"What Time do the Condors come out?"

I have finally slowed down to tourist time.  I remember my brother-in-laws' story about the moose crossing and the tourists in Northern B.C., and now I am asking around to find out when the best time of day it is to see the condors fly.  I had a conversation with a young guy who assured me that 6:00 am is the best time to see them.  He is probably right, but logistically that will be a tough nut to crack.

I think for the first time since I started this blog, I am actually planned ahead.  I don't know if that is such a good thing, as one never knows what the next day brings in this touring business.


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I wandered around town this morning, and took in the sights. While certainly part of the tourist scene, Chivay is pretty laid back.  I think the main reason there are so few touistas in town is that we are at the height of the rainy season. The nice Tourism lady provided me with a map of the area, as well as a chart confirming that February is the high point for rain, thunder, and lightening.  Well, I am here and I have rain gear....

The Colca Valley is the goal, and the Condors live and fly throughout the canyon...

 These people are very devout, and I was trying to get a shot of the cross cut into the nearby mountain...

I question whether a pub in southern Peru can really call itself "Irish", but what the heck, if the Irish really are upset, they can start a war over it...

All of the local bikes, of which there are many, have dirt tires..I wonder why that is??

The church is at the focus of the town plaza, and it is very Catholic from what I can tell.  I am drawn to these buildings, and certainly appreciate their architecture...but...a friend of mine said to me that "they build the Churches bigger than life so that the people will always have to look up.." I understand some of the history of the Church in the New World, in terms of the enslavement and the dislocation of the cultures, and certainly there was an agenda which did not respect the local values and customs..however it is clear to me that there is a place in the minds and souls of these people for a higher power.  They live and work in extraordinarily tough conditions, and for the most part seem to be doing it happily and with an inner contentment that I do not see in Northern American cities.   It is interesting for me to read that over 75% of the present worlds' Catholic population is located in Latin America and the southern hemisphere.  With the Pope's resignation, perhaps there will be a different focus in the coming years...

This depiction of the Condor is as close as I may get to the real thing, as the weather does not look promising, and if I were flying the deepest canyon in the world, I think I would stay in my nest...

A local apalca picture baby...

I took a tour of the local market.  Lots and lots of fresh products. I believe that there are thousands of different varieties of potatoes, for example.

Corn that is corn...

 These are the buttons from the top of cactus plants....

 I bought one, and it was sweet, with small seeds inside, like a pomegranate..

There are a series of statues in the plaza which are amazingly life-like.  I don't know the material which the artists used, but they are amazing.  

This guy seems to be ecstatic that he ripped a chunk of leather out of the belly of a fox, or some other creature....

This guy is wearing a mask because he is about to do some serious harm with his big sword...

 This guy is just plain happy because he has a dead squirrel and a flower....

She just don't care.....

 This fellow is celebrating with a big cup of coffee, or something...

Now this guy is my favourite.  I wonder if it is a coincidence that he is wearing military fatigues??

 Pretty life-like, eh?

This portrayal seems to be realistic, in that I have seen these huge flutes being played.

This wall mural was just plain weird...

 I wonder if this guy is a Canucks fan???

Local bike with a chain guard, and mud tires?  Should I be paying attention?

This fellow is working on an old sewing machine.  He and his shop reminded me  of the fellow in Cartegena who took 3 hours to repair my friends' Garmin.  Things are not made to be thrown away...

 These four characters and their charge had quite a conversation with the old guy tourist.  The young guy was in grade six, and very smart. He explained to me that he was going to be a mining engineer and mine for gold.  He wanted to know if there was a lot of gold in Canada.  I didn't tell him that I thought there were a lot of Canadian mining companies in Peru and that they should be hiring Peruvian mining engineers...

You can see that two of the five are without ice cream, so old guy bought a round and learned about when the condors come out...

 Young Ronald explained that the condors come out at 6:00 am, and that if I wanted to see them, I needed to leave from the village at 5:00 am on my moto.  He also warned me that they are so big that they routinely take away baby alpacas, such as "Blanchito" here.  He said she was only four days old....

Well, if I see any Condors carrying white apalcas, I will be convinced that they are truly huge birds...

Wikipedia says that they routinely reach a wingspan of 10 feet six inches 

In case they don't fly, or the rains come, or my batteries fail, this is what I am after:

Peru Revisited

In spite of the crooked cops, I am still very happy to be back in Peru.  The vibes are better and for the most part the scenery is as varied and moreso.  I hope I did not overstate the business with the insurance and the cops, as I think that two recent cases of crooked cops in my own province, one with a Vancouver cop selling weed, and the other where an RCMP officer killed a motorcyclist while driving drunk are better examples of a failure in the system.  Too often we ignore the errors in our own house, and point fingers elsewhere...

Puno Centro

Getting some of the mud removed..boots and face...

I decided to visit some Pre-Inca ruins at Sullistani.  The site was off the main road from Puno north,  and I was the first visitor at the site.

 The skies had cleared, and I was thinking that a good day of sun was in front of me...

Resident herd of sheep and the lama buddies..

Four  funery structures  overlooking a small lake

 The largest funery structure at the top of the site.  Lightening has struck this a number of times, before lightening rods were installed on the site.  Also, sismos, or earthquakes have damaged some of the ruins on-site.

 Lots of carved and hewn rocks about the site..

This circle of stones was determined to be of the Incan era, whereas much of the other constructs were of Pre-Incan times, with the people orginating from the Wari culture..

The inside view of the large funery structure.  The royalty were buried in these tombs..

The tomb had a dragon carved into the face of one of the rocks...

Other funery tombs on the site

A view towards the west from the top of the site...

To me, the planning and organization required to carve and place this huge stones is amazing...

Kind of looks like I would imagine Celtic Britain or Ireland to look like...

The ancient terraces, which were used as a basis for farming, can be seen in the hills surrounding the lake.  There must have been a very large population here at one time...

This guy is the resident watch cat.  He looked up from his cat nap, yawned at another tourist, and resumed his post...

 The watch rooster was much better at keeping an eye on the tourist..

Larry the Lama was snoozing in the sun..

It was still early in the morning, and between my map and Mr. Garmin, I thought that some sideroads would get me in the general direction of North....

Sure enough, there was some great riding and whenever  I got lost or turned around, some Peruvian would get me turned around.  I did have a few hairy moments when mud and single bike tracks were  the only options.  Blondy lost her shine and regained that mud-look...

I had to regain the main highway for awhile, and that went fine until I came upon an accident where a pickup had smashed into the front of a bus.  A few kilometers up the road, I stopped for cocoa tea, and the guy said that four people had been killed in the truck...he also pointed me in the right direction for Chivas, which was my destination.  I wanted to see the condors fly, and also to avoid the main highway.  I had been cruising between 3800 meters and 4100 meters for most of the day, and I was feeling acclimatized to the higher altitudes for the most part.


Obviously, I had spoken too soon about the good weather.  The road climbed and climbed and soon the elevation peaked out at 4800 and something meters.  I ran throught an hour or so of fog and slow driving.  When it cleared for a bit, everything was white and very Canadian-like!

 As they say, what goes up, must come down...I haven't ridden so many twisties since Ecuador, and the drop in elevation was most welcome, as I was freezing cold, and while my gear was keeping me dry, hands and feet were very cold...

I eventually arrived at my destination and found a hostal and a warm shower.  The condors will be there tommorow...

My route (more or less) from Puno towards the Condors..

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