Overview
Colca Canyon, a river canyon in southern Peru famed as one of the world's deepest, is a well-known trekking destination. It's a habitat for the giant Andean condor, on view from overlooks like Cruz del Condor.
Description
The canyon landscape comprises a green valley and remote traditional villages with terraced agriculture that predates the Incas. Its Colca River is popular for rafting. It’s not just the vastness and depth of the Colca that make it so fantastical, it’s the shifts in its mood. There are more scenery changes along the river canyon's 100km passage than there are in most European countries; from the barren steppe of Sibayo, through the ancient terraced farmland of Yanque and Chivay toward the cruising condors riding warm air currents, into the steep-sided canyon proper beyond Cabanaconde that wasn’t thoroughly explored until the 1980s. Of course we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to the vital statistics. The Colca is the world’s second-deepest canyon, a smidgeon shallower than its near neighbor, the Cotahausi, and twice as deep as the more famous Grand Canyon in the US. But, more than that, it is replete with history, culture, ruins, tradition and – rather like Machu Picchu – intangible Peruvian magic.
Chivay, Arequipa
Peru
URL:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/peru/arequipa-and-canyon-country/canon-del-colca