Goodbye to Peru

It´s been a long three and a half weeks in Peru, but I had one of the top experiences of my life - Machu Picchu.

Just got back from a day tour to the Colca Canyon. You know how I was bitching about starting to hike at 5am, well, today I got picked up at 2:10am for a day tour. I managed to get about 5 hours sleep which definitely helped since I wasn´t really able to sleep on the bus. The tour consisited of driving 3 hours from Arequipa until Chivoy. This town consisted of nothing. We ate the typical Peruvian breakfast offerred at hostels - butter, jam, a hollow bun and coca tea. Luckily I was prepared this time and had my backpack stashed with fruit and trail mix! ¨My Trailmix........¨
Drove to Cruz del Condor where the bus stopped and we all jumped out in hopes to see the giant condors take flight. We waited, and waited...about 30 minutes looking out into fog...excited I know. All of a sudden you hear someone yell ¨there´s one!¨ A mad rush of turning on cameras to catch a glimpse of this giant bird...the wingspan is over 3 meter long!!!! I think I heard it´s the largest bird in the world. Correct me if I am wrong. I could google it right now but dont´feel like it. Took a few cool pictures which I will post on Facebook for now. I´m trying to get an account set up with flickr...it´s supposedly much easier to download photos while keeping the quality.
Back in Arequipa for tonight, meeting up with a few people from the tour for drinks a little later on. Wont´be a crazy night since I have a 5 hour bus ride at 7:30am tomorrow to Tacna, Peru. So I could go hard tonight and sleep on the bus...we´ll see how it pans out. From Tacna, I have to take another bus across to Chile, and then another bus to my next destination, which at this point I´m thinking will be Santiago. The one downside is I heard the drive is over 25 hours!