Nature Ramble

This week my Nature Ramble is a little different. We’re going to Peru, to the Apurimac region upwind from Cusco.

Warning

I wish to warn you that some of the scenes in the video involve animal cruelty, although not of the bloody kind, it is still torment.

I do not condone bullfighting, neither the bloody Spanish spectacle nor the Peruvian.

Peru is one of the places in South America that has bullfighting. Not on the level of cruelty as traditional Spanish bullfights where the animal is torment by bloody injuries and is finally dispatched. In some communities, the event is a little like a rodeo with bull riding events.

But there is another aspect to bullfighting in the Peruvian Altiplano, the Andes that involves the magnificent condor.

“Each year high up in the Peruvian Andes, people celebrate the sacred condor in dozens of celebrations known as Yawar fiestas. These festivals are also threatening the last few hundred condors left in Peru because the birds are incorporated into bull fights in a fusion of Incan culture and Spanish colonial influence.” – The Guardian

The Guardian video is better than the one I have included, where you see the condor is finally released; unfortunately not all live to be returned to the wild.

The condor is a magnificent bird.

Seen here at Cruz del Condor in the Colca Canyon, 3,600 metres above sea level.

I have seen these giant birds here many times when I was working in Peru as a tour guide. They are truly one of nature’s spectacles. I have also seen bullfighting rings, but never witnessed a bullfight, either with or without condors.