Condors over the canyon, and a lake at the top of the map

Colca Canyon, in the Arequipa region of southern Peru, reaches a depth of roughly 3,270 metres at its deepest point, which by most measurements makes it more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, though its walls slope more gently and its floor supports villages, terraced fields and a river rather than the sheer, largely uninhabited drop Arizona's canyon is known for. The comparison to the Grand Canyon tends to be the one visitors reach for first, but it undersells the place slightly: Colca is a working agricultural landscape as much as a geological spectacle, terraced since pre-Inca times by cultures who farmed the canyon walls long before the Inca absorbed the region into their empire.

Condors, riding the thermals at Cruz del Condor

The canyon's best-known residents are Andean condors, among the largest flying birds in the world by wingspan, which use the rising thermal currents generated as the sun warms the canyon walls to gain height with barely a wingbeat. Cruz del Condor, a viewpoint partway along the canyon rim, has become the standard place to watch this happen, generally in the mid-morning hours when the thermals are strongest, with condors sometimes passing close enough overhead for their shadow to cross the viewing platform before the bird itself comes into sight. Sightings are, as with any wild animal, not guaranteed, though the site's reputation for reliable condor activity is well established rather than a piece of tourist-board optimism.

Lake Titicaca, and islands built rather than found

East of the canyon, on the border with Bolivia, Lake Titicaca is commonly described as the highest navigable lake in the world, sitting at an altitude of around 3,800 metres, cold and clear enough that the Inca considered it the birthplace of their civilisation's founding myth. Its most distinctive settlements are the Uros islands, dozens of small floating platforms built and continuously rebuilt from layers of totora reed, a plant that grows in the lake's shallows and has been used this way for centuries, originally, according to local tradition, as a defensive strategy that let communities move their entire settlement if threatened. The islands remain inhabited today, their reed construction requiring regular renewal as the base layers slowly rot from below.

Taquile, and a textile tradition UNESCO recognised

Further out on the lake, Taquile Island holds a different distinction: its textile traditions, woven and knitted by both men and women following patterns that encode social and marital status, were recognised by UNESCO in 2005 as a masterpiece of intangible cultural heritage, one of relatively few textile traditions anywhere to receive that recognition. The island's slower pace, reached only by boat and with no motor vehicles, gives visitors a useful contrast to the more heavily visited Uros islands closer to the mainland.

The Amazon, a different kind of wildlife entirely

Some itineraries through southern Peru extend east again, beyond the Andes to the Amazon lowlands around Puerto Maldonado, trading condors and high-altitude lakes for an entirely different register of wildlife: macaws at clay licks, caimans along oxbow lakes, and a canopy dense enough to make every sighting a matter of patience rather than expectation. It is a considerable shift in both altitude and ecology within a single trip, from thin mountain air above four thousand metres to humid lowland forest within a couple of days of travel.

Altitude, and why the wildlife thins out with it

Both Colca and Titicaca sit at considerable altitude, the canyon rim above 3,600 metres in places and the lake itself close to 3,800, high enough that acclimatisation in Cusco or Arequipa beforehand makes a genuine difference to how much of either day a traveller enjoys rather than endures. The thin air also shapes what lives there: fewer species overall than the lush biodiversity of the Amazon lowlands, but a set of animals, the condor chief among them, distinctly adapted to conditions that would defeat most lowland wildlife entirely.

The dry season, May to September, gives the clearest conditions for spotting condors at Colca, since strong, reliable thermals depend on clear skies and warm, low-humidity air; the same months suit Titicaca's crossings, when the weather is settled enough for comfortable boat travel between the islands.