Daily Archives: November 23, 2017

Peruvian coffee

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I’ve decided that the best part of Cuzco is the coffee. This, however, is just because the coffee is so bad in the rest of the country!

The museum of coffee in Cuzco.  It’s less a museum and more of a cafe.
From what I gather, Peruvians don’t really drink coffee.  So when you order coffee in most of Peru you get something quite interesting.

Coffee, as served in Paracas.
That little jug on the right contains coffee.  The tea pot contains boiling water.  The idea is that you mix the coffee with the boiling water and you have Americano (kind of), or you drink it straight and you have espresso.
Peru actually produces coffee beans for export, but the majority of them are just that, exported.

Condors

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Before descending into Colca Canyon my group stopped at a viewpoint in the hopes of seeing condors.  There are quite a few viewpoints along the rim.  We initially stopped at Cruz del Condor, as seen here.

It’s a good idea to get here early, as once the large tour groups get here, it fills up pretty quickly.  The other reason to arrive early is that is usually when the condors appear.  They live on the side of the canyon and in the mornings when the hot air is rising out of the canyon they literally jump off the cliff and use the hot air to glide.
Condors weigh up to 15kg so they are not very good at flying, they focus on gliding instead.
We actually did not see any at the first viewpoint, but the tour provided bikes so we could cycle along the rim.  Biking downhill at 3700m is fine.  Biking uphill is another story!  Anyway, even with the difficulties, it was not long before somebody spotted a condor and then we spent an hour of so watching them and taking pictures.