyss
And then we decided it wasn't good enough to look down from above on the second deepest canyon in the world, we needed to drive down into it. So we took an extremely twisty road all the way down, and then hiked into a hostel in the base of the canyon that was also a hot springs. Really cool!
Hanging out at the bottom looking up
Enjoying the lovely warm water. All the time we spent at altitude, there were lots of nights that just weren't that warm, so this was a lovely chance to soak up the heat.
The next morning we drove the same twisty, crazy, side of the mountain road to get out. When we were back up on top we were cruising our way out of the canyon, when we saw this.....
A condor! We got super lucky, he was just a juvenile and for whatever reason not very afraid of us, so we were able to get some really close shots.
They are a massive bird, at adulthood their wingspan is 3 m.
Jared standing by the condor as he took flight.
And this is why he was hanging around, a nice maggot-filled bovine carcass. Yummy!
Hanging out on the balcony, recharging before the next adventure
The next morning we drove the road to Arequipa, and saw a herd of vicuña, a first for all of us!
And there is Volcan Sabancaya from another angle. It's pretty much continually erupting, sometimes more dramatically than this!
Vicuña in the foreground and Volcan Misti in the background. Arequipa is a very seismically active area. A few weeks ago the roads were closed because of an earthquake.
Vicuña crossing (or as I call them, vicuties). Their fibre is among the finest, if not the finest in the world. The Incans only allowed people of royal descent to wear garments woven from their fibre.
We arrived in Arequipa that afternoon, more on that in the next blog,
Until Next Time!
Thank you very much for sharing information that will be much helpful for making coursework my effective.
ReplyDelete