Buenos Dias Chico¨s and Chica¨s !

After a couple of days relaxation in Cusco (our legs needed it) we headed off on an 11 hour overnight bus to Arequipa, hoping to get some sleep. Boy were we wrong. Despite having sleeper seats, the driver was so crazy through the mountains that we barely slept a wink, we were hugging the seats thinking, "oh my god we are going to die!"

Arequipa is a beautiful white city made from volcanic stone, the plaza was rather impressive. The city is overlooked by three 6,000m peaks, with El Misti (the active volcano) sitting just behind the city.

We visited "Juanita - the ice princess" (one of the most important archaelogical finds in the Americas in the last few decades)! This is a 12-14 year old girl sacrificed 500 years ago by the Inca´s and left at the top of the volcano for the gods. She is now kept in the local univeristy in a glass-viewing freezer which you can visit. Her body is intact, hair, teeth, nails and clothing etc. The only noticeable difference is that her face has whitened due to this being the only part of her body left exposed to the sun for 15 days after her tomb was uncovered in 1995.

We went on a 2 day tour of the Colca Canyon which is the second deepest canyon in the world (deepest is a couple of hours further away). We were last minute finding a tour company to use for the trip and at 7pm realised that the following day there was to be a national stike, protesting against the government. Therefore our tour would be leaving at the lovely hour of 4.30am instead of 8.00am to avoid road blocks etc! Reluctantly we booked the tour and Ben set the alarm for 3.45am! At 4.40am Lisa woke up to a little knock on the door with a nice lady shouting Hola!!! Lisa noticed Ben¨s phone flashing and realsied Ben had set the alarm but left the phone on silent mode. In literally 2 minutes flat we were changed, out the door and sat on the minibus (where everyone else was waiting for us oops) wetting ourselves, wiping the sleep out of our eyes and complaining we hadnt had chance to brush our teeth.

Part of the tour (on the way to the canyon) felt a little pointless as we were jumping off the bus every 5 minutes in the freezing cold at 5,000m high to take a photo of an animal (there were some interesting one´s).

We stayed in a place called Chivay which is a small village and not that much to see, we were shattered due to getting up at 4.30am and couldnt really be bothered to visit the hot springs but were really glad that we did! The hot springs are baths (like a swimming pool) which are filled with hot water from the nearby volcanoes and very relaxing!

We arrived at the the canyon the following morning and we thought it was pretty spectacular, you felt so high. We´re told it´s around twice as deep as the Grand Canyon but not as long. Then we sat around waiting to view the Condor´s, which are the biggest birds in the world, with a 3metre wingspan. Waiting hours for them to appear made us feel like bird-watchers, when they finally arrived (2 hours) they were pretty impressive and suprisingly we managed to get some good photos.

Chao!!

xx