Buses and Roundabouts

We took yet another overnight bus journey to the `White City´ of Arequipa. For some reason the town planners of Nasca decided to put the bus station on the side of a (half-built) roundabout with no cover, which made for a rather cold wait for our bus at midnight (which was only an hour late to be fair). We went for the economy version so were rather cramped for the 9 or so hours it took (they said 7 - not far off!) as well as having to endure a Spanish film at full volume which they turned on about 6.30am. I have never seen a film which disturbed me so much (a very small man pretending to be a baby, parents don`t notice it`s a man, man does disturbing things to the women whilst pretending to be a baby). I was very glad when it finished.

The White City

We`re staying in a guesthouse a few blocks of the the main plaza (they`re all called Plaza de Armas in Peru which literally translates as plaza of weapons which Peruvian people actually call it when speaking in English!!) with a kitchen and a roof terrace! We`ve not had a kitchen for weeks so have been enjoying cooking meals, all pasta! The roof terrace is great for sunbathing and eating on too.

Arequipa is a very pretty city with a feel of a large town rather than a city and has stunning views of volcanoes, the most prominent, El Misti which actaully looks like a triangular shaped proper mountain! A lot of the buildings are built from sillar which is white volcanic rock and makes the town look very old and pretty. We really like Arequipa but have had some trouble finding things to do. We visited the tourist information and the very helpful women gave us a map and list of activities. So far we`ve spent nearly two days wondering round trying to find these sights, such as museums, a convent and hot springs, and we`ve not seen anything! All three of the museums had closed down (the leaflet we had was this years!), the convent was closed despite ìnfo saying it was open all day and the hot springs were tiny and smelt of sewage. Note to anyone going to Arequipa: DON´T GO TO TOURIST INFORMATION!! However it wasn`t all bad, we made it into the main catherdral and wondered around the city for a while. The main reason for people coming here it seems is to visit the Colca Canyon but it was mucho expensivo so unfortunatley we had to give it a miss.

Over the Border

In a slight change of plan we`ve decided to head to Chile briefly and then down through Argentina rather than just through Chile. We`ve heard there are vineyards everywhere with lots of tasting to be done so we needed no persuasion! We`re heading to Tacna to cross the border into Chile then Arica in Chile. Apparently Peru and Chile hate each other so border crossing is tricky so fingers crossed.