Colca Canyon, 21st birthdays, and some Nazca Lines

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Current Location: Trujillo, Peru

The Colca Cross, in Colca Canyon is the best spot in Peru to view and photo the great Andean Condor. That is unless, you happened to arrive on the day that I was in the Canyon, and all of the condors seemed to be missing.
Our group scanned the canyon for atleast two hours, to no avail. There was a little excitment when someone thought they saw a small spec miles away down the canyon. But as it got closer our guide informed us that it was just a common eagle. ¨Bummer guys, bad timing,¨ was all our guide could give us. We just happened to come at the wrong time. But luckily, the sheer awesomeness of the canyon itself was almost enough to make up for a lack of birds. At least in my eyes. (One member of our group cried because she didn´t get a picture of the codors)
From the top of the canyon the walls fall away for over 3000 meters, making it the second deepest canyon in Peru, just behind Cotahuasi. A grand spectacle with our without the condors.

Our trip through the canyon was only two days long and I arrived back in Arequipa just in time to celebrate my 21st birthday. Now normaly in the states, a 21st birthday means a large party, followed by a few rounds of drinks at the bars, and ending in a painfull headache and a day on the couch. But luckily I was in Arequipa, so my experience was quite a bit different.
For you sakes I wont bother going into any details about the night (don´t want to worry mommy), but rest assured it was a blast, I didn´t have to pay for a single drink, and it will not be forgotten anytime soon. God times.

I left Arequipa two days later and took the bus up along the coast to Nazca. If it wasn´t for the famous lines I´m not sure anyone would ever bother stopping in Nazca. It is in the middle of an absolute desert, that relies on water from the Andeas, almost a hundred miles away to survive. And yet it does, and has done for thousands of years. When we flew over the lines it became apparent how special they are. The ancient Nazcans created lines in the Pampas that streatch strait as an arrow for as far as you eyes can see. It becomes even more amazing when you see from the air that these lines continue on completely strait over the tops of small hills, and through ravines. It makes you wonder how it was all done.
Along with the lines zigzagging everywhere, are the animal and insect figures scattered all around. They created dogs, monkeys, birds, and even something that resembles a spaceman, all scaled up by hundreds of meters. It is really no wonder people have speculated the Nazcans were communicating with aliens. All evidence points towards the lines being created to be seen from above. For aliens or not, who knows.

My time in Nazca was very short, in to see the lines and then back out again, because like I said, it is in the middle of nothing. 3 more hours on a bus, and I found myself in surrounded by 500ft sanddunes in Huacachina.
Huacachina is not even a town, it is more or less seven hostels all jumbled around a large lake, a few restaurants thrown in, all surrounded by massive sanddunes. It was the perfect place to just lay around and read a good book. The only real adventure in Huacachina came in the form of a two hour tour through the desert in a V8 dunebuggy, driven by a mad man. I have not been on many rollercoasters but the few I have been on were nothing compared to flying up and over these dunes. I spent the entire two hours convinced that we were about to crash and die. At the end we were all so shaken up that it took several minutes before any of could walk strait. It turned out to be some of the best money I have spent this trip, and at only 40 sols I almost stayed another day so that I could do it again.

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Photos

Monkey
This is one of the largest of the animal shapes

Spaceman
This pictures was a little different from the others, it was created in a different way and was palced on the side of a small mountain

Making the Climb
This is us climbing the sanddune directily behind our hostel.