High and mighty

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We arrived late Saturday night in Chivay, a small town near the Colca Canyon. We got up at the crack of dawn to go the canyon. The thermal winds created in the morning meant that we were most likely to see condors. The area had a long history. As we traveled through the Colca Valley we saw lots of Incan terraces. The landscape was fantastic. We stopped to look at some old tombs built half way up the side of the hill.

We had a fantastic guide, Luis, who filled us in on the history of the area, and he also knew heaps about condors.

We got to the lookout point after a couple of hours, and a bunch of tourists were already there. We were warned that we might not see any up close but within 5 minutes of our arrival half a dozen condors started buzzing the lookout and they were flying low directly overhead. We were lucky and the experience was unforgettable.

One of negative sides of being in a group, is that occasionally you end up in a room full of tourists, including Japanese, all fighting over the same buffet lunch. Hmm.

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