Colca Canyon Condor Watching Tour from Arequipa, Full Day

This Colca Canyon condor watching tour from Arequipa is built around one moment: the condor gliding over a canyon counted among the deepest anywhere. To get there, the guide and driver leave the city centre in the early morning, take the Yura road around Chachani mountain and cross Pampa Cañahuas, a stretch of the national reserve that is home to vicuñas.

Breakfast is in Chivay, then roughly an hour more on the road brings you to the Cruz del Cóndor lookout, the observation point over the canyon. Coming back, three villages, Pinchollo, Maca and Yanque, each have a colonial church. Two lookouts, Choquetico and Antahuilque, open onto the valley's farming terraces, with pre-Inca tombs and a stone-carved pre-Inca model of the same landscape.

• Cruz del Cóndor, for the condors
• Pampa Cañahuas, for the vicuñas
• Chivay, for breakfast, lunch if you choose it, and a walk through its streets
• Patapampa, 4,800 metres, for the line of volcanoes

There is time to rest in Chivay, and you can add the optional soak in the La Calera thermal baths, whose warm waters sit between 35 and 38 degrees Celsius. The day lasts about 14 hours and ends at your accommodation. Hotel pick-up, transport, a professional guide and breakfast are included. The Colca ticket and the hot springs are not. Wheelchair users cannot join.