Cusco - Arequipa

It seems a long time since I last updated, but guess it's only been a week or so.

The day after I last wrote, I treated myself to breakfast, it was one of the nicest ones I've had in a long time, huuuge portion of lovely fruit salad, granola and yoghurt, a cheese and ham croissant and a coffee - mmmmm!

So that was my last day in cusco, I had a place on the night bus to go to Arequipa. In the morning after my most yummy breakfast, I was planning to go to the inca museum.  I had to cross the plaza de armas (main square in cusco - actually, that name seems to be the main square in every south American city I've been to!) to get there. But as I did, I saw there were loads of people standing in it and that there was a service going on outside the cathedral. It looked like they had moved some of the statues inside the church, outside for it. When the service had finished, the two statues were carried around the plaza. I'm not sure if it was a memorial service, or if it was anotherbig religious service, someone I met after said there was usually one in cusco at the end of january so it might have been that, it was quite moving though and was on the news for a day or so afterwards.

So when I finally got to the inca museum, it was quite interesting, but only certain bits of it were translated into English so I didn't learn as much as I'd hoped.

The afternoon was boring, I was just killing time for my bus to arrive.

So the next day I was very happy to be in Arequipa. I got to my hostel which was a lovely family run place with really friendly owners. I booked dorm room but that was already full so I got a private room for the same price - bonus!  The only shame was that the kitchen was a bit gross and I didn't fancy cooking there which was annoying as I'd been eating out loads recently and was looking forward to doing some cooking myself.

It was really refreshing to be somewhere new and I had a nice time planning what I was going to do until my flight from Lima in a few weeks time.

The bus that took me to Arequipa was really posh! It was great! Big seats, pillows and blankets etc etc

So once I'd had my breakfast in Arequipa, I got planning for going to colca canyon and what I was going to do after that. I found a good company to do the tour with and sorted out my next bus to take me onto nasca right after my colca canyon trip (with the nice posh bus company again!!)

After a most productive morning, I had some lovely falafel for lunch and then went to the museum to see an inca mummy. The museum was good, learnt about the Incan mummy that was sacrificed to the gods on top of a volcano. It had been preserved in the ice for centuries, then when a nearby volcano erupted in the 1990s, people went up to explore and discovered lots of remains that had been frozen in the snow until now, but the nearby eruption had melted lots of the snow.  It was interesting.  Then I went for a walk up to a viewpoint to look at mount misti, a volcano.

As I had to be up for 3am the next day and was tired from not much sleep on the nightbus, I had a very early night.

The next day was really good but really hard. I was up at 2.30 for my pick up at 3.00... Which didn't turn up until 3.50 - grump! The drive was quite long, about 4 hours or so. We got to the condor lookout point at about 8.45 and stayed there for about an hour. We didn't see anything at first, but then we finally saw 4 condors which was great. Apparently we were quite lucky to see them as there are only 35 of them in the whole of the colca canyon and they tend to fly towards the coast in the rainy season.

After that we drove to a village at the top of the canyon. We had a little wait around and then had lunch and I met my othet co-travellers. There were 5 of us in our little group and we got on really well which was good :-)

After lunch it was time to climb down 1000m or so to the base of the canyon. The descent felt really long and the path was made of loose stones and dry dirt so it was quite slippy in places. Hard on the knees.

We finally got to the bottom after about 4 hours, had a little break by the river and then had to ascend 350m or so to the little village where we did a homestay.

We had a nice tea there and ate in the kitchen. In the kitchen there were loads and loads of guinea pigs!! They lived in a warm hole under the stove!! There were loads of them and some cute little baby ones 2 weeks old as well. Fortunately we didn't have guinea pig for tea (I was worried as it's a Peruvian delicacy)! I was a bit worried beforehand though, I don't think I could have brought myself to try it!!

The next day, after yummy banana pancakes for breakfast, we walked along for an hour or so before descending to the base again to a little oasis. It was lovely and sunny and there was a pool at the little resort which was lovely and refreshing! We stayed there for about 4 hours before the ascent. It only took us about 2.5 hours but my legs were really tired! Don't think they'd properly recovered from the bad inca trail day. But we got to the top and had a lovely hot shower before going to tea.

Dinner was pretty gross, some rice and chicken thing with lots of bone and other bits still in it :-( but then later on in the evening, someone from our group got the munchies and we had chocolate :-)

The third day of our tour we didn't do all that much really, we went to some thermal spring place and had lunch and then headed back. We were supposed to stop at a viewpoint where you could see all the volcanoes in the area, but the cloud was down so we couldn't!

Got back to Arequipa in time for me to grab my bag and head to the bus terminal. I got there a bit early but was glad I did as the lovely bus company departure lounge was very swish with Internet and free drinks :-)

Another night bus took me to Nasca.