The Gwinners: Catching up on the last few months

Well, we've been pretty busy lately, and have completely fallen behind with the Gwinners in Peru updates.
I was going to try to just hit on a few brief highlights, but couldn't pull it off. The problem is, we've seen such interesting places, I had a hard time just picking out a few photos. So, instead I'm going for installments.
This one dates back to Easter, when we took advantage of the 4-day holiday weekend to visit the beautiful city of Arequipa and nearby Colca Canyon.
Arequipa is southeast of Lima and located 2,300 meters or 7,500 feet above sea level. It is surrounded by the peaks of several volcanoes, which makes for a rather spectacular setting. The city buildings and streets are made of a white volcanic stone. It is a prosperous place, with a rich variety of great restaurants, a university-town atmosphere, and a proud local population. It is also the home of many churches, a museum dedicated to the "Ice Maiden, Juanita" (a sacrified Inca mummy found with several others on top of one of the nearby volcanoes), and the monastery of Santa Caterina, which is a village in and of itself.
Plaza del Armas, Arequipa

Santa Caterina Monastery

From Arequipa we traveled on to the Colca Canyon. This trip involves heading going over a 5,000 meter pass and through a natural reserve filled with vicunas (the wild relatives of llamas and alpacas) before descending a bit to reach the Colca Canyon. The villages by the Canyon are at 3,600 meters altitude, and the canyon itself is said to be the second deepest in the world (deeper than the Grand Canyon). The deepest canyon in the world is also in Peru and further inland from Colca. The scenery is spectacular. We took some amazing hikes through different types of terrain, including patchwork quilts of fields (many still on old Inca and Pre-Inca terraces), cactus covered areas that reminded us of the Grand Canyon, and pastoral landscapes that felt more like southern England. We also awoke early one day to see the famous condors, who come up from their nests within the canyon cliff walls to catch the early morning thermals.

Leaving Arequipa, the volcanoes are in the haze behind us.

Wild vicunas

Baby alpaca and big llama.

Going through the pass at 5,000 meters in altitude. The snow-capped volcanues are in the background.

Arriving in the Colca Canyon region

This farmwoman was collecting dried cow pies and presented the picture of poverty, which is much higher in the Andes than in either the Amazon or coastal regions of Peru.