I am in the planning stages of a trip to Peru in April and am interested in seeing Colca Valley, the condors, etc. I understand that while you can do it in a day (leaving at 3 AM) the preferred way of seeing it is to go on a tour and stay overnight.. It sounds like most of the tours include very humble hotel accomodations which we are not interested in. Does anyone have a recommendation for a tour that they found to be more upscale? I checked out Las Casitas del Colca but don't want cooking classes, etc. We just want airport transfers and a tour out to see the condors.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Nina at Ancient Summit: http://www.ancientsummit.com/welcome.shtml
found us this awesome inn: http://www.ancientsummit.com/welcome.shtml
and arranged a great tour out of Arequipa.

oops...wrong copy/paste for hotel: http://www.colca-lodge.com/quienes-somos.php

Most agencies in Arequipa will give you a choice of the type of accomodation that you want. Keep in mind that you're really only in the room for a few hours for one night anyway.

We stayed in Colca Lodge, and it was nice. There are hot thermal baths that are nice. You can go - and in fact you are recommended to go - after dark. So you can sit out in the hot springs and look at the stars - very nice. The food at the restaurant was very good as well.

We stayed at a nice hotel, Colca Lodge, in Colca Canyon thru the tour we booked. We were the only couple of the 7 or 8 on the tour that stayed there. They dropped us off and picked us up the next day. Lovely grounds and great scenery. Rooms were not luxurious but very nice. We were there a couple years ago and a newer more luxurious hotel was being built somewhere in the area. I'm sure the tour agents know about it. We booked thru the hotel we stayed at in Arequipa and the tour guid was very flexible with everything.

Good to know all this info. Thanks for all your input. I actually found the new luxury place that yestravel referenced. It is called Las Casitas del Colca. I think we may splurge and stay there.