We arrived in Arequip aat 6am on Sunday morning and booked straight onto a two day tour of the Colca Canyon. This si the deepest canyon in the world at 4160m (twice as deep as the grand canyon although its walls are not as steep).

We set off at 8am and drove through the colca valley stopping off at several view points along the way. The land here is very fertile and apparently it si where potatoes first came from before they were taken to europe?! We had lunch in a town called Chivay before checking into our hotel. The rest of our group went to some hot springs but as we were feeling very tired from our our over night bus we slept instead! That evening we went out for dinner with the rest of the group to a restaurant that had a local band and some dancing which was pretty interesting to watch, especially as the men all wore skirts?!

The next day (monday) we were up at 5am to go to see the condors in the canyon. We drove for about an hour and a half, again stopping off at view points along the way. We got to the main view point at 8.20am and at about 9am we starting seeing loads of condors flying around. They were massive and can apparently reach up to 3m wiong span, 1.2 top of head to end of tail and can wight up to 15kg! One landed on the rock right in front of us so I got a good photo of it spreading its wings. As you can see from the other photos, they are hard to spot! After an hour or so we headed back to Chivay fr lunch and then back to Arequipa.

Today we have spend a day in Arequipa looking around. We got a tour around the santa carolina monostry which was really interesting. 175 nuns used to live there although now there are only 25. Girls at age 12 were sent there as part of their tradition and were made to become nuns and follow the vows of silence. Something I dont think I could do!

Tomorrow we are getting a bus to Nazca to see the Nazca lines and then onto Ica before going to Lima to fly home :-(