After leaving Colca Canyon we had another long drive to Arequipa. The roads were ridiculous! I half wished we hadn't stopped for lunch enroute as I could feel it coming back every 10 minutes! The stereo couldn't cope with the bumps so Vee and I shared an ipod ear each and entertained ourselves (and some of the truck) with our singalonga. Well, until one old bat told us our singing was totally unnecessary and to "Ssshhh". Harrumph! Didn't stop us and we sang until we made it to Arequipa!

Arequipa is a lovely colonial town surrounded by what seems like some of the wildest terrain in Peru - with volcanoes, hot springs, the canyons and deserts all on the doorstop! It's Peru's 2nd largest city and you can see 2 of the volcanoes from the city centre. Apparently the local saying is "When the moon separated from the earth, it forgot to take Arequipa"....eh?!!

Anyway, we were staying in a fab little hotel that was set around lots of gardens full of cages of budgies (enough to make you lose the whereabouts of your room every time!). Some of us went for a great group dinner in what seemed to be a bit fancy for a bunch of backpackers - great service and presentation - and it tasted good too! A few of us then headed to a bar where Vee and I proceeded to drink a few too many pina coladas and stumbled back to bed at around 1am - she's a bad influence on my no-alcohol regime (ahem!).

On Saturday we had a free day so after a leisurely breakfast, Vee and I set out to the Plaza de Armas and the cathedral which were both pretty nice. We then headed to the museum to see "Juanita", the ice princess. This is an amazing story. She is basically a frozen mummy of a teenage Inca girl who was discovered in 1995 on the Ampato Volcano, after the neighbouring volcano erupted and the ash and lava melted the snow. She had been buried on the volcano for more than 500 years after being sacrificed. In Inca times, the mountains were deemed as violent deities who could kill by volcanic eruptions, avalanches or climatic disasters and they believed that the only way to appease these Gods was by sacrificing young children. It's thought that Juanita was between 12 and 14 when she died and she had probably been handpicked since birth to be sacrificed. She would have had to travel to Cusco and then onto Arequipa to start her journey to death to the Apu Ampato (God of Mt Ampato). From the research that has been carried out on her body, scientists believe that she was drugged and sedated before being struck by a kind of mace across her right eyebrow. They are not sure if she actually died from the blow to her head or froze to death. Because her body had been frozen for 500 years, most of it was still intact - even her skin and muscles! They could determine her last meal and the drugs used to sedate her from the contents of her stomach. They can also determine her genealogy, the state of her health, her diet and the viruses and bacteria that affected her and were still present in her body. Fascinating! The museum was done very well and the guide was great (surprisingly as I'm not normally into guided tours). There were a lot of artefacts that were found with Juanita including her clothes. We then saw her - she's kept in a case that's -20 degrees to keep her preserved. She almost looks alive (well, I suppose she is apart from being frozen!) and you could see all of her features. She was tiny though - and crouched almost in a foetal position. Anyway, it was an amazing experience and fascinating.

We then went to grab some lunch at one of the balcony cafes on the main square. Halfway through, Vee opened her sandwich to out in some ketchup and discovered 2 dead flies on her lettuce - ugh! The coffee wasn't much better and we'd lost our appetites by then so we headed off to the Monasterio Santa Catalina which is like a city within a city. It was founded in the 16th century by a wealthy widow who selected the nuns for the convent from the richest Spanish families. It's completely constructed from sillar which is a volcanic stone quarried locally. It's considered to be the most important and impressive colonial structure in the city and it was full of proper streets, nun's houses, staircases etc. It was huge and fairly interesting for the first few minutes and then it got a bit samey. Anyway, we had an early dinner and an early night (maybe I'm getting a bit old for all of this!!!).