I had a sleepless night on the bus from Nasca to Arequipa and when I arrived in the city I immediately ran around trying to organise a cycling excursion on the Chachani mountain, which had been highly recommended to me. Once that was booked in for the afternoon I went to see the pretty Santa Catalina monastery - it is a beautiful complex of brightly-painted old convent buildings and collections of related art and artefacts (it was rather over-hyped by the guide book though).

Afterwards I had an alpaca steak for lunch in a balcony overlooking the Plaza de Armas. Arequipa's main square is dominated by the huge Cathedral and all the buildings around the square are in the same architectural style - it looks very impressive, especially with the fantastic backdrop of El Misti volcano.

In the afternoon a few of us embarked on the cycling trip which proved disastrous. When I booked it I was told that we would drive in a van for an hour up Chachani mountain and then cycle for 3-4 hours. It turned out that it was actually 3-4 hours driving for one hour's cycling. As the van climbed the mountain we grew increasingly impatient and frustrated - our guide, Gonzalo, didn't speak any English and we didn't get very far in trying to understand why it was taking so much longer than we expected. Meanwhile, the weather took a freakish turn for the worse, becoming bitterly cold and very foggy (from what I could understand from Gonzalo this weather was very unusual and unexpected); none of us were dressed for the cold.

When we reached the summit at 5,000 metres above sea level, we finally got on the bikes but it was freezing cold and visibility was minimal! The rocky dirt-track had lots of hairpin bends - it was challenging and some of the bikes were not in great shape, with gears or brakes that weren't working properly. Unfortunately this meant some of the group couldn't carry on for very long and after 20-30 minutes had to stop cycling and continue in the back of the van. My bike was working fine and going very fast, in fact it almost felt like it had a motor - I was having to brake even going uphill! At one point I was zipping along and got stuck in a dip in the middle of the track, rapidly approaching a big rock; the dip was too deep for me to steer out of and I was going too fast to stop in time so I hit the rock very hard and went flying over the handlebars, landing on my head! Thank God I was wearing a helmet, gloves and pads! Joel was ahead of me and saw this all happening - he came running over to check that I was okay. I was in shock but everything felt okay, I had cut my arm and leg and had a black eye where my sunglasses had bashed into my face (I was lucky they didn't go into my eye!). I dusted myself down and carried on a while longer but I got so cold that I had to give up and join the other girls in the back of the van. As I thawed out, the pain started to kick in!

Only the boys continued on to the end of the track at 4,000 metres above sea level. The whole cycling trip was a shambles and I felt guilty that I had roped the others into it! On the upside, we did have a fantastic view of the sunset as we came down the mountain. Gonzalo took our contact details to send us some photos that he'd taken but he turned out to be a bit of a weird stalker, plaguing all the girls with strange messages!

In the evening we went out to a great Asian restaurant for Sebastian's birthday. We were joined for dinner by Betzy and her group. However, we were so knackered from our cycling adventure that we didn't stay out very late.

The following morning we had to be out early to begin our trip into the Colca Valley (see separate blog entry).

A couple of days later we returned to Arequipa from the Colca Valley just in time to catch the start of the sunset up on the hill at Yanahuara Square and then quickly taxi it over to the Plaza de Armas to see the fabulous pink sky over the main square and the Cathedral. We stayed there for a drink at a rooftop bar and so we saw the square lit up at night too - it was beautiful!