Arequipa

Our bus trip to Arequipa included a few tourist stops, the first was to a winery and pisco distillery. Pisco being made from the very sweet grapes that grow in the desert. It was an old rustic style winery that still stomped their grapes by foot and fermented the wine in clay barrels. Unfortunately it was disgusting wine, but don't tell any Peruvians that. Sugar is very popular over here and I even heard that some people add more sugar to their fizzy drinks, although that may just be a rumour but all the wines were crazy sweet, like desert wines but not delicious.

The next stop was a tower to see some of the Nazca lines. James and I both decided that we skip the Nazca lines they maybe be mysterious and all but they have never really appealed to me so we were happy just to see a bit from the viewing tower. We had dinner in Nazca another sad omelette for me and chicken with rice for James which was organised by the Peru hop tour. So now we were being told what to look at and what to eat.
At least it was a comfy ride up to Arequipa in our nice big seats, I could have spent longer on the bus as we arrived at Arequipa around 4.30am. Luckily our hostel let us check in early and since our bunk mates had already left to do a tour we happily got an extra couple of hours sleep.

Arequipa turned out to be a really amazing town. Up in the Andes at 2300m it was completely different to the Peru we had seen before. It was filled with huge stone colonial buildings and nestled in a valley between huge volcanoes over 6000m it was really beautiful. Arequipa had also been an Incan settlement so it had a lot of history. We started our morning with a walking tour and were joined by two others from our Peru hop tour. We also kept running into the same people as everyone does this trail, much like in Patagonia there is a definite tourist route that no-one much strays from. We went to the markets in the afternoon to get some local street food. The food in Arequipa was spicier with a bit more variety than on the coast so James got a spicy stuffed pepper for lunch. Unfortunately vegetarian food in the markets is a little harder to come by so I had potatoes and vegetables. We also stocked up on Coca leaves at the market. We had started drinking coca leaf tea in Lima and I loved it. It doesn't give you a high or anything but it's supposed to hive you an energy hit and suppress your appetite, similar to caffeine. It's also supposed to help with altitude sickness. I thought that it was delicious though

like a sweeter green tea, and like green tea its also full of antioxidants as well as protein apparently. I wish we could get it in NZ.

After lunch we headed out to a museum to check out Juanita the ice maiden. Juanita is a 500ish year old mummy was sacrificed to a volcano at age 14. I read one thing that said she was killed by a swift blow to the head and one that she was sacrificed alive. Anyway you would have to be very sure of your religion to be sacrificed, or to let your child be sacrificed. She was found wearing her best clothes and amazing cloaks that they think her parents would have given her. Anyway because of the cold she was found almost perfectly preserved when a mountaineering team happened to go up during an eruption which melted the snow and she is now creepily displayed in her own little glass coffin. Apparently human sacrifice is still popular in Peru and Bolivia but now they take homeless people that no-one will miss. This is just a rumour of course.

In the evening we watched the sun go down over the plaza de armas from a very expensive restaurant. James eyed up the cuy (guinea pig) but even with amount of meat he's been eating , he couldn't bring himself to order a whole guinea pig. They are also served whole with, roasted or deep fried with their heads and feet still on so they can look at you while you're eating them. Since he had given up on the guinea pig I found us a vegetarian restaurant so I could finally have a stuffed pepper. Delicious and spicy and not a chip in sight. Perfect.
One of Arequipa’s main attractions is its proximity to Colca Canyon the 2nd deepest canyon in the world, there were a few day trips on offer for sight seers in vans but I wanted to get into it so I persuaded/bullied James into doing an overnight trek into it. Unfortunately it meant a 3am wake up call so it was early to bed for us.

Ready for an early start....