On Thursday we left Arequipa for our adventure to the Colca Canyon - the deepest canyon in the world, although it's cliffs are not as vertical as The Grand Canyon .... apparently this is the point of much contention ha.

We had a slow drive up to our highest point of the day - 4,900m altitude - you certainly can feel it, it's quite hard to breathe. Along the way there were several alpacas and llamas just wondering freely around the valleys. On the many viewpoint stops there were little stalls and often woman with baby alpacas asking for pictures etc, Martin picked up a baby and put it in my arms, its was so soft and cute but - it bit my ear! I think it knew I had been enjoying a bit too much Alpaca recently =/

Once we arrived to our gorgeous accommodation at a mere 3,600m we had a wee trek with Orlonso (our local guide) up to an old archelogical site (San Antonia) and a place on the cliff where there used to be Mummies ... unfortunately it has now been tomb-raided so little remains. It was really interesting hearing all the stories of how it used to be done etc and, seeing evidence in some of the remaining skulls on how they used to elongate the head - ouch.

Friday we had a ridiculous early wake up call - 5.30am and headed out for the Canyon 1/5hours away from where we were staying in an effort to see the Condors in the morning. As it is not the season, they are not around all the time.

There is some fascinating geography around these areas, which Andrew was loving and enjoying sharing a few titbits of knowledge for us all. As I'm not good at describing I think I'll wait to put the photos up but really, it's fascinating. Totally daunting to be around something that natural, all encompassing and gorgeous.

And, we got there early enough so - we say lots of condors! They're huge, and really actually quite ugly. I guess that comes from being part of the vulture family. In any case, it was awesome to watch them fly in and around and through the canyon ... amazing.

Today we headed back to Arequipa to prepare for another night bus to Cusco! We had a girls afternoon and had a leisurely stroll around the gorgeous city of Arequipa and visited the Monastery. Here Monastery's are for woman. It was a gorgeous place and we ended up chilling out there for a while and having lunch. The monastry was created as a city within a city and back in the day, the girls were not allowed to leave it. We learnt some fascinating things about the history of the nuns and Peruvian woman in general.