Colca Canyon

I had no idea until this week that the deepest and the second-deepest canyons in the world are here in Peru. D & J & I took a two-day organized tour to the second-deepest: Colca Canyon. The drive to the canyon took us through a national reserve where we spotted a bunch of free-ranging vicunas...

...some of them set against the backdrop of one of the seven volcanoes gracing the landscape in this high country.

The landscape was sparse and gorgeous and mostly abandoned-seeming.

The high point on our drive to Colca Canyon (before we started descending into the canyon) was at nearly 15,000 feet--the highest I have ever been--and had amazing views.

Finally heading down into the canyon, you can see the town of Chivay, where we spent a night, in the background of this picture.

Chivay was chill, both in temperature and in atmosphere, and I wouldn't have minded spending another night here.

But on we went, deeper into the canyon. It's wide enough that it's hard to appreciate its full depth (more than 6,000 feet between the top of the mountains that tower over it, down to the river bed).

One of the reasons people like to visit Colca is that Andean condors thrive in this region and can pretty reliably be seen from a viewpoint called Cruz del Condor. We only saw one of these incredible birds when we were at the viewpoint, but later on, on our way back out of the canyon at another viewpoint, a condor flew almost directly over our heads at extremely close range. It was a stunning sight--so stunning that I was too busy marveling to manage to take a picture before it soared away and was gone.