Our planned trip to our next location of Arequipa was brought forward a day when we told that there would be no transport between Puno and Arequipa for 3 days due to transport strikes over an ongoing mining dispute. Therefore we tiredly caught a bus at 10.30pm from Puno and arrived in Arequipa at 4.30am, which was followed by yet another argument with a taxi driver over not actually knowing where the hostel we wanted was and trying to drop us off any old place. Eventually we stumbled across 'Friendly AQP hostel', and although our room wasn't ready at that time in the morning we were given blankets to nap on the sofas until a more humane hour! The purpose for our visit here was to hike through 'The Colca Canyon', the deepest canyon in the world at over 3270m deep (although this fact is highly debated). That day we searched around town for some suitable tour companies, whilst trying to avoid the protests going on around the main square and adjoining streets, where hundreds of police were lined up armed with batons, tear gas and guns! That afternoon we joined in on a free walking tour of the city which took us around the very pretty main square full of big palm trees and historic old buildings. We were also shown various churches covered in both Incan and European Spanish symbols and patterns, and a painting of 'The Last Supper' complete with the local delicacies of Guinea Pig and sweetcorn cobs painted in. All this coupled with lots of history about the city and free samples of potato, pisco and chocolate made for a great way to see the main sights of the city in a short time!

The following day we booked our canyon trip and went to visit a museum to see 'Yunita', a frozen mummy girl discovered on nearby volcano, Mt. Ampato, when the snow melted after the neighbouring volcano erupted and deposited ash on it. The Incan girl had been sacrificed in her teenage years to the Inca Gods in an effort to appease them, by being hit in the head after taking all sorts of drugs to numb the pain, both physically and psychologically! The girl is particularly important as she has been so well preserved, even the skin on her face and arms, due to being frozen in the ice for so long. Afterwards we went and visited the Santa Catalina Monastery; a very old nunnery where historically the very rich families used to send a daughter to be a nun, and where each nun would have poor servants to do everything for them. While much to Trevor's disappointment we didn't see any nuns wandering around (it used to be forbidden for them to ever leave the nunnery or see people from the outside world after entering), the monastery itself was beautiful, and going just as the sun went down and the candles were lit gave it a brilliant ambience. We wound down small lanes into central squares, and peered into old rooms that once were the living quarters of the nuns, still with all the old beds and equipment they used to use. We wandered with anticipation into what was the old hospital of the time, complete with old operating utensils and bottles, hospital beds and a rocking chair and felt sure we would see some kind of ghost! We were all the while accompanied by choir-esque music as we walked around, and real fires had been lit in different rooms; the whole experience was quite surreal and fascinating!

On the 29th May at the disgusting time of 3.30am, we were picked up by our Colca Canyon guide 'Honorio', which we had booked though the company 'Pablo Tours' to do a 3 day, 2 night trek on an alternative less touristy route. After a few hours in a mini bus we arrived in the town of 'Chivay' to have breakfast, before a couple more hours in the bus took us to 'Cruz de Condor', the lookout spot for the giant condor birds across the canyon. We were fortunate to see quite a few swooping around, hardly needing to exert any effort to glide on the warm air currents across the canyon. Next we continued to the town of 'Cabanaconde', where we would start our trek and had lunch at a small restaurant where we talked to 'Ono' more, our long haired guide who was into head banging rock metal music and hiking up mountains! The first day of our trek involved about 4-5 hours of mainly downhill walking, beginning with a great view down into the vastly deep canyon, complete with a river running through the length of it and surrounded by mountains. Two of these mountains people historically tried to use tight bandaging to try and shape their babies heads like (tall and thin or wide and short) to appease the mountain gods! After admiring the view we walked down a cliff edge path into the canyon, where two snakes slid out in front of Sophie shocking her into nearly jumping off the edge! We were also lucky enough to see more condors on our walk, one of which flew straight over our heads and we were able to see its rather gruesome face and turkey-like neck close up. At 5pm that day we reached the small settlement of 'Llahuar' where we were staying in a white washed round stone room, with the mattress even on a block of carved out stone. We spent a while in a hot pool down by the river, heated by the natural underground springs, and then joined Orno for dinner, where we enjoyed a beer and a few games of cards before heading to bed.

Next morning we had pancakes for breakfast before doing a couple of hours of ascent, taking us up through cactus farms, which were being grown not only for their fruit, but also for 'cochineal', a cactus parasite which when squashed (as Orno kindly demonstrated on Sophie's hand) goes from white to a bright red liquid which can be used as a dye. We also came across some donkeys which we spent far to long stroking. Orno filled us in on all sorts of information about Peruvian culture, including on 'Death Day', where everyone goes to visit their dead family and friends at the cemetery and take the favourite foods and drinks of the dead to have a party there for them; it sounded like an amazing concept and one we wish we'd been able to observe! After climbing up through some small villages and wooded areas we reached the dusty road which we followed for a couple of hours while Orno taught us about Peruvian music and played examples though his portable speaker. We proceeded to walk through a village containing the oldest church in the area, and where a small van full of fruit, vegetables and meat was being crowded around by villagers eager to buy their supplies, followed by another village full of coloured plots of flowers and vegetables, and unfortunately a cage full of terrified guinea pigs ready to be chosen like lobsters in a tank. Descending down a slippery scree slope for half an hour we reached our lunch village set amongst lots of neat farms on the side of the canyon. After a tasty lunch and trying a fruit Ono gave us which you scraped out of the skin with the look and texture of frog-spawn but the taste of passion fruit, we set off again. Not long after, Orno was keen to make us try another fruit, this time a sour cactus fruit which really did make your face contort with sourness! Afterwards we descended all the way down and over the river, to spend the next couple of hours trekking up and down the forest covering the side of the canyon, trying fiery pepper corns off a tree, and being treated to spectacular views down the length of the canyon. Heading downwards for the last 40 minutes of our day we reached 'The Oasis', where we would be staying for the night, and jumped in the chilly swimming pool to refresh. After more card games with Orno, some pisco from Trevor's hip and a huge barbecued steak for dinner we headed to bed ready for an early rise the next morning.

At 5am the next morning we began our long ascent out of the canyon in the dark with a bright blanket of stars above us. The canyon silhouettes as the sun came up were great brilliant and we could see the lights of everyone else climbing ahead and behind us up the trail. It was 2.5 hours of continuous uphill walking, and while most people struggled up on foot some people we saw had opted to ride mules up the path...this looked extremely scary as they turned precariously around the tight corners! We even saw a cross that had been erected after a little local girl had been crushed by a mule on the path! Eventually we emerged back out of the canyon at the top and hurried off back to Cabanaconde for a well earned breakfast buffet, with Orno and Trevor sharing the last of Trevor's hip flask pisco in celebration. Trekking completed, we made a few stops on our bus journey back to see some impressive pre-Incan terraces sculpted into the side of the canyon, to visit some hot springs, for a big buffet lunch, and at the 'San Miguel Viewpoint' at 4,800m high, where we were able to see 7 different volcanoes surrounding us, including where the mummy girl was found! Returning to Arequipa at 7pm, we swapped Facebook details with Orno who had proved to be a brilliant guide, really informative and enthusiastic about everything we saw, and thanked him for an exhausting but really interesting and fun trek through the Colca Canyon!