We were waiting in the hostel lobby for our promised transfer. It was about 15mins till the bus left and there was no sign of the bus, pretty annoyed we jumped into a taxi and headed of to the bus station ourselves. We found the bus and realised the bug*er had put us in the rubbish seats on the top floor so we went back inside and payed extra so we could sit in the good seats downstairs. We then noticed that the cheeky barstward had put the departure tax stickers over the price, the tickets we payed 30soles for we only worth 15soles. Raging we decided never to trust the lying cheating touts ever again.

Brid got chatted up by some 17year old boy on the bus who was headed to Arequipa to try and become a doctor. At first he didn't realise we were together as we were sitting in different seats, he looked gutted when he realised i was there too, i reckon he thought he was gonna get himself a Irish visa/girlfriend. He left her with about 19 E-Mail address's which was a bit weird but pretty funny.

Arrived in Arequipa and people here drive even more madly than the rest of South America. Checked into the Home Sweet Home hostel which had the coolest little boxer which was slightly bigger than a puppy. It liked shoes a bit to much though as he was always trying to eat mine and was difficult to calm down once you wound him up. I still wasn't feeling 100%, we only really wanted to do the Colca Canyon here, the 2nd deepest canyon in the world, slightly less deep that one 100miles away also in Peru but there didn't seem to be any tours to go there. We check out the start times of the tour and they were all really early, i wanted another day to get better so we decided to leave it for a day, hoping i'd be ok the next day. Went to a nice Italian restaurant for Dinner, they had the best tomato soup. Went back to the hostel as i was feeling crap via the pharmacy to buy some antibiotics, felling the worst ever that night, even worse than Puno. At one point i thought i had malaria, horrible.

Next day and i was feeling ok during the day, didn't do much today except go and see a mummy that was found in the mountains close to here, it looked pretty horrible, it was pretty well preserved as it had been buried under snow for 300 hundred years. Brid hunted out a crepery and had a banana crepe. Wasnt sure if the antibiotics i got were working we headed back to another pharmacy to get something stronger. We weren't sure what was in them so brid checked on the internet, turned out to be some horse tranquilizers or something. Decided to book the Canyon tour for the day after next as i didn't want to feel like death during it.

Had a lie in today, then headed to the Catalina convert that was in the middle of town, we bumped into one of the girls that we did the inca trail with, she was with 3 other folk so we all wandered around the convent for a couple of hours, as boring as i had imagined convents to be it turned out to be pretty interesting and they had a nice cafe that had good chocolate cake. Booked our canyon tour. Later on we met the girl nikki again and headed off for a baked potato place we found round the corner. Said our final goodbyes to Nikki and headed back to the hostel to play with the dog.

Up at 2:30am to meet the bus for the tour, tried to get some sleep i the bus but it was pretty uncomfortable, after 3 hrs in the bus we eventually reached the canyon, it was here were found out we wouldn't even get to see the deepest part of the canyon. Being the whole reason i wanted to see it in the first place i was pretty annoyed. Stopped at a small hotel for breakfast which was no more than a piece of bread. At the deepest part the canyon in 4200metres deep, 3000metres deeper than the Grand Canyon, i would have liked to seen this bit but we had to make do with a 2000metres deep part that had some Condors flying about beside it. Got speaking to an English guy and a swedish girl who were travelling together and spent most of the day speaking to them, luckily they didn't want to go on the expensive lunch either so we headed off and found a cheap cafe in town. After the tour we headed off for some more baked tatties and then headed to bed, hopfully gonna get to Chile tomorrow as we dont have that much time left in South America.