Beautiful Views

If You decide to travel to the Colca Canyon, you will find one of the best miraculous places to visit in Peru and in South America, will be pleasantly surprised with amazing beauty scenes, and just will find a gateway into the world of wonder!

A Peruvian famous novelist, politician, journalist, and essayist Mario Vargas Llosa described Colca as "The Valley of Wonders." That is no literary overstatement. Colca is one of the most scenic regions in Peru, a land of imposing snowcapped volcanoes, narrow gorges, artistically terraced agricultural slopes that predate the Incas, arid desert landscapes and vegetation, and remote traditional villages, many visibly scarred by seismic tremors common in southern Peru. Some of Peru's most recognizable wildlife, including llamas, alpacas, vicunas, and the celebrated giant Andean condors, roam the region. Colca Canyon is a canyon of the Colca River in southern Peru. It is located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Arequipa. It is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the United States. However, the canyon's walls are not as vertical as those of the Grand Canyon. The Cotahuasi Canyon to the northwest is a deeper canyon at 11,488 ft (3,501 m). Since they are such major features of the landscape, the Colca and Cotahuasi canyons are both easily recognizable in even low-resolution satellite photos of the region. The name Colca refers to small holes in the cliffs in the valley and canyon. These holes were used in Inca and pre-Inca times to store food, such as potatoes and other Andean crops. They were also used as tombs for important people. The Colca Valley is a colorful Andean valley with towns founded in Spanish Colonial times and formerly inhabited by the Collaguas and the Cabanas. The local people still maintain ancestral traditions and continue to cultivate the pre-Inca stepped terraces.

The Colca River takes its beginnings high in the Andes at Condorama Crucero Alto and changes its name to Majes, and then to Camana before reaching the Pacific Ocean. Parts of the canyon are habitable, and Inca and pre-Inca terraces are still cultivated along the less precipitous canyon walls. The small town of Chivay is on the upper Colca River, where the canyon is not so deep but where many terraces are present in the canyon and continue for many kilometers downstream. As the canyon deepens downriver, a series of small villages is spread out over the approximately 35 miles (56 km) between Chivay and the village of Cabanaconde. The canyon reaches its greatest depth and, in contrast, about 15 miles (24 km) to the southeast rises the 20,630-ft (6,288-m) Nevado Ampato, a snow-capped extinct volcano. The valley lies in the Callalli and Huambo districts of the Caylloma Province.

The canyon is a sweet home to the Andean Condor (Vultur gryphus), a species that has seen world-wide effort to preserve it. The condors can be seen at fairly close range as they fly through the canyon walls and are an increasingly popular attraction. 'Cruz del Condor' is a popular tourist stop to view the condors, the pass where condors soar gracefully on the rising thermals occurring as the air warms. The condors are best seen in the early morning and late afternoon when they are hunting. At this point the canyon floor is 3,960 ft (1,200 m) below the rim of the canyon. The La Calera natural hot springs are located at Chivay, the biggest town in the Colca Canyon.

Nowadays, travelers from all over the World are spending much time in the Colca Canyon, observing its amazing beauty, quiet traditional life, and options for outdoor adventure sports, but the number-one draw remains the practically most tremendous wonder of seeing imposing, giant condors with massive wingspans soar overhead at Cruz del Condor lookout point over Colca Canyon and head out along the river. The best time to visit Colca is throughout the dry season, May through November, and the condors put on their best show from June to September. Take notice of: The Colca Valley is lush and green just after the heavy rains from January to March, but most of the rest of the year it is arid and dusty. Nonetheless very sunny during the all day, it can also get quite cold at night - which is not surprising, as Chivay is much higher than Cusco.

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is the largest steep-sided gorge in the world carved by the Colorado River in the U.S. state of Arizona. It measures up to 18 miles across, with an average width of 10 miles; its average depth is one mile. Within this Delaware-size area of eroded rock rise mountains higher than any in the eastern United States and that dark walls of gorges millions of years old. Agent of this scene, the Colorado River drops 2,200 feet over nearly 200 rapids as it roars through the Canyon toward the Gulf of California.

Numbers, however, tell only a small part of the canyon's story and merely hint at the magic of its myriad hues, strata, spires, and gorges. The place is more than the sum of its parts-so much more that neither the eye nor the mind of the beholder can encompass more than a small part of it at one time. As John Wesley Powell, whose party in 1869 became the first to traverse the canyon by river, wrote, "You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted."

At the canyon's bottom, a mile below the rim, the Colorado River slices through Granite Gorge, exposing some of the oldest rocks visible anywhere on the earth. Nearly two billion years old, the Vishnu schist is the gleaming black remnant of a once towering mountain range. Some 500 million years after it formed, vast rifting and faulting laid it down the tilted, colorful sediments of the Grand Canyon Series atop schist. Ten distinct layers of sandstone, limestone, and shale bespeak the advance and retreat of ancient seas, the building up and wearing down of mountains, the meandering of rivers over 600 million years. At either rim, visitors to date perch atop creamy Kaibab limestone cliffs studded with fossilized sponges, corals, snails, and shellfish that inhabited a warm inland sea 240 million years ago. Though rock layers once covered this ancient seabed, all geologic signs of the more recent Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras wore away eons ago.

Compared with the about two-billion-year process of deposition, erosion has set a brisk pace. The Grand Canyon itself is less than six million years old, created only since the Colorado River changed course and began flowing through the ancestral Colorado plateau. In just two million years, the river sliced to within 500 feet above its current depth. Wind, rain, snow, heat, and cold have helped the process along. So has the flow of hundreds of tributaries, many of which are dry washes, filled intermittently by snowmelt and summer thunderstorms. Over eons these streams have created " a composite of thousands, of tens of thousands, of gorges," as Powell marveled. "Every one of these...is a world of beauty in itself."

What's more, The Grand Canyon is not only a slice of North America's geologic history but also a cross section of ecozones. Between rim and river, travelers find the same variety of ecological regions they would encounter on a trip from Canada to Mexico - from the snowy evergreen woods of the boreal zone to the arid depths of the lower Sonoran, where summer temperatures soar above 100oF and tenacious shrubs like creosote and ocotillo predominate. In all, the Grand Canyon provides rich and diverse habitat for more than 400 vertebrate species and 1,500 plants.

The human presence here goes back at least 4,000 years, beginning with hunter-gatherers who deposited delicate split-willow animal figures in limestone caves. Before disappearing about A.D. 1150, ancient Pueblo peoples who had lived in and around the canyon for a millenium or more left a rich legacy of pottery, baskets, pictographs, and granaries and other structures in thousands of sites. The Havasupai people in the region today trace their presence back hundreds of years. During the 20th century, humans have had a far more profound impact on the Grand Canyon than in all of the past. By 1900, the canyon was already a well-known destination, thanks to written accounts by explorers and scientists and to the glowing canvases of Thomas Moran. And after Grand Canyon National Park was established in 1919, the number of visitors continued to increase exponentially: About five million people now visit the canyon each year by car, on foot, atop mules, on motorized rafts, and in helicopters. Some of the human impact, such as the view-marring haze drifting in from power plants and urban centers, has been indirect. In 1963, the Glen Canyon Dam ended the Colorado River's free flow at the Grand Canyon's entrance, and that single action has changed the canyon more than any other event in human times.

Talking more about this amazing place, let's kick around the most supreme viewing places to observe the canyon. Lipan Point is a promontory located on the South Rim. This point is located to the east of the Grand Canyon Village along the Desert View Drive. There is a parking lot for visitors who care to drive along with the Canyon's bus service that routinely stops at the point. The trailhead to the Tanner Trail is located just before the parking lot. The view from Lipan Point shows a wide array of rock strata and the Unkar Creek area in the inner canyon.

Probably the most heart-stopping view of the canyon is had from the Toroweap Overlook (Tuweep) situated 3000 vertical feet above the Colorado River, about 50 miles downriver from the South Rim and 70 upriver from the Grand Canyon Skywalk. This region — “One of the most remote in the United States” according to the National Park Service — is reached only by one of three lengthy dirt tracks, that start from St. George, Utah, Colorado City or near Pipe Spring National Monument (both in Arizona). These roads traverse wild, uninhabited land for 97, 62 and 64 miles respectively. Remember that The Grand Canyon we visit today is a gift from past generations, a visit to this area can be very awe-inspiring, exciting and challenging. The Park Service manages the area for its primitive values and, therefore, improvements and services are minimal. Wander along a trail and feel the sunshine and wind on your face, attend a ranger program, follow the antics of ravens soaring above the rim, listen for the roar of the rapids far below, savor a sunrise or sunset - all this you can find at the astonishing Grand Canyon!

In this post I want to review such a beautiful place to visit and wonder like Iguazu Falls. Iguazu Falls, Iguassu Falls, or Iguaçu Falls are waterfalls of the Iguazu River situated on the borderline of the Brazilian state of Paraná and the Argentine province of Misiones. The falls split the river into the upper and lower Iguazu. Their name comes from the Guarani or Tupi words y (IPA:[ɨ]) (water) and ûasú (IPA:[wa'su]) (big). Legend has it that a god planned to marry a beautiful aborigine named Naipí, who fled with her mortal lover Tarobá in a canoe. In rage, the god sliced the river creating the waterfalls, condemning the lovers to an eternal fall. The first European to find the falls was the Spanish Conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541, after whom one of the falls in the Argentine side is named. The falls were rediscovered by Boselli at the end of the nineteenth century, and one of the Argentinian falls is named after him.

The waterfall system is made up of 275 falls along 2.7 kilometres (1.67 miles) of the Iguazu River. Location is at Latitude (DMS): 25° 40' 60 S ,Longitude (DMS): 54° 25' 60 W. A number of the individual falls are up to 82 metres (269 ft) in height, though the majority are about 64 metres (210 ft). The Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat in English; Garganta do Diabo in Portuguese), a U-shaped 150-metre-wide and 700-metre-long (490 by 2300 feet) cliff, is the most impressive of all, and marks the border between Argentina and Brazil. Two thirds of the falls are within Argentine territory. About 900 metres of the 2.7-kilometre length does not have water flowing over it. The edge of the basalt cap recedes only 3 mm per year. The water of the lower Iguazu collects in a canyon that drains into the Rio Parana in Argentina.

The falls can be reached from the two major towns on either side of the falls: Foz do Iguaçu in the Brazilian state of Paraná, and Puerto Iguazú in the Argentine province of Misiones as well as from Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) on the other side of the Parana river from Foz do Iguaçu. The falls are shared by the Iguazú National Park (Argentina) and Iguaçu National Park (Brazil). These parks were designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1984 and 1986, correspondingly.

On the Brazilian side there is a long walkway alongside the canyon with an extension to the lower base of the “Garganta del Diablo”. The Argentian access is facilitated by the Tren Ecológico de la Selva (Rainforest Ecological Train), which brings visitors to different walkways. The “Paseo Garganta del Diablo” is a one kilometer long way to bring the visitor directly over the falls of the “Garganta del Diablo”. Other walkways allow access to the elongated stretch of falls on the Argentinian side and to the ferry that connects to the San Martin island. The fall area provides good options for water sports and rock climbing. So, if you are a person who likes travelling in such a marvelous breathtaking sights and doing sports simultaneously, you are on making the right choice!