I leave Cusco at night to cross the mountains to head south west to the city of Arequipa. I have a travelling companion with me now, a girl called Karly from Melbourne and as we were bought heading the same way, both travelling solo during previous weeks and months, we said why not and left together for Arequipa. Its a b**** of a journey to Arequipa, an over night journey with Cruz Del Sur but regardless of how careful we were of booking with a good company nothing can make up for lack of leg room. I'm awake on the half hour all during the 9 hour trip. Arequipa greets us early in the morning with a beautiful sunrise over the glaciated mountain called El Misti in the distance and much closer its three sisters could be seen, Mt. Hualca, Ampato and Sabancaya. I had such a good experience in Wild Rover, La Paz, that we decided to go to their brother by the same name in Arequipa. Its similar in looks, has the same things you'd expect from a Wild Rover, but it was a lot quieter so we have to amuse ourselves in other ways that they partying that we were used to. We head out for the day but our main goal is to get on a Colca Canyon tour and to get the chance to do the Peruvian cooking expereince. The main highlight of the first day for me was visiting a museum, and yeah, I know, a museum, but it was good. After you get through all the cracked vases on display and taking brutal photos through foggy plastic cases, we enter a freezing cold room where there's a little lady sitting in front of you. Her name is Juanita and she's a Incan girl that was found on top of one of the nearby volcano's, frozen in time, believed by archeologists and historians alike to be an offering to the gods. The permaforst has her body very well preserved with skin and visible pigmentation clearly seen on her right hand. The room is cold to keep her from leaking all over the floor and its dark too, so once you've looked through one eye at her for a while, you slowly get used to looking at a dead body that has in some ways life still breathing in her. She sat in a hunched position, that at any time looked as if she'd let a spine-tingling growl roll out of her throath as as she strangled your neck, she was that close to being alive. The poor girl though, they think she was brought up the mountain knowing that she was already to be a sacrifice but then at the last minute she may have had second thoughts and did a legger. She had a skull fracture it later showed, so historians think that she got a wallop from the chiefs crozier as she tried to escape at the last minute before probably being buried alive. Back to being positive, in a way sort of. Getting up at 3am and not being collected till 4:30am aint the most positive I've felt since being on this trip. We're collected well off the supposed time, in a lovely minibus, seemingly brand new but for some reason there was no heat coming from the blower. Instead we were given babies blankets with Ben 10 and My Little Pony adorned on the front. Are the Peruvians that tight, has he hit his head and lost his sense of temperature, it was baltic inside and the driver didnt care. The bus was packed as we headed into the mountains to where the famous Colca Canyon. It was so cold that we were frozen to the bone, like a box of choc-ices just after the HB man had made his delivery. We stopped in a small town called Chivay for breakfast. We were realing with the chill factor and I was hoping to something warm to sit in and something to warm the cockles of my heart but the cold bus was warmer than the room we ate in and the breakfast was stone cold too, I'd be better off sucking my thumb. The only thing being warm that we had to eat or drink was a glass off orange juice/cordial mixed with hot water and quinoa which was suprisingly nice. The day was begin to kick into motion and finally it started to get warm. We continued all the way to a fantastic view point over the Colca Canyon which is amazingly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the States. The Canyon can be done as a two day trek but we both had just been off crazy multi-day treks, plus we were on our holliers, so we decided to take the easy route and go and see the canyons residents, the gigantic Andean condors instead. The view point gives you a great photo opportunity to hold your camera steady as you wait for these majectic birds to cross your path. The birds live high in the mountains so that they dont have to your their wings much but to fly, instead relying on thermal winds to propel them towards their prey. We stop at other viewpoints or miradors along the dusty road to purchase some local arts and crafts and to have a chomp at some of the fascinating fruits that they have on offer. One of the things that caught my eye was a fruit that grows on the top of the type of cacti in the area, and when all the pines are knocked off it, its good to be sliced open and eaten, the flesh being very similar to a kiwi, only super sour! We pass towns in the distances such as Lari, Madrigal and Ichupampa before arriving at a small town called Achoma. Theres nothing there really to see only a disused church, but a few locals have made their way to town with beautiful birds of prey, huge eagles and hawks that we're allowed to have sit on our heads and get photos of. A young boy has brought his cute baby llama too and he makes a few quid as the tourist goo all over his cuteness. He's covered in s***e, so I dont go near him. In a town called Chocapi we cross an ancient Incan bridge that crosses the Rio Colca to where they have thermal baths. The area is seismic, so their lucky enough to have piping hot water brusting through the rocks and into man made pools for everyone to enjoy. The sun is shining, the water is hot and the scenery around is amazing. Whether its better than the ones just outside Mendoza in Argentina that I visited a few months, I'm not sure, but there definately on par. The jury is still out. We're back on the truck after a while of bathing in the waters, after having a picnic lunch in Chivay, we're headed back towards Arequipa to finish the tour. The views are amazing, the first we've seen of them as it was pitch black when we came this way that morning, plus some of us might have been dozing even with the chronic lack of heat wwe had in the bus! The scenery ranges from deep canyons, to rock strewn landscapes, melting sheets of ice and snow to flat green plains where llama and alpaca roam freely. It was so nice, that we nearly had an issue. An Aussie guy, sitting to the right of me started to get nervous, jittering about the place, all fidgety he was, asking me if I could ask the driver to stop. I asked him what was wrong and he said with a worried little smile on his face, "I'm from Queensland, Australia. I've never seen or been this close to snow, I need to get out and touch it". My god, well he was like a kid in a candy store or even the Brazilian family that live just down the road from me in Roscommon. It snowed during Christmas Day 2010 and sher they were all out in the garden going balooba's in the snow as we headed in for the 12:15 mass. That Aussie guy, happy as a pig in s***e! Peru has an amazing food culture, their well able to cook and I wanted to try my hand at it. Peru has in the region of 3,000 types of spuds available so I knew that I'd have carbs looked after, thats for sure. They even have one type of spud for the prostrate gland. Now whether you boil it, roast it, mash it or just stick it up your arse I dont know, but the Peruvians swear by it. Its threaded just like the threads on a bolt, so it probably would screw up your arse! No sign of Kerr Pinks branching off that way though. We booked into the Peruvian Cooking Experience thats run by one of the fancier hostels in town as it was highly recommended by others I've met and it ranked number one on Tripadvisor, so it must be doing something right. The experience was broken into three sections, the first being a walk to the local fruit and veg market to see different varieties that the ladies had on sale there. Then there were flowers, medicinal plants, etc, etc and guide told us how we could incorporate these ingredients into our dishes today. The second part of the tour was the actual cooking bit. We met our chef for the day, a woman called Lady Melissa. When I heard of the way she wanted to be addressed I was wondering whether I was in the right place at all. I left me whip and arseless pants behind, Lady Melissa but it turns out she wasnt an S&M demon, she was a fantastic chef as she took us through what we'd be cooking for the day. For starter or entree's (if your from America) we were to make Causea which is a cold, spiced potatoe dish, built like a tower with different fillings in between, which was really good and simple to make. For mains, we cooked the famous staple Peruvian meal, Lomo Saltado which is to the Peruvians as to what a stew is to the Irish, their famous for it! It consists of stir-fried beef with onions and garlic, a dash of soy sauce, beef stock, orange chillis, spring onion and a spinkle of pisco, the famous Peruvian alcohol. Once cooked with a reduced sauce, its poured over shallow fried chips and a serving of boiled rice, its then plated up and forced under your gob! Delicious, cheap and ready in a few minutes and its definately a recipe I'm bringing back home to feast on once in a while. The third section of the experience is to make Pisco Sour's, their national drink. Pisco though is a town in Peru, south of Lima along the coast and its the origin of this famous drink. Years ago, when sailors arrived in the port they wanted to use up some of the eggs that they had onboard so they tried a few ways and came up with this. Basically what it is three parts pisco (a grape brandy), one part squeezed lime juice, a pinch of sugar and egg whites. This is all put in a cocktail shaker with ice and once the ice can no longer be heard, its time to pour and to be finished with a dash of angostura bitter on top. Delicious, frothy with loads of punch, its a great drink to while away a sunny afternoon in Peru. Arequipa is a nice town, with a beautiful colonial touch. Its a place where you can do as much as you want or as little as you want, whether its exploring the hustle and bustled or fruit markets, hiking down the Colca Canyon or braving the element as you climb the ice to the summit of one of the peaks close by. We decided three days was enough as we had many more places in Peru to visit, with our next stop being the dusty town of Nazca another overnight bus journey north which is famous the mysterious geometric figures that are concentrated in a relatively small space just outside of town which archeologists call the Nazca lines.