We had a nice quiet night at this spectacular lookout. We were more than a little curious as to how proceedings would get started this morning after discovering that there was no afternoon activity yesterday. The security guards arrived by bus about 6:00am and the first of the vendors about 6:30am but by 7:00am when we departed there were no tourists, not all the vendors, and no condors flying (presumably because the thermal air currents had not yet started). On the drive back to Chivay we passed dozens of large and small tourists buses. We concluded that Cruz Del Condor only operates from about 7:30 to 11:00 am each day.

We took advantage of the thermal baths at Chivay to wash off some of the dust from the dusty road and were on our way retracing our steps back to highway 3S by 10:10am. It was a beautiful day as we climbed out of Chivay to the 16,040 ft high point of two days ago. To our amazement, at the top of the pass there were about a dozen local women selling souvenirs. The tourist buses stop at this pass for the fine views, and I guess enterprising locals do not let any opportunity go by.

The final 15 miles of the return to highway 3S was over some terribly pot-holed road and to add to the misery of this section of road we got a puncture. Normally no big deal, but with our damaged spare tire (from the Huaraz experience) this was a bit of a problem. I feared that the spare may not last long, so our priority became finding a repair shop - that is if we could cover the 10 miles of terrible road back to the highway.

Arequipa was the nearest sizable town, unfortunately 50 miles south west (the wrong direction). We got there, found a very small servicio llantas where they fixed the tire without the aid of any powered equipment, breaking the bead on the tire and removing the tire from the rim with specialized hand tools. As luck would have it I discovered that the spare tire carrier was beginning to fracture along a weld, the shop next door was a welding shop (?) and he welded the problem up for me. I must add that the welding would make my jeep club friends cringe - no welding mask, simply look between your fingers to soften the flash !!.

We were back on the road by 2:30pm with 4 good tires and headed north east towards Puno.