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THE TRUE PERU; From soaring condors to plunging gorges, the little-known Colca Canyon will take your breath away.

Article Excerpt
Byline: by Chris Leadbeater

THE ROAD from Arequipa to Chivay leaves you breathless. Literally. As the bus carrying my tour group inches up this highway in the southern Peruvian Andes, I can feel the air thinning with each mile.

By the time we hit the hamlet of Canahuas, 4,000 metres above sea level, I am having to focus on the simple ins and outs of breathing.

This is just the start. An hour latesr we break the 5,000-ms etre barrier - higher than Mont Blanc, the roof of Europe - and the world changes. The landscape has gone lunar, a plain of rocks and dust. And the oxygen seems to have gone entirely. I tilt my head back, open my mouth as wide as possible, and suck at the meagre atmosphere. Happily, there is good reason for this madness - as becomes clear as the road dips towards the relative sanity of 3,000 metres. In the valley below, the town of Chivay, all white walls and low houses, glints in the sunlight. Beyond is the geological scar that has lured us to this distant corner of South America.

Thirty-five miles long and 3,269metres deep at its most vertigo-inducing point, Colca Canyon is undoubtedly worth a flirtation with the side effects of...

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