While waiting for the bus I talked to some other travellers, so at least the time passed quickly. The bus ride was really bumpy. At one point the bus went down the wrong road and had to do a two-point turn to get headed back in the right direction. At first it was really weird because the road was right on a cliff and there were no guardrails, and the road itself was pretty narrow, but then I started laughing because only in Perú would this happen without people freaking out that the bus was going to go over the cliff.

Cruz del Cóndor is really pretty. There are mountains all around and the sun was bright and beautiful. It is a lookout point to watch the condors as they soar over the valleys and peaks. There were vendors there selling all sorts of things. I talked to some of the artists and bought a necklace, bracelet, some earrings made of silver and serpentina (aka ¨the Machu Picchu stone¨because it´s really commonly found in the mountains of Perú). Then I saw a lone condor gliding in circles over the lookout point. It was just circling gracefully around and around above us. I tried to take a picture but it didn´t turn out well. It sort of reminded me of how my family and I used to go down to Starved Rock to watch the bald eagles.

For a while I sat on the ledge overlooking the mountains, thinking and enjoying the scenery and sun. Then the bus came and I got back on to head back to Chivay. In Chivay we found a buffet lunch restaurant. The food was really good and there were surprisingly a lot of vegan options in the buffet. Peruvian food is so much better than Chilean food. It has a lot more flavor and tends to be more spicy.

Then I took the bus back to Arequipa, where I got to spend a little bit of time in town before the bus departed for Cusco. I got a vanilla-hazelnut soy latte at a place called Cusco Coffee Company and walked around looking in different shops. I ate in the falafel place before taking a cab back to the bus station for a very long and uncomfortable overnight bus to Cusco...

written by  Sara Florecita on September 13, 2010 from Cabanaconde, Peru
from the travel blog: año de dos inviernos (Chile 2010)
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cruz del cóndor y mucho tiempo en el bus

written by  lebron james shoes on September 27, 2010

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