Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

After a night in Puno we arrived the next day in Arequipa, a beautiful colonial town, founded by the Spaniards in 1540. The surroundings of Arequipa are, like many other Peruvian and also Ecuadorian towns, amazing. From the city centre you can see the snowcapped volcano El Misti and the Nevada Chachani which are really impressive! We had a look around the city centre, some good dinner (not guinea pig though - which is the Peruvian National dish), and booked our trip to the Colca Canyon.

The convent of Santa Catalina in Arequipa is a real must for travellers - it is so impressive, really amazing! The entrance fee is well worth the visit!

All in all we found Arequipa a quite busy but pleasant town!

The Colca Canyon is apparently the deepest canyon in the world. Apparently for more than 100kms it is 3400m deep! Quite impressive. It is famous for the condors that can be observed in this canyon. The condor is a huge and extremely rare vulture. There are 2 types of Condor, the Californian Condor and the Andean Condor. The latter is the world's heaviest and biggest bird of prey. The length of its body is about 1.5m and it can reach a wingspan of 3 meters (!!!)
It weighs between 9 and 11 kilos.

When we arrived at the Colca Canyon we waited for a few minutes then we saw our first LIVE condor! WOW! it is really big! There were just a few flying around and most of the time we could only spot them from a distance. But then all of a sudden more condors appeared and they came closer and closer. At the end there were about 14 condors in the sky at the same time and some sat down to rest just in front of us! Some others decided to fly right above our heads! A really amazing experience!