place to spot Andean Condors. The road there was even worse than the main Ruta 40 road - it was just bumpy dirt and took over an hour to get there. When we did finally arrive though it was worth all the bashing around - the canyon was a breathtaking sight, especially after over 30 hours of just semi desert steppe!! It was an oasis of green with a river flowing through the bottom, and reminded us in many ways of the Grand Canyon. Once again though it started off on a bit of a sour note as we found out that despite the cave being an expensive add on to the tour we still had to pay to get in!! The guide who was with us had only started working for the company the day before and hadn’t been told that this was the case and was equally as shocked as we were and promised to complain to the company that nobody had been told this!! That aside though, the walk through the canyon was pretty amazing - we saw a couple of condors in their nest high up on the canyon wall, and then walked down to where the cave paintings

were. The hands that the place was named after were quite a sight to look at - there were literally hundreds of them - and they looked like they had been made with a spray can!! The reason for this we found was that they kind of were!! They had been made by these people placing their hands on the wall and blowing their paint at them using a pipe of some kind!! The paint they used was made from ground up rock and animal fat and urine - hence it lasting so well for nine thousand years!! There were also paintings of the people hunting the guanacos, a smaller relative of the llama which were present in large numbers in the area. After around an hour looking around the place we were back on the road feeling much better about today than yesterday. As we got further South the scenery became even more desolate, but with more views of distant snow capped mountains to the East. We caught sight of lots of Guanacos, and the odd Rhea, the South American version of the Ostrich or Emu!! We even saw a mother Rhea with a