18/6/09 We caught a local flight from Cusco to Arequipa, which is nicknamed the 'White City' from the white volcanic stone bricks the buildings in the main square (Plaza de Armas) and nearby are made from. The effect is stunning - I had thought Cusco's centre was beautiful, but this was even more so!

The minibus was waiting to pick us up and take us to the airport at 11.40am, but some people were late getting back from town. **** was desperate for us to be off, because time was running short, and after we had piled everybody's bags on he was just about to leave a note for the others telling them to get a taxi to the airport whilst the minibus went on ahead with those of us who were here, but luckily they arrived just in time!

The flight was uneventful. I managed to get a window seat and took a couple of pictures of the mountains below us. We didn't arrive until late afternoon, so we just rested for the rest of the day, and Dave and I had dinner at a Turkish restaurant.

19/6/09 The next morning we all left for our trip to Chivay, a small town only 42km from the Colca Canyon, and had a few stops on the way. The valley near Chivay is famous for its Inca terracing, which is still used at the present day for farming, and we stopped for a look and a few photos. We also stopped at a place where we could see Inca graves in the side of the mountain above us; these are just small holes, now empty. Only the upper classes were buried in this fashion, and were embalmed sitting up in the foetal position - we saw some examples of these at the Inca Museum in Cusco. Once we arrived at Chivay most of us went to some thermal swimming pools nearby. This part of the Andes is very volcanic and they have frequent small earthquakes in Arequipa, Chivay and elsewhere in the area, though there weren't any that we noticed while we were there. Due to the volcanoes, there's lots of hot springs and suchlike around. Unlike in Rotorua these ones are built up into swimming pools, but you can tell it's all thermal because of the boiling hot spring which pours into one end, and you can see the white minerals when they settle. That evening we went out to a restaurant where they had locals dancing traditional Peruvian dances, and playing live folk music. The dances were great to watch, and I got several photos. It was one man and one woman dancing them all, and after each one they'd retire for a bit and then reappear in a different outfit. I guessed the second one was probably about celebrating the harvest originally or something similar, because the man danced with a decorated little wooden plough and mimed digging with it at times. Another one was a little stranger and first of all involved the man biting into an orange given to him by the woman, then staggering, falling down and being struck by a knotted rope. Then the woman sat on his face before helping him up, and the same thing happened the other way round. Unfortunately the food wasn't that great, but the dancing made up for it.
20/6/09 The next morning we got up early to go to the Colca Canyon itself and look out for condors, because it's a condor reserve. We were there for an hour and a half, and we saw lots of them. At first they were all a bit too far away to get good pictures of them, but later on some kept soaring around much closer, even flying only a couple of metres above us, so I got a couple of good photos. A couple of them also landed on the edge of a rock nearby. Their wingspan is so wide, it was a great sight to see them swooping around us!
After this we went back to Arequipa, where we'd be for the night and most of the next day. Dave and I walked round the square and took some photos, popped into a church for a look around (and impressive it was too - the striking, volcanic white brick on the outside, beautifully decorated inside, including a fantastic golden carved shrine and altar taking up most of the wall at one end, and old religious paintings along the long walls.) We did a bit of shopping, too. For dinner we went to a restaurant with Mark, **** Jon & Olivia where they did lots of traditional Peruvian dishes; Mark, Jon and I all had guinea pig! I was taken aback when it arrived, because all they'd done to it was take the insides out and the hair off; the head and claws were still on, and it had been deepfried. The meat was quite gamey, a mixture between chicken and rabbit, but there wasn't that much of it and it was quite slippery, so it was quite hard to actually get the meat off the bones. It was OK, but I'm not going to bother having it again if I ever see it offered anywhere else.

21/6/09 We had a lie in and then just wandered round the square again, having some lunch at another Turkish place which the others had been to the day before and had recommended to us. We ended up meeting everybody else there, and I had a delicious steak sandwich whilst Dave had some falafel. We were all meeting up at the hotel at 7 to get a minibus to the bus station, where we were to get a local night bus to Nazca, so before this we bought some snacks and drinks for the journey. Dave and I were very impressed with the bus, because it was by far the most luxurious we've been on in South America. Loads of legroom, a blanket, a film, a 'road hostess', cupholders, comfyish seats, even dinner.... though the latter wasn't very nice and we left about half of it. After the film finished I managed to get to sleep OK, but I woke up a couple of hours later and a woman nearby was snoring annoyingly, so I didn't manage to sleep any more before we arrived at Nazca at 4am.