Mountains

We went to Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world. The deepest is a few hundred km away, Cotahuasi Canyon, but would take at least a day to get there, provided the road is actually passable. Colca Canyon is famous for its farmland views and the possibility of sighting the Andean Condor, one of the largest birds in the world. The drive from Lima to Chivay (in Colca Canyon) is rather nice: sandstorms, 1000m drops, winding roads with plenty of switchbacks, falling rocks, gutted dirt roads, lots of dust, steep climbs, views of altiplanos, vicuñas and the other andean dromedaries, ichu, etc, etc. Oh, supposedly the highest sand dune in the world is along that path, just outside of Nazca.

There's nothing like the air at 4000m. I'd like to own a hotel and bar up in Chivay, i bet it'll start doing very, very good business up there in a couple years.

Also close to Nazca (the place mainly famed for its lines, like the one on my arm) is a 1700 year old aqueduct, still in use. I got to crawl through part of it - it is too low to stand up in and very narrow, probably much like the tunnels the Viet Cong built during the Vietnam War. These Nazca were quite smart; one reason the aqueduct is still in use is that it uses redundant supplies of water: some coming from the closest river and some coming from the mountain springs. More redundancy is built in for the water to areate - the aqueduct itself runs underground (the area gets quite hot and dry), with entrances every few meters. These entrances are spiralled in different directions so that any way the wind blows, air will blow into the well and provide oxygen for the water.