We were still on the bus when the sun came up and it felt like we had a decent enough sleep through the night. There was still a lot of desert and canyons down the coast which is supposedly due to the cold water currents running north up the coast. Despite the sunshine there is very little evaporation of sea water to come onshore as rain.

As we headed inland towards Arequipa, it became a little bit more fertile with fields that had crops in them. The bus eventually arrived to Arequipa terminal terrestre an hour late, about 10am, and we took a taxi towards the city centre and our hostel, Posada del Kuraka. Our room wasn't ready so we left our bags and went to look for a cafe for a late breakfast.

We walked down towards the main square, Plaza de Armas, and on the main pedestrian street we came across Capriccio. The menu looked okay and they served proper coffee so we decided to give it a try. Maria went safe with an American Breakfast while David threw caution to the wind and went for the local Criollo Breakfast. Maria's breakfast came first and David was beginning to think he made a bad choice, there was a basket full of bread rolls with jam and butter plus a plate of eggs and bacon. David's plate arrived with a lump of meat, some salad and fried banana and looked small in comparison. Then a loaf of ciabatta style bread was set down. Then he tasted the meat...whoa!! It was like a chunk of deep pork belly and so delicious. Even the salad turned out to be a special spicy local recipe. It turned out to be the best breakfast dish ever, so amazingly delicious.

We ordered more coffee and sat there using internet for a while, they had a very fast WiFi and we uploaded all the photos onto the blog to get it a bit more up to date.

Afterwards we went to the municipal tourist information but no one there seemed too interested in their work. We left a bit disappointed and went back to hostel to get our room and showered. It was a very simple room but it does have a television and private bathroom even though it's one of the cheapest we found in Arequipa centre.

After bit of a relax we went to try the Peru tourist information by Plaza de Armas and they had much more information to give. We took a wander around the old town and came across Museo Santuarios Andinos, the museum which has 'Juanita', the 500 year old frozen Inca girl. It was close to closing time so we left that for another day and continued our wander round the streets.

Arequipa is architecturally a beautiful city, there are lots of nice, huge buildings with multiple courtyards beyond their small entrances. There were lots of churches set in amongst the streets full of nice cafes and restaurants.

The sun began to drop and even though we were in the city centre, the sunset was amazing. We were at the cathedral on Plaza de Armas and the stonework magically just lit up.

Arequipa is famous, at least in Peru, for it's food and this is no doubt due to the early settlement of Europeans. There is a fantastic mix of indigenous fare and worldwide options. We were still quite full from the late breakfast and opted for a creperie, Crepisimo, close to the Santa Catalina convent. It had a nice French feel to it even though it was in a old Spanish building. To put a local spin on the traditional French dish,they used quinoa in their crepes and also had some local fillings. David decided on alpaca meat with rouqefort cheese while Maria had lamb. They even had a wide variety of beer and cider on offer so Maria managed to have her first cider in South America even if it was a very tasty vintage English cider.