Colca Canyon

Colca Canyon is a canyon of the Colca River in southern Peru, located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Arequipa. It is Peru's third most-visited tourist destination with about 120,000 visitors annually. It is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the United States at 13,650 ft (4,160 m) depth, and is promoted as the "world's deepest canyon", although the canyon's walls are not as vertical as those of the Grand Canyon. The Colca Valley is a colorful Andean valley with pre-Inca roots, and towns founded in Spanish colonial times, still inhabited by people of the Collagua and the Cabana cultures. The local people maintain their ancestral traditions and continue to cultivate the pre-Inca stepped terraces.