Giant Condors and sand-boarding

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	Wanaka Arrived on 28th Jul 2012
Blog updated: 28th Jul 2012

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Corcovado and Beyond

18th Apr 2012 - 28th Apr 2012
Giant Condors and sand-boarding

Arequipa is a lovely city, with no really big hills for a change! The main draw for people here is the Colca canyon. It's the deepest canyon in the world at more than 4000m deep. That's about twice the Grand canyon!

Giant condors make their nests on the canyon walls and can be seen gliding through the canyon on hot air currents coming from below.

I decided to do a one day trip to the canyon and some small surrounding towns. We started at 2.30am with a 3 hour bus trip to Chivay. We visited some small indigenous towns on our way to the Condor Pass. As we arrived we spotted 4 condors soaring overhead. I had heard how magnificent they were but still could not believe how cool they were in real life. The adults wing-span is up to 3.5m and they're over 1m from beak to tail. We sat for ages just waiting to see more of them flying. It depends on the conditions though. They only fly if the hot air currents are good on the day. We were lucky to spot a few more flying past.

After lunch we got dropped back in Chivay to explore the local markets. I think I've seen enough alpaca clothes to last me a lifetime now though! :)

The next stop on my trip was Huacachina. It's a tiny town built around a desert oasis just outside Ica. The lagoon itself is an awful green colour and is apparantly infested with all sorts of nasty creatures. So it's not for swimming, just for enjoying the view..!

Since the town is in the middle of giant sand dunes so you can go sand boarding here. You take a sand buggy across the dunes. I'ts like a 20 minute roller coaster! It was the best bit I thought. Then you're given a sand board and you can try and stand on the board or lie on your stomach to go down the dunes. It was a bit scary at first as some of the dunes are enormous, but it was great fun. The only problem was, it was so windy, we couldn't bring our cameras as they'd get filled with sand, so I don't have any pictures of the sand-boarding.. :(

Mancora is coming up soon. It's a tiny fishing village with a great nightlife apparently! And plenty of sunshine :)

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