Peguche and the Condor Park

The waterfall drops about 18 m inside a small eucalyptus wood. The eucalyptus is not a local tree. People brought it from Australia in the 19th century.

It is one of the most important holy places for the Kichwa people of the Otavalo valley. At midnight on 22 June, during the Inti Raymi festival, people take a special bath here to make themselves pure. We visit in November, so the place will be quiet.

A family workshop that shows every step of making cloth: shearing (cutting the wool), cleaning, spinning, dyeing and weaving on a loom worked by foot pedals.

One of the natural dyes is cochineal, a small white insect. It lives on the leaves of the prickly pear cactus and gives a strong red color.

The condor's wings reach up to 3.3 m from tip to tip, and it weighs up to 15 kg. Because it is so heavy, it hardly moves its wings. It glides on rising air for hours without effort, and it eats only dead animals.

Fewer than 150 condors are left in the wild in Ecuador. The birds in the park came here hurt or poisoned, and they will not go back to the wild. This is a rescue center, not a show.