Lunch was at a buffet in a restaurant jammed with other tourists. It was my first time eating alpaca and it was absolutely delicious.
We were in town a little bit doing some shopping where most bought some alpaca wool goods; I got a baby alpaca scarf and it is so soft. We left Chivay and headed a ways out of town to the Pre-Incan/Incan town of Uyu Uyu at 3,560m. It was a 2km hike in to the site up some elevation up some terraces at the end too.
There was active archeology going on in the site, reconstructing buildings stone by stone (each one gets a number so they ensure they are in the right place when they put them back). We even found some pieces of pottery on the ground as well as some obsidian fragments on the way into the hike. Jessica did a great job of explaining everything, even the Inca stairs (2 or three stones that jut out from the terrace walls).
We stopped down by the Colca River by a small arch bridge, and I absolutely had to get a picture.
From there we headed to the Condor Cross viewpoint at (3,800m) overlooking the Colca Canyon which is the deepest canyon in the world. It is really hard to capture or fathom the scale of it. We weren’t expecting to see any condors in the evening, but it was great to be there when there were no other tourists around at all.
Our last event of the day was an evening hike down towards the town of Capanaconde. I managed to take some great long exposure photographs post sunset.
The only issue I had taking one of them, was not seeing where I was leaning to place my camera, and I got stuck by a cactus in the shin…
Despite being barbed, thankfully it all came out in one piece without leaving anything in me. We finished up the hike and got down to Capanaconde (3,285m) to our hotel, showered up and had supper. I had a delicious alpaca steak for dinner.
Then it was having a drink while dealing with very finicky internet before heading to bed for an early start.
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