Arequipa

The hiking chronicles continue.

After accidentally booking 2 tickets to Arequipa, I recruited Charlie to join me. The bus cost us £8 but we ended up in cama. However, we did spent the first part of the bus ride worrying that they hadn't put our bags in the hold so that was interesting.

We arrived in Arequipa at 4am and slept until we went on the walking tour around the city. Known as 'the white city', Arequipa is really beautiful. In the same desert region as San Pedro in Chile, it was boiling hot which makes a nice change. We walked round the city centre and then went for some traditional Peruvian food at La Capitana. We got 4 dishes for £5 which were really nice - apart from the cows cheek which was disgusting.

After I went back to the hostel and organised myself for doing the Colca Canyon tour the next day. We went for drinks and an Indian - I haven't eaten curry since leaving the UK so this was a nice treat! We had some drinks but nothing too heavy because I had to get up at 3am the next morning.

After an early start and really uncomfortable bus ride, we arrived at the Condor viewpoint at around 8am. You could see about 4 or 5 condors flying overhead which was cool. We then started our trek of the Colca Canyon - the second deepest canyon in the world.

I liked my group because there were some girls I had met in La Paz on it so it was really fun. We trekked for about 2 hours downhill which was easy apart from that the track was so slippy as the rocks were basically dust. We had lunch and a quick nap and then continued to 'the oasis' which was our hostel for the night. The first day's trek was good but pretty exhausting and I was out like a light by 8pm.

The next day we had to get up at 4.30am to start the trek back up the canyon. The trek is about 1000 metres up and it ended up taking nearly two and a half tours. It was hard but it was really good to have done it.

We had breakfast and then went to the hot springs which was really good after having done all that walking. My muscles were achey but the hot springs relaxed them. We then got the bus back to Arequipa which took about 5 hours and arrived back in the city in time to have some food and then get the night bus to Ica.Meer informatie