Chivay and Colca Canyon
It was strange to be back on board Frank (the truck) again after 9 days apart,      
and with several new parts and a working fridge, we were 'good to go'. The road to Arequipa was a good test of the repairs that had been carried out, as it took us high up into the Andes again. From the point where we were picked up in the minibus, the road climbed to a high pass at just over 5,000m and we felt the familiar light headedness and breathlessness when we made a short photo stop. We drove across a high plateau, which was actually a volcanic crater, and had excellent views of Peru's three largest volcanoes, on whose snowy peaks the mummified remains of the Incas' child sacrifices were discovered. Our guide was the spitting image of Diego Maradona, and talked nearly non stop, about anything and everything, over a microphone with terrible feedback noises because the radio and his mobile phone were on at the same time. Some of the things he said were a bit random, like did we know it was the Incas who had discovered Iceland? And had we noticed that the younger generations of Peruvians are looking more and more Chinese? When he did stop rambling on, he put on the same terrible pan pipe cd that they'd played on the train to Aguas Calientes!
Our hotel near Chivay was lovely, it consisted of a cluster of thatched buildings, set in landscaped gardens, and all the rooms were decorated in rustic style, but with amazing things like properly working hot showers, very unusual for South America! 
We set off at 6.30 in the morning, back over the high pass, and turned off down a VERY bumpy 40km unsealed road, to la Cruz del Condor, the part of Colca Canyon where the condors rise up on the early morning thermals. They were a spectacular sight, with a wing span of about 2 metres, and you could hear a great 'whoosh' as they went gliding past, especially as sometimes there were 6 or more of them all circling round at the same time. We also saw giant humming birds, about the size of blackbirds, lots of finches, butterflies and lizards. 
The canyon itself is deeper than the Grand Canyon, but not very wide. It is particularly unusual because it has a rainforest at the bottom, and pre-Inca terraces all along the sides, some of them sweeping right to the edge of the ravine. This gives rise to a great number of micro-climates, and unique eco systems, whereas most of the large canyons are just bare rock, and don't support much wildlife.
It was a shame to have to tear ourselves away, but we had to get to Arequipa, which meant bumping our way back along the unsealed road, with the guide standing up at the front, bouncing around with his mullet haircut, talking relentlessly about the Incas, the 4,000 different kinds of potatoes, and playing the pan pipe cover cd. It seemed a very long journey!