A little bird told me that there was something on the news there about an earthquake in Peru? I haven't heard any of the reports, nor do I know where the earthquake reportedly took place, but there was one here on Wednesday night! I apparently lived through some pretty big ones in Mexico, but the truth is that I don't really remember them. So I count Wednesday's as my first earthquake! It wasn't very big, I don't think, although people were definitely talking about it the next day. I was sitting on my bed, reading, around 9 0r 9:30 at night and all of a sudden I realized that the bed was shaking very faintly. The shaking grew at little stronger and a little stronger, and I looked up and realized that other things in the room were trembling, too. At this point it dawned on me that we were having an earthquake (I know, right? Wow... smart.) Lucy called for me from down the hall to put on my shoes and go outside in the garden, but by the time we all made it out there, it was over. Exciting! My teacher told me the next day that Arequipeños believe that earthquakes are the earth "unloading", and that they were are growing nervous because they hadn't had an earthquake in so long, and were afraid the next one might be big.

Alright, without further ado, more pictures from last weekend! The bus ride to the canyon from Arequipa was about three hours long, with lots of stops to take pictures (of clouds, in our case) and buy souvenirs and use the restroom. The slow ascent is purposeful: to prevent altitude sickness.

Here are my favorite little fuzzy alpacas. I'm not sure why I think they are so funny, but I do.

This is the so-called "Lookout of the Andes". Altitude here is 4,910 meters (or 16,109 feet, for those of you who, like me, can't do the conversion.) It supposedly has amazing panoramic vistas of five surrounding volcanoes and their mountain ranges... none of which we could see. Plenty of tour busses, though, and local women hawking traditional textiles as well as more touristy alpaca hats with "Peru" written on them.

A "traditional" mountain hut? I'm actually not totally positive; I'm pretty sure it is just there for tourist consumption. The many little cairns covering the mountainside supposedly bring good luck in love and life to their builders (a wishing-well of sorts.)

On Saturday night, we slept in the small town of Chivay, which is located very near the opening of the canyon. We were taken to a natural hot springs pool for a couple of hours, from which you could enjoy a nice view as well as a cold beer (and I did both.) Then, for dinner that night, we were all taken to the same restaurant to eat typical dishes and take in a traditional music and dance show. I loved the music and ended up buying a CD at the end of the evening. The dance was less interesting, although the costumes were elaborate and gorgeous.

Literally about five seconds after I took the picture above, the dancers all let go of their partners and turned to the crowd to pull in participants. One of them came to my table and grabbed my hand. So I tried to follow along in the dance that honestly seemed like it would never end (also, the air is REALLY thin up there!) One of the major disadvantages to traveling alone is that there was no one to take a picture of me looking utterly ridiculous.

The next morning, we were up bright and early for our trip down the canyon about an hour, to try to spot some condors hunting in the morning! This picture I took from inside the bus, but it still gives you an idea of how beautiful the canyon was. You can see the ancient terraced farming system that is still used.

Flight of the condors! These guys can be HUGE: up to 3m wingspan and 1m high, weighing about 30-35 pounds. They don't actually hunt, they scavenge. So twice a day, they glide and swoop around the sky, looking for dead quarry.

In this picture you can see four condors in the distance. For about ten really amazing minutes, we had six or seven fully-grown condors soaring right above our heads at the same time, putting on a show. It was really hard to capture with a camera.

This is an adult male; you can tell by the white ring at the neck.

Self-portrait when the condors had all moved on.

Along the way back up the canyon, we stopped at a tiny little town for more pictures, trinkets and crafts shopping. This is a woman peeling a tuna for me, or prickly pear fruit.

Local llama dressed up for the tourists gets a snack of orange rind.

The two young boys from the family in my tour group pose with a little local girl and her baby goat.