Petting Baby Alpacas in the Colca Canyon

After deciding on a day tour to the Colca Canyon, we could calmly explore the rest of the city.

Beautiful streets

Painter's street

we made our way to the highly acclaimed Santa Catalina Monastery. Gigantic! The monastery is like its own city with 16 streets covering an area of about 2 hectares! Simply unbelievable in size!

Entrance fees for this place are quite expensive, over 10€, but you get a cheap guided tour for about 2€ per person and a coupon voucher for the shops across the street - for example, a free pair of llama socks if you spend over 70€ 😂🙆

Back to the monastery - we were blown away by its ENORMITY!

Each nun had her own small apartment with a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, garden, and servant chamber, and maybe an extra room if she had a few slaves.

Today, each nun has her own room with a bathroom, but since there are no longer any slaves, they now cook for themselves in just one large kitchen.

The streets are beautifully designed, with red, white, or blue walls; flower pots

and a cute café in a courtyard.

The view from the terrace near the church is also very beautiful, overlooking the Andes and volcanoes in the background.

By the way, that used to be the laundry room 🙆

Since we had to leave early the next morning, we tried to go to bed early and failed miserably. After 5 hours of sleep, if that, the first alarm clock rang at 2:30 AM. The tour bus could arrive at 3 AM.

After the third alarm, we finally dragged ourselves out of bed at around 2:45 AM to get ready.

Slightly delayed, we stood at the door shortly after three, waiting for the minibus to pick us up 10 minutes later. (Unfortunately, not everyone was as well prepared as us, so we had to drive by one house twice because the girls weren't ready the first time 😑).

After 3 hours, we arrived at an altitude of 4,910 meters - the highest point of our tour. It was quite frosty at 6:30 AM up there! There was still frost at about -15°C everywhere. We weren't really prepared for that.

Then we continued to a small town where there were eagles, alpacas, and llamas.

Everywhere you find the same sweaters, bracelets, socks, etc. 🙈🙆

We also struck up a conversation with some people we had already identified as Germans in the monastery, and behold - they were also from Dresden. It turns out that a Brazilian in our bus also studied in Freiberg, as she told us during breakfast.

On the way back to the bus, we saw the baby alpacas, and I couldn't resist.

So fluffy! 😍

Next, we reached the theoretical highlight - I had already had mine with the alpaca - the Condor viewpoint. Our guide was nice and drove past the crowd at the first viewpoint, so we had 10 minutes just to ourselves.

After 10 minutes, we made our way to the other crowds. Here, we also saw a few condors from a distance, but it wasn't as spectacular anymore.

Tom and I had a laugh when we saw a small, slightly dented bird. We imagined it seeing the condor and pretending to be dead - as animals do to avoid worse 😵😵 And then it realizes it's a condor and that it used the wrong tactic.. 😬🐦 It managed to escape just in time with a screech 🐥😫... well, it was funny in that moment 😂😂

Afterwards, we stopped at another viewpoint, where they served tuna juice?! 😲 ... And guinea pigs - probably not common pets.

❤❤ into the suitcase!

The last stop before lunch was the hot springs, which looked better this time than on the Uyuni tour. So, over the rickety wooden bridge we went

and into the bathtub-warm water.

After an hour, we were called back with a friendly 'Vamos' (let's go). The guide must have been hungry...

The highlight of lunch: alpaca goulash - turns out those cute animals taste good too 🙈

Overall, we once again felt slightly rushed from one place to another, not really having time to truly enjoy the moment and just take in the surroundings - such a pity.

Next stop: Cusco, Peru

➡ Rainbow Mountain; Machu Picchu