Colca Canyon

The Colca Canyon plunges into the high country of southern Peru, a gorge so deep, more than twice the Grand Canyon at its greatest, that the river at its bottom runs in perpetual shadow far below terraced slopes still farmed as they were in Inca times. Each morning Andean condors, among the largest flying birds on Earth, rise from the canyon walls on the warming air, drawing travellers to the rim. It is a landscape where dizzying geology and a living agricultural heritage meet.

Carved by the Colca River where it cuts down off the Andean highlands, the canyon reaches a depth of around 3,270 metres from rim to river, making it one of the deepest in the world, and runs roughly 70 kilometres through volcanic country. The surrounding heights, snow-capped peaks and old lava flows, frame a valley whose floor lies far below the surrounding altiplano. Hot springs, fed by the region's volcanic plumbing, bubble up along its course, and the great condors patrol its thermals.

The Colca Valley was terraced and farmed for well over a thousand years, first by the Collagua and Cabana peoples and then under the Inca, and many of those stone terraces are still cultivated today, growing maize, quinoa, and potatoes. Spanish colonists gathered the population into villages whose whitewashed churches still stand. Long isolated, the valley opened to the wider world only in the late twentieth century, and it now balances tourism, drawn by the condors and the depths, with one of the Andes' most enduring farming cultures.

• Grand Canyon
  The Colorado River's mile-deep masterpiece carved through northern Arizona compared with
• Andes
  The world's longest continental mountain range, the 7,000-km spine of South America located in
• Peru
  Heartland of the Inca, gateway to the Amazon located in
• South America
  A continent of the Andes, the Amazon, and dazzling extremes located on