I have been in Arequipa now for a few days. The white city. Due to the fact that a lot of the building are made of a white volcanic rock called Sillar. Arequipa is a beautiful city. It has numerous old buildings and is great for just wandering around in. It reminds me a bit of Antigua, it is also surrounded by 3 volcanoes. They offer free walking tours so I was able to get a bit of the history of the city and the surrounding area. And of course the walking tour ended up in a bar for a Pisco sour tasting. I wonder whether it's possible to come to Peru as a tourist without tasting a Pisco sour at least every other day!

Sandwiched in the middle of my Arequipa stay I had a 2 day tour of Colca Canyon. Colca canyon is the 2nd deepest canyon in South America.

To get there we had to drive 3 hours, up to the highest point at approximately 5,000m above sea level and then back down to 3,600m where we would spend the night in Chivay. Here we went to some thermal swimming pools and saw a traditional dance performance during dinner.

Staying seated was not an option. By the time dessert came we were all up dancing! After a freezing night in a hotel (no heating, no hot water) we headed along the river and into the canyon itself. We stopped at various viewpoints which I felt were not the best places to stop at, we stopped at a couple of villages for a chance to get an alpaca selfie and then we stopped at something called Condors Cross. A view point in an area where approximately 20 condors are known to fly. What a spectacular sight! I decided against walking down to the main viewpoint, mainly because the altitude was quite high and breathing wasn't that easy. So walking up a hill didn't seem like a good idea. Instead I found a wall overlooking the cliff and sat on it. And I am glad I did! For a while I could only watch the condors flying close to the viewpoint and I doubted my decision to stay put. But then they came my way. And not just one or two. But 5 of them. And they were flying right over our heads! So close that you could hear the wind as they passed by. At one point one of the adult condors (adults are black, young are brown) tried to land on the rock behind my head. Much to the surprise of the lady that was sat on it! Four condors decided they'd had enough of flying too, and landed on a rock just beneath me. It was amazing to be so close to such a massive bird. A fully grown adult has a wingspan of 3m and the young aren't much smaller. So in hindsight, my decision to be lazy gave me the best vantage point for these incredible birds!