My 5 month adventure!: Arequipa, Peru

The bus to Arequipa was about 16 hours overnight. We were pleasantly surprised because it was a really nice bus, we were served dinner and breakfast, some of the movies had English subtitles, and we even played a game of bingo to win a bus ticket (unfortunately we didn't win). When we bought the bus tickets the guy was laughing at how excited we were that we were getting food on the bus - the little things while traveling!!

Arequipa was a cute small town so we spent a bit of time wandering around the markets and the plaza and then organised our Colca Canon Tour for the next 2 days. We found another local place with a set menu for lunch - 6 soles even better! It became a bit of menu roulette because we weren't quite sure what half the food was. When we were wandering around we bumped into Will and Gerard who are my friends from home and had been on exchange in America. Such a crazy coincidence because I had no idea they were in South America! We were staying at the Wild Rover Hostel which had a bar so they came over later for drinks and then we headed out to a club. We didn't get home until around 4:30am and had to get up around 8am to go on our tour!

The Colca Canon Tour was 2 days/1 night. On the first day there was a lot of driving but we stopped a couple of times at some markets, tried coca tea, saw lots of llamas and alpacas, had great views of snow capped mountains and finally arrived in Chivay where we spent the night. Coca is a plant that is very popular in South America and is one of the ingredients in Coca-Cola and Cocaine. You can chew the leaves and they give you energy and can help with altitude sickness. As well as chewing them you can use them to make tea and you can also buy coca lollies and coca energy bars etc.

Once we arrived in Chivay we were all dropped off at our hotels and then went to the hot springs. There were 3 pools, 2 outdoors and 1 indoors, and there was a beautiful view of the mountains. It was so nice and relaxing but very hard to get out because it was really cold! We definitely weren’t ready for the cold weather. After the hot springs we all went out to dinner and there was a folk band playing and some people performing traditional dances.

The second day we were picked up before sunrise and stopped in a few small towns to look at their markets and churches. We then continued on to some view points of the Colca Valley and then to the Colca Canon to watch the Condors. The Colca Canon is the 2nd deepest canon and the view was amazing. The Condors are big birds that glide around the canon and are really awesome to watch. We then had a lunch buffet and I tried some Alpaca - not bad. You can also do Colca Canon tours where you hike into and camp in the canon. We were considering doing this but it was more expensive and we decided to rest up for the hike to Machu Picchu!

Once we got back to Arequipa we hung around at the hostel for a couple of hours before our overnight bus to Cusco.