3rd-10th April

So after the white knuckle bus ride from Nazca to Arequipa, and a game of bus bingo (prize: a return ticket to Arequipa...), we arrived in one piece in Arequipa late on Sunday night.

City looked pretty dead as we drove through towards the hostel (our promised hostel pick up hadn´t materialised...), and we got to a deserted square where apparently the hostel was. Finally spotted it, and some sort of night watchman rang the bell for us... we got in, to find out that our reservation had been ignored and we were in a twin room with a shared bathroom - shared with the rest of the hostel. Excellent. Promised that we´d get our proper room the next morning... and they´d give us a discount. Ok fair enough. and headed to bed.

Got the right room the next day, after sharing the bathroom with the great unwashed (teenage gap yearers...). It´s a lie that travelling makes you more tolerant. 3rd thing to go wrong... no hot water for almost 3 days, which resulted in a couple of very cold showers and unhappy peeps. Apparently none in Arequipa... I don´t believe you Mr Hostel man...

Got our tour booked for Colca Canyon, after visiting the LP recommended one - where a very nice man talked us through what sounded like a smashing tour, and then dropped the big big one on us at the end... 650 sol EACH!! (150 GBP - expensive for Peru) Our eventual tour cost 240 sol for the 2 of us... By this time, we had also ditched the idea of using the hostel tour company and went with one recommended by a girl we´d met in Paracas. They all run basically the same trip to the canyon, with just a few differences. Company we went with was Peru Schweiz. Pretty good but more about that in a minute.

We spent the next couple of days wandering round Arequipa. It´s a beautiful city - called the White City due to the stone they use to build it. And has some incredible carvings in the buildings, as well as the Plaza Armas which is their gorgeous main square. Opening times for the churches and cathedral fluctuate quite a lot. They are all predominantly places of worship rather than tourist attractions which is the way it should be. We managed to check out the Cathedral early one morning - think the outside is more dramatic than the interior but worth a 10 minute wander, and another church down a side street from the main plaza, where we stood at the back watching mass one evening. Beautiful.

A lot of our time has been spent dodging the propaganda blaring cars and many protests as Peru is in the run-up to a general election due to take place today. Got followed up the street one night by a large protest group, and tried not to feel paranoid about it. They were pretty peaceful fortunately.

Arequipa is a great city to enjoy just wandering round. We stumbled over loads of little garden squares and nooks and crannies behind building facades all worth checking out. There´s a great view point of Mount Misti - the main volcano looking out over the town - in Yanahuara, a little suburb located to the west of the city, which is worth the walk over. This is also where one of the big popular Arequipeano restaurants, Sol De Mayo is located. Unfortunately, Paul was feeling like death due to some sort of stomach bug the day we headed out there, so guinea pig or llama was a no-no. I picked it up the next day, so some of our time in the White City was spent feeling atrocious - to the point that we had to push the Colca trek back by a day.

This actually turned out well in the end. Despite a viciously early start (pick up was 3am...), our group turned out to be great. 8 in total of us doing the 2 day - although we were sharing a minibus with the other lot who were doing a 3 day - apparently less hardcore in terms of the walking. We were slightly naive going in, thinking that while not exactly a walk in the park, if you´ll pardon the pun, still couldn´t be that hard. We´ve done Everest base camp don´t you know. In the words of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, BIG mistake. Huge.

A couple of near misses on the journey there, as we topped off 4,900m on the road and a couple of people were hit by the altitude. Luckily they made it off the bus before the big vom. We´d learnt from Nepal, and picked up some more Diamox to avoid feeling too ropey, plus had been drinking coca tea for the last few days which also apparently helps with altitude sickness. They´d both looked awful, but recovered pretty quickly once we descended for breakfast in Chivay, around 8am. Then off to the Condor viewpoint, as the canyon is famous for the condors who love to fly on the thermals it produces. We were lucky to see a few of the beautiful birds in the distance. Sadly not close enough for any decent photos, but just after we´d set off on the trek, one flew past very close above us and we got to appreciate just how huge and graceful they are. Unfortunately you won´t as we managed to get the camera sorted just as it was flying off into the distance.

Should mention, despite Colca Canyon being the 2nd deepest in the world and apparently twice the depth of the Grand Canyon at its deepest point, around 1,100m deep from the top to bottom ít doesn´t quite produce the same kind of mind-blowing reaction as the Grand Canyon. Not quite sure why. Think it´s probably because it´s not nearly as wide and you don´t get the same kind of incredible vista of flat tableland dropping away to incredible depths that you do at the Grand Canyon. Colca is surrounded by mountains, and while absolutely beautiful landscape and well worth the visit, definitely think the Grand Canyon has something extra.

1st day trek was pretty much all downhill, mainly slipping and sliding around in the dust and gravel. We stopped for lunch in San Juan village, just as it started to rain, but our excellent timing meant it had stopped by the time we headed off again. We found out later that the lomo saltado (strips of meat with onions, peppers and potato, served with rice (more carb overload, at least with the walking, you don´t feel so bad) was actually our 1st taste of llama. Pretty good. Our group was pretty international - the 2 of us, a French-Canadian couple, a Swiss couple, a guy from Manchester who now lived in Florida and a girl from Mendoza in Argentina. Our guide was Horatio, or Hono. We thought initially he looked a wee bit of a stoner, but he turned out to be great - good laugh and knew loads about the area, pointing out lots of interesting "stuff" on the way, such as hallucinogenic cactuses, cochineal beetles - which suck out the juice of cactuses and produce the red colour used in 101 things including make-up, where he gave us a little demo, and bush that secrete gunk which burns your skin off. Lovely.

By mid afternoon, having climbed up a little way, we stopped off at a little shack on the side of the trail for a breather. We were both absolutely b*****ed by this point - as you´ll see from the photo of Paul. However, he soon revived when the lovely wee boy of the woman who was running the stall, produced a balloon and started playing football on a piece of string with Paul. It´s the simple things in life these days.

Got to our final camp place - an oasis at the bottom of the canyon as it was getting dark. Clearly we were a hit with Hono as we got the best room. Score. Sadly no time for a dip in the pool as the rain and dark had both arrived at the same time, but our hose-pipe shower was a result after a sweaty day. Had a good chat with some of the group and some others who were doing different treks over a couple of beers waiting for dinner. Pretty much straight after dinner it was game over and we headed off for bed after promising to be up for 5am the next day. And a 3 hour climb up and out of the canyon. Yikes.

Started walking in the dark. Sky was still full of stars and pretty amazing to be up and about at that time. The trevor head torch came in very handy again, both at the camp and when we started walking. Can´t believe how i´ve changed to appreciate the practical since the days of Duke of Edinburgh and laughing at Morvy for using hers... (sorry, that´s a very niche reference for St. Leonards ladies). Despite talk of hiring mules to carry her up, our Argentinian girl was also up and ready to get going and she made a great go of it heading up the canyon, in spite of suffering from asthma and really not looking forward to this bit. Go the asthmatics!! It was bloody hard work, not helped by the altitude also affecting us a little bit in terms of breathlessness. Having walked 25km the previous day, we only walked 6 today, but 1.2km up a very steep track. Just as we were reaching the top, we were passed by one of the other groups - all on the back of mules, the lazy b*****s. Although one guy fell off as he tried to dismount... we tried not to titter and look sympathetic.

The group made it up in 2.5 hours, so much backslapping all round, and a very enjoyable 2 hollow bread rolls and tea breakfast at Cabanconde. It´s amazing how delicious the basics get! We headed to Chivay for a great buffet lunch and to use the hot springs. Smelled pretty bad, but not as bad as NZ. Although left all of us feeling very lightheaded afterwards, and our legs are still killing us today, so wasn´t totally successful. Unfortunately, the clouds had rolled in through the afternoon, so we didn´t manage to get a view of the 8 volcanoes at the highest point of the road on the way back, but did get a good photo of a snowman at the top.

Back in Arequipa for a night. Got the duff room in the hostal (are they punishing us for not booking their trek). Unluckily it faced onto the square where a bunch of strangely dressed men had decided to gather to play guitars and sing until around 1.30 in the morning. Look you lot, do you know how tired i am. Well, do you?? Also managed to lock the bathroom door with all our stuff in from the inside, and key provided in the room didn´t work, so our hostal manager had to break in using a kitchen knife. He was eventually successful, but i think it´s safe to say we don´t recommend our Arequipa hostel...

Off on the bus again tonight to Cusco where we are set to meet up with Katie and Alfie for the Machu Picchu trek. Hopefully our legs will have stopped hurting by then: the driver found it hilarious that I was walking like a robot. Hilarious.