CRUZ DEL CóNDOR IN THE COLCA VALLEY

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Day 8: THE FLIGHT OF THE CONDOR IN THE VALLEY OF COLCA

The alarm sounded at 4.45 in the morning and so that we are going to deceive ourselves, we are burst. This of coca mates is going to make us more sleepy than energy. And today, precisely, that we have a long day, what we need most is energy. Today is the day we will go to Cruz del Cóndor in the Colca Valley.
Shortly before 6 in the morning we are having breakfast in the lounge of the Colca Lodge Spa, coca tea of course and somewhat light since we are noticing a slight headache that makes us be alert to other symptoms.

At 6.30 o'clock your bus comes to pick us up to start the morning visits, ending at Cruz del Condor.
The first stop is in Yanque, a quiet town 7 kilometers from Chivay, to see some traditional dances that students do in the main square every day.

Yanque Church

Typical dances in Yanque

The day is quite sunny, so we hope to enjoy today, where we take the cameras fully loaded to see all the condors we can.
The next stop in the morning, on the way to Cruz del Cóndor in the Colca Valley It is Choma, a town created by the Spaniards to conquer the Incas.
The town is a very quiet place, built as the Spanish teach us. The square, with the church and political power next door.
As the weather is very clear, the guide decides that we will go directly to Cruz del Cóndor to ensure we can see the flight of a condor and on the way back we will make the stops that are planned in several places in the area.

The views during the journey from Choma to Cruz del Cóndor in the Colca Valley, more or less 45 minutes take away the meaning. They are incredible and this is the reason why it is impossible to close our eyes even if we are dying of sleep.
Immersed in these incredible landscapes, around 8.30 in the morning, we arrive at Cruz del Cóndor in the Colca Valley At 3800 meters above sea level, the famous viewpoint, known by the locals as Chaglla.
We got off the bus with a couple of indications about the time we have to enjoy the expected flight of the condors, which will be a couple of hours and the recommendations of going to the two viewpoints that are in the area. The first just where you leave the buses and the other a little lower and that is seen from the top.

Cruz del Condor viewpoint in the Colca Canyon

The first thing we do is the typical photos of rigor, with which you can show that you have really been in the place you speak of without stopping when you return from the trip.

Photo that shows that we were here

And as soon as we have it in our memory card, we run to the first viewpoint with the hope placed in the family of Andean condors that nest in the rocky outcrops of the viewpoint Cruz del Cóndor in the Colca Valley and hopefully we will see them plan above our heads.

Views of the Colca Canyon from Cruz del Cóndor

We have been more than 20 minutes, looking at us almost hopeless, when we begin to see that people raise their cameras accompanying their hands with an inevitable "ohhhh".

Condor planning on the Colca Valley

Stunning images in Cruz del Condor

Seeing the flight of the condors, planning on the thermal currents that rise from the canyon or plummeting, almost touching the heads of the tourists that are there, is undoubtedly a fascinating spectacle.

A condor plans on us ...

After more than 40 minutes and seeing that time passes by, we take advantage of a moment in which we see that there seems to be a pause of condors in the viewpoint, to go down the path to the observation area in the lower part.

Going down to the second viewpoint of Cruz del Cóndor in the Colca Valley

Cruz del Condor viewpoint in the Colca Valley

As soon as we get here, we have another condors show in front of us, planning on us, with a dance that seems rehearsed to perfection.

Condor flying over the Colca Canyon

The flight of the condor ...

We would have stayed here for several more hours, but it is almost 9.30 in the morning, the time we have been to meet, to continue with the tour of the Colca Valley that we started yesterday.

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We leave 10 minutes later than expected, heading towards Chivay, stopping before on an already extinct volcano with a lagoon inside with stunning views.

Views of the extinct volcano on the road to Chivay

The next stop is at Huaira Puncu, a viewpoint in the Colca Valley, which is called that way, the wind's door, because of the strong wind that blows in the afternoon. It is said that from here all winds leave towards the Colca Valley.

Huaira Puncu, a viewpoint in the Colca Valley

Incredible views of the Colca Valley

The time comes to leave and it happens to us like a while ago in the viewpoint Cruz del Cóndor in the Colca Valley And if we had more days on this trip to Peru, surely we would have extended this tour to a few more days.
The next stop is in Hanta, another viewpoint of the Colca Valley, from where, with another lower perspective of the valley, we can also enjoy incredible views.

Hanta, another of the viewpoints in the Colca Valley

The next stop is in Maca, a town that was completely destroyed after a nearby volcano erupted and there was a landslide. The church of the town was rebuilt with the help of the Spanish cooperation agency and today it looks completely firm.

Maca, in the Colca Valley

In the square we find many shops and stalls with drinks that, as they tell us, is one of the town's revenues.

Streets of Maca

And from here we go to Chavay, where we arrive in 45 minutes and where we have a buffet where we can eat before they take us to the station 4M buses that will take us to Puno in a few hours, stopping at some important points and where we will arrive around 8 at night.
East The 4M bus is the only one that travels from Chivay or Colca Valley to Puno, costs $ 45 per person although we have already included it in the 2-day tour of the Colca Valley that we hired with the Colca Lodge Spa.
The bus leaves at 13.15 and now a few minutes past 12 noon, so we have enough time to eat quietly and make a quiet dinner. The buffet is not included in the price of the tour and we pay for it more water, coke and two triple mates 65 soles. Something more expensive than usual, but counting that it is a tourist place, where the buses that make the Colca Valley tour stop, we will not complain.
A few minutes before 1 noon, we leave with a taxi, included in our tour, to the 4M bus station that will take us to the next stop of the trip: Puno and Lake Titicaca.
We make the first part of the trip quite numb and still have no symptoms of soroche, although we are about 4100 meters.
Ahead we took a woman that the poor is having a terrible time and eating we learned that two people from the group we traveled with on this tour, but that they were staying at another hotel, were also quite bad yesterday.

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Here we would like to clarify a question about the Colca Valley Tour, which yesterday we forgot to mention and that we did not answer on any website we consulted.
This "trip" through the Colca Valley, it is difficult to do it for free since there is no good combination of public buses that travel the place, so the most advisable option is to hire a tour in some agency, either from home or from Arequipa, if you leave from that city.
Normally, unless you hire a private tour (much more expensive), you will be joined by several groups, possibly from different agencies and you will transfer in a bus or van.
The route from Chivay to Puno, as we mentioned before, only the 4M company does, so if you hire this route with the agency, do not think they will take you with private transport, it will be on this bus, which is tourist, so to speak somehow, since it makes a couple of stops in important places through which it passes.
We booked this tour without knowing exactly how it would be. Once the experience is lived, we recommend it 100%, since despite being organized, they leave enough time to not overwhelm you.

We continue with the newspaper ...
After 2 hours of traveling through the Colca Valley, in the opposite direction on the road we arrived yesterday, we made the first stop of the trip, in the restaurant where we were also in Patahuasi.
In the same restaurant they give us a sandwich and a water and in addition we ask for a triple mate to make sure that the soroche does not appear, that we still have many days in height and we prefer not to tempt luck.
When we leave the restaurant we see that the weather has clouded again and we see more than one ray in the distance. It seems that the Colca Valley wants to fire us the same way it received us ...
After this stop, it is necessary to continue the trip for a couple more hours until we reach Lagunillas, another point of the route where we will make a stop.
On the way we pass through the Imanta Stone Forest, which we only see from the bus and that reminds us that we have to return to the area, one day, to explore it more calmly.
Another of the points that we pass with the bus and that explains a guide that we take with us, is the area that separates Arequipa from Puno, which is 4600 meters and at this time, it is all snowy. We are going through incredible landscapes that prevent us from sleeping, fearing to miss some minute of what we are living.
There are a few minutes to 5 in the afternoon and we arrive at Lagunillas at 4200 meters, where nothing else down, we can not believe how cold it is. So we are not more than 5 minutes outside the bus to run back and when we sit down we realize that we are out of breath.

Stop in Lagunillas on the way from the Colca Valley to Puno

It takes a few seconds to remember that we are at 4200 meters and any minimal effort is noticeable.

Lagunillas

And so, after 5 in the afternoon we set off, with no further stops to Puno, which will be our next stop and where we will stay.
We arrive at the city of Puno at 7.30 in the afternoon and the guide that comes with the bus asks us all, with extreme kindness if we have a taxi, what is our hotel ... etc
When we tell her that we are going to the Qelqatani Hotel, she tells us that she also goes to that area and that if we want she comes with us, so we wait for her and take a taxi that leaves us at our hotel for 4 soles.
As soon as you check in at the Qelqatani Hotel, located very close to the Plaza de Armas, in the heart of Puno, we ask about the price of the tour to go tomorrow to the islands of Uros and Taquile by speedboat, since we want to be back about 3 in the afternoon in Puno to go to Sillustani before our night bus leaves for Cuzco.
They confirm what we had read and it is that in normal boats you arrive around 5.30 in the afternoon and we would not have time to make the visit to Sillustani, so we prefer to opt for an organized tour and thus be able to make the two visits that We have in mind.
They give us a price of 190 soles per person and it seems very expensive, before saying anything, we look at agencies online and see that the prices on several of the websites we consult are very similar, even some higher.
A couple who came with us in the Colca Valley Tour He told us eating that he did this tour with an agency in Puno, which is called Amara and that they checked many prices and this was the best.
We took advantage of the annotation we had done, we looked for it with the GPS of the CityMaps2Go application and by chance, it is 1 minute walking from our hotel.
So before confirming with our hotel, we will ask the other agency. When we arrive it is closed, but the hotel next door works with them, so we come in to ask and they give us a price of $ 66 per person.
Even more expensive than what our hotel gives us. It's after 9 pm, so we don't think about it much, we go back to the hotel and hire the excursion to Uros and Taquile for tomorrow at 7.10 in the morning.
After this time comparing prices, we have observed that the prices are quite uniform in all the tours and the bargaining exists at a low level as we commented in the previous days that had happened to us with the taxis.
Commenting on this with several people in the country, we have been told that they have reached agreements between them to give the same prices, since if they were not operating the business and in the end with so much lower prices, they did not earn anything.
Exhausted, we will rest in our room at the Qelqatani Hotel, which today has been a very long day and tomorrow, Lake Titicaca, one of our dreams, awaits us.