Colca Valley: villages and agricultural terraces
There is one way to see the Colca Canyon that most travelers know: from the rim, looking down. And there is another way that almost no one plans with the same dedication: exploring the valley that surrounds the canyon, stopping in its villages, walking alongside the agricultural terraces, and understanding that the most impressive landscape […]
Trekking in the Colca Canyon: routes and difficulty
Traveling through the Colca Canyon by bus from Chivay to Cruz del Cóndor and returning to Arequipa the same day is seeing the canyon. Going down to the bottom is something else. The moment the trail leaves the paved road at the San Miguel Viewpoint and begins descending along the loose-dirt slope toward the river […]
Hot springs in Chivay: a complete guide to La Calera
After a day on the road from Arequipa, crossing Patapampa Pass at 4,800 meters and having the first encounter with the Colca Valley, the body asks for exactly what La Calera offers: hot water, relative silence, and time without any specific objective. The hot springs of Chivay are not a luxury or a secondary attraction […]
Andean condor sighting in the Colca
The question of how far in advance you need to book the Inca Trail is one of the most important ones to answer correctly. There is no way to recover once the spaces for a date are sold out: the permit does not appear at the last minute, there is no waiting list, and no […]
Cruz del Cóndor: schedules, how to get there and what to expect
The Cruz del Cóndor Viewpoint is the most visited spot in the Colca Canyon and one of the most visited places in all of Peru. The reason is not the landscape, although the scenery is extraordinary. The reason is the Andean condor. Every morning, when the canyon walls begin to warm up with the sun […]
Cabanaconde: the deepest town in the canyon
There is a fundamental difference between seeing the Colca Canyon and being inside it. Most travelers who visit Colca on a standard two-day organized tour see it from above: from the Cruz del Cóndor Viewpoint, from the Antahuilque and Huayrapunko viewpoints, or from the restaurant terraces in Chivay. Cabanaconde is the town where that distinction […]
Chivay: Complete guide to the Colca village
Chivay is not the most photographed destination in the Colca Valley. That place belongs to the Cruz del Cóndor Viewpoint, 45 kilometers to the northwest. Chivay is something else: it is the town where you spend the night before seeing the condors, where you have dinner after a day on the road from Arequipa, where […]
Pichu Pichu Volcano: the forgotten guardian of Arequipa
Of the three volcanoes surrounding Arequipa, Pichu Pichu is the one that appears least often in the city’s tourist photographs and the one few travelers know by name. Misti draws attention because of its almost perfect cone and its visibility from nearly every point in the historic center. Chachani impresses with its 6,057-meter height and […]
How to get to the Colca Canyon from Arequipa
Colca Canyon is 151 kilometers from Arequipa by road. In terms of distance, that is not much, but the route crosses a mountain pass that exceeds 4,800 meters in altitude before descending into the valley, making the drive one of the most spectacular journeys in southern Peru regardless of how it is done. There is […]
Ampato Volcano: the mountain of the Mummy Juanita
Ampato is not the volcano most visible from Arequipa. It lies 80 kilometers northwest of the city, in the province of Caylloma, on the southern side of the Colca Canyon, and its 6,288-meter summit only appears on the horizon from specific points in the city with good visibility. But it has something none of the […]