El Condor Pasa

Just for the next few weeks, I have put a file on my World web site (which has a limit of 100 meg, which I'm nearly at). The file is a (very amateurish!) movie I've made that combines video and music that are both directly "of" a very special place: El Condor Pasa (The Condor Pass), a small recreational park about a 90 minute drive on an incredibly dusty but even more incredibly scenic dirt road along Colca Canyon, through two tunnels, from Chibay. Elevation of the park is 13,000 feet.

At the park, the elevation of the river in the canyon is about 10,000 feet. The tops of the surrounding peaks are nearly 20,000 feet. Thus the canyon is nearly two miles deep. Colca Canyon persists with such dimensions for over 50 miles - the world's deepest, and one of its longest, canyons. I have seen Colorado's "Grand" Canyon, and can say with authority that Peru's Colca Canyon makes it look like some logger dragged his axe for a little while.

The video is of the largest-winged birds in the world: Andean Condors - wingspread up to 10 feet - soaring at the Pass.

Peru is like Equador in that even in tourist gathering spots, there are relatively few signs, fences, or other devices to keep careless people from getting hurt or killed. I perched on a rock, in a place from which a fall would definitely have been fatal, to get the video. Panning to follow Condors flying overhead, while perched on said rock, in the wind, was a bit shaky... but I got 10 (fragmented) minutes of incredible video. A little over 2 minutes are included here.

The music is from a song named after the park, written in 1913 by a Peruvian composer based on Peruvian folk tunes, in this case performed by an Andean band named K'Ayataki that we heard in a pedestrian alley in Arequipa.

Wikipedia has the history of the song. You will find the melody very familiar from 1970. However, in the Peruvian cities we visited one still hears it frequently today.

With no further ado, here is the link:

    El Condor Pasa, the movie.